NA nod for budget

The Federal Budget 2021-22 passed without incident

The Opposition’s chest-thumping statements were all for naught as the Federal Budget 2021-22 was passed without incident – and also without several key opposition figures being present in the National Assembly. Even Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif was not in attendance at the lower house. It was a far cry from the claims made by Shehbaz as well as PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari that they would give the government a tough time with as to the passage of the federal budget. Whatever behind-the-scenes machinations the PML-N and the PPP might have been attempting clearly failed, because the Finance Bill was okayed easily.

This was not, however, because the Government of Prime Minister Imran Khan had an overwhelming turnout or support. In fact, they only scraped past the finish line, with 172 votes – the minimum that is required to ensure that a bill get the nod from the House. A handful of government legislators were actually missing, and this could have been devastating if the Opposition had bothered to show up, keeping in mind the government’s slim majority. Instead, the Opposition could only muster 138 votes, meaning that almost 25 opposition lawmakers were also absent. If the Opposition had actually shown up, a handful of additional PTI absences, or disgruntled MNAs from its coalition partners, could have toppled the government. This is, after all, what Shehbaz had promised to do, and what Bilawal had indirectly said the PPP would back. Instead, we only had a voice vote because the Opposition wanted to avoid further embarrassment.

At the same time, the final days of budget wrangling had been anything but boring. Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin’s efforts to blame past governments for the bleak economic indicators during the ongoing tenure were especially comical. Tarin claimed that the only significant inflation-related problem with the economy was food prices, which he blamed entirely on past governments. Never mind that the government’s own law enforcement machinery is currently proceeding — albeit at a snail’s pace — with investigations and inquiries into Jahangir Khan Tareen, Khusro Bakhtiar and several other leading members of the PTI and its coalition partners for their role in creating commodity crises that led to food price inflation. Never mind that the government’s own inquiry commission faulted the PTI-led Punjab government for the wheat crisis that contributed to food price inflation.

And of course, the icing on the cake is that, as Finance Minister from 2008 to 2010, Tarin was one of the people directly responsible for the policies of past governments. Meanwhile, his claim that the government only went to the International Monetary Fund because of the debts incurred by previous governments is undercut by the fact that the government has set records for borrowing, including with loans at commercial rates, reportedly to pad its foreign exchange reserves. There was also the surreal claim that no new taxes had been imposed, even though the budget Tarin was presently clearly included new taxes. In his ‘defence’, he said that “consumers are paying taxes, but we are not seeing it.”

And while we have another year of underinvestment in health, education, and infrastructure development projects, there are benefits aplenty for the financial sector and uber-rich industrialists. If this is a good budget, we are not seeing it.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2021.

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