Budget debate or a choreographed formality?

A strong opposition is a must for any democracy, especially for a functional parliament.

However, in the absence of a large chunk of PTI lawmakers, who recently tendered their resignations, the general debate on the budget which started on Monday in the National Assembly is expected to be merely a symbolic exercise as most of the lawmakers sitting on the opposition benches are the ones who helped the incumbent government come to power.

Though the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) dissident lawmakers in the National Assembly neither officially joined any other party nor voted against former prime minister Imran Khan when he faced the no-confidence motion, it was evident from their conduct in the recent past that they provided the much-needed leverage to the then opposition parties to pull the previous government’s coalition partners away and successfully execute the motion against Imran.

Though the Supreme Court had not ruled that the votes of the dissident members would not be counted before Imran was ousted from office, the dissident PTI lawmakers were smart enough to maintain a safe distance just to avoid any legal consequences later on.

They succeeded and now enjoying powers of the coveted offices of the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and the Public Accounts Committee — the accountability forum of parliament, among other things.

Because of that, different shades of the budget session were conspicuously missing from the National Assembly proceedings on Friday, when the federal government introduced the budget for the next fiscal year.

The coalition government rolled out its election-oriented budget amid a rare hush and unprecedented scenes of calm in the lower house of parliament – an otherwise chaotic site of bickering and deafening noise during the past budget presentations.

Similarly, political analysts say, it was the least expected to have an informed and meaningful debate, especially with a lame-duck opposition in the current system, whereas the budget is never referred to any committee for scrutiny.

“Ideally, the opposition should not only be present but critically scrutinise and point out weaknesses in the budget,” said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, the president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT).

“Even if opposition is present in sizeable number, they don’t engage in informed debate; they simply raise populist slogans like petrol bomb. They seldom talk of policy alternatives.”

Pointing out reasons, the PILDAT president said that “one reason for this is our parliamentary budget process which is just 10 to 12 days and is never referred to committees, where real scrutiny takes place.”

“With the opposition present, I don’t expect much improvement in the quality of the debate,” Mehboob said, “There may have been greater rowdyism and even scuffles” — something which was positively missing from the budget’s introductory session. The empty opposition benches ensured the same momentum on Monday when the leader of the opposition Raja Riaz opened debate on budget session.

However, Mehboob clarified that he was not saying that the opposition was not present. “I am only saying that no substantial improvement in budget debate can be expected because members generally don’t work hard to prepare for real scrutiny of budget.”

He recalled that a small ineffective opposition was seen in the National Assembly in 1997-1999. “But effectiveness doesn’t depend necessarily on number; I can recall West Pakistan provincial assembly 1965-1970 which had only a handful opposition members,” Mehboob said, adding: “Only three members – Khawaja Safdar, M Hamza and Malik Akhtar – were so well prepared and vocal that they acted as very effective opposition.”

“In the 1985 National Assembly,” he continued, “Haji Saifullah became the one-member opposition because of his grasp of parliamentary rules and procedures and activism.”

Keeping the budget’s introductory session in view, when the opposition benches busied themselves with devouring the budget books dumped on their tables just before the finance minister started reading his budget speech, political experts feel that serious input from the lawmakers would be missing as a dim and submissive presence of the ruling alliance and the opposition members appeared to be only a choreographed formality.

Monday’s session depicted the same. The opposition leader’s speech touched different areas, pointed out a few flaws but he blamed the previous ruling party, of which he is still a member and leading the house as opposition leader, for the current crisis.

GDA’s Ghous Bux Mahar rightly questioned how effective would be the role of the opposition leader when he has already shown his intentions that he would contest the next elections from the ticket of the current ruling party — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Political analyst Zaigham Khan, while commenting on the budget presentation amid empty opposition benches, said that the absence of the serious input of public representatives in the budget process was more serious issue than the total number of the lawmakers.

For Zaigham, the entire parliament remains absent during the budget process because, unlike advanced democracies, the budget cycle isn’t followed properly and the parliamentary committees do not prepare the proposal or review the budgeting of their relevant departments and sectors.

“Budget documents are dumped in front of parliamentarians on the budget day and they do not get enough time to review them,” Zaigham said, adding: “We can say that the opposition’s absence is only symbolic and the presence of parliamentarians of the ruling alliance is also symbolic.”