Parliament is not a place for flattery, but a place for fulfilling responsibilities: Opposition Leader

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami Dr. Shafiqur Rahman said that Parliament is not a place for flattery, but a place for fulfilling responsibilities. He said this while participating in the discussion on the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 in the National Assembly today, Monday (June 29), under the chairmanship of Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmed.
The opposition leader said, “Whether it is the ruling party or the opposition party, it is not possible for everyone to have the same thoughts. If everyone had the same thoughts, then there would be no need to spend so much speech or so much time, it would have been enough for one person from both sides to speak. We were elected by the love and votes of the people and got the opportunity to come to this parliament by the will of Almighty Allah.” Therefore, everyone is responsible to their own conscience, Almighty Allah and their beloved people.
Describing the budget session as the most important session of the year, he said, “How the entire year will go depends on its foundation and all the members spoke from that sense of responsibility.”
Rather than a statistical analysis of the budget, Dr. Shafiqur Rahman highlighted its deeper political and social significance, saying that the parliament basically runs on two wheels—one is the government party and the other is the opposition party. If any one wheel becomes useless, the entire vehicle will come to a standstill. The tendency to puncture the wheel by inserting pins or nails in the wheel must be stopped. He advised to avoid the divisive mentality of dividing the parliament into pieces and calling for unity.
The Jamaat Ameer said that the opposition party will not blindly accept all the intentions of the government party and if the government takes any good initiative, the opposition party will not oppose it just for the sake of opposition. He called on the government party to respect the opposition party and the opposition party to have a mentality of cooperation with the government for relevant reasons.
Admitting his newness in the parliament, the Jamaat Ameer said that the youth want to learn something good from the elders, not something bad. Strongly criticizing the culture of singing, poetry and dreaming to flatter individuals in the past, Dr. Shafiqur Rahman said that the parliament should not be turned into a place of flattery with the people’s tax money. It is a place to understand and fulfill responsibilities. He strongly demanded that the ‘bad culture’ of hurting others and character assassination that existed in the past while flattering individuals be completely stopped through the Speaker.
The opposition leader said that some in the government party welcomed this criticism, while others expressed annoyance. This diversity is the beauty of the parliament. Criticizing the prevailing practice of ignoring the cut proposals on the supplementary budget, he expressed hope that this time the Finance Minister will accept the rational proposals from the opposition and the government in a revised form, so that the countrymen understand that this discussion was not just a waste of time or a flurry of words.
Proposing the much-awaited structural reforms in the implementation of the budget, Dr. Shafiqur Rahman said that since the July-June fiscal year is the end of the year, work is done in a hurry amid floods and natural disasters. As a result, only 42 percent of the work is completed in the first 10 months and the rest is done at the end of the year, which opens the way for waste and looting. To solve this crisis, he reiterated his strong proposal to change Bangladesh’s fiscal year to a calendar year or January-December instead of July-June, which will reduce the country’s losses and speed up the work. The opposition leader reminded that although the budget is made in parliament, the main responsibility for its implementation lies with the executive branch and state officials, so it is important to ensure proper use of public money through them.