Budget debate: ‘N’ demands greater military accountability

Government defeats all 208 motions to cut specific items in its budget requests.

ISLAMABAD:

Frustration at the opaque nature of the military budget finally boiled over in the National Assembly on Saturday as legislators from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz demanded that the government provide more details about defence spending, particularly in light of the recent public embarrassments faced by the military, including the May 2 US raid on Abbottabad and the terrorist attack on PNS Mehran in Karachi.

The outrage, however, was not able to prevent a Rs505 billion allocation (more than a quarter of expected government revenues) for the defence division, particularly since the military budget was not subject to a vote by the National Assembly.

Approval of the defence budget is given because it is presented with allocations for charged expenditure before parliament, which is just a formality. Even if the ayes outnumber the nays, legislators cannot demand a reduction in charged expenditure. In frustration, the opposition called upon the government to provide a breakdown of the expenditure and called for transparency.

Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan of the PML-N cited militant attacks on the Army headquarters in Rawalpindi, the naval airbase fiasco in Karachi and the US raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden as failures of the military and called for greater accountability.

“The people of the country want to know where the taxpayers’ money is being spent,” he said, adding “The country’s resources are not for a select few.”

Ahsan Iqbal, the PML’N spokesperson said that spending over Rs1,800 billion on defence and debt servicing would not lead the country towards progress and prosperity.

Yet despite the heated rhetoric, the PML-N was not able to match words with deeds. The PML-N has 92 seats in the National Assembly but there were only 30, and at times, even fewer members present in the house. Far outnumbered, they could not block any of the military’s budget demands even if they wanted to.

Though the PML-N led in moving ‘cut motions’ – where legislators seek to cut the amount being demanded by the government for a particular item – the party did not have the numerical strength to get any of its cut motions approved.

Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh presented the government’s demands for charged expenditure for various federal ministries and departments. The minister opposed every single cut motion and instead invited the opposition to discuss the recipient’s performance. While securing approval for its demands, the government rejected all 208 cut motions put up by the opposition.

Winding up the debate, Defence Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar said that the government had given a four-page detail of defence expenditures instead of a one- liner. “Next year, we hope to give more details,” he promised. There is merely a 2.24 per cent increase in defence expenditure in the budget, said Mukhtar downplaying the opposition’s concerns.

The opposition censured the performance of the Cabinet and Establishment Divisions and its affiliated departments. Abbasi expressed bewilderment over the allocation of Rs630 million for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Rs546 million for the PM Secretariat, Rs246 million for ERRA, Rs 94 million for NDMA and Rs156 million for the Board of Investment (BoI).

He said that NAB was practically toothless due to the absence of an accountability law, but was given more money than the BoI, which is mandated to invite investment in the country. Anusha Rehman from the PML-N referred to an audit report which highlighted an embezzlement of Rs35 billion by NAB officials.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2011.