FOUR budgets have been passed following a walkout by the opposition in the National Assembly as well as in the legislatures of three provinces — Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In fact, the walkouts themselves were motivated by factors that had nothing to do with the budget. This is not the first time that budget sessions have been marred by walkouts due to factors extraneous to economics. KP has a bit of a record in this, where every budget session for the past three years at least has seen a walkout. The state of the economic conversation amongst the political leadership is dire enough as it is, but walking out of the budget session in protest has taken matters to a new low altogether.

The budget session ought to be reserved only for budget-related discussions. Political scores can be settled later. The budget and the allocations contained within it are far too important to be held hostage to politicians’ outrage. The combined amount contained in these four budgets is close to Rs6.9 trillion, which is not a small sum of money whose allocations are being decided in such a casual manner. And although the Balochistan Assembly did not stage a walkout, the quality of discussion was very poor; the provincial government did not even release the detailed documents of the budget, so it is difficult to see how the legislators were even able to have a debate. Budget debates have historically been of very poor quality in Pakistan, with most members sticking only to rhetorical talking points. But this year has been a record as four of the five assemblies passed their budgets while the opposition walked out, and the fifth assembly carried on a debate without any budget details having been released. It shows a lack of interest in our political class that appears averse to tackling the real problems that plague the country. This is a deeply regrettable fact in the era of empowered provincial assemblies.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2015

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