The political ramifications of Imran Khan's 'development funds' promise

Money, politics and power are closely tied everywhere there is any kind of functional democracy. The standard practice is that legislators make budgets and bureaucrats implement development work using the allocations. But Pakistan has a history of legislators wanting the budgets to implement development schemes in their electoral constituencies themselves and governments usually succumbing to the pressure to let their legislators bypass and undermine the country’s three-tier governance system in doing so.

Which is why when last month Prime Minister Imran Khan approved that the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party members of National Assembly and four provincial assemblies would be given “development funds,” the announcement in itself came as no surprise. The real surprise was that Khan had done so despite in the past being a vehement opponent of the practise and rightly dubbing “development funds” as “political bribes” by ruling parties to keep party legislators loyal.

The Supreme Court took notice and asked the prime minister to justify the decision and give a formal undertaking that the award of funds was constitutional. The constitution, of course, overtly allows for no such provision, thereby opening the PM for potential legal action if the funds distribution was challenged in court later. Puzzlingly, the PM stated before the court, through the top national law officer, that no funds would be given even though in the two weeks between the first announcement and the court hearing, no government denial was issued that the funds would be issued.

What is breathtaking is not the legal aspect of the matter, which seems to have apparently resolved itself, but of the political aspect of it. The promise of a staggering Rs500 million worth of “development grant” to each PTI legislator was essentially a hoax to begin with.

While promising his party MPs funds and telling the court he would not distribute them may have settled the matter in a court of law, the issue has political ramifications for the premier who now must placate his angry party legislators who feel understandably short-changed.

Adnan Rehmat

Pakistan’s National Assembly and four provincial assemblies have a total of 1,088 legislators of which PTI has 480 members. Half a billion rupees for each of them would have meant giving away an astounding Rs2.4 trillion when Pakistan’s total budget overlay for the current financial year is Rs7.2 trillion, with an accumulative development allocation of Rs1.2 trillion. The PM didn’t have the money he seemingly unlawfully promised his MPs.

While promising his party MPs funds and telling the court he would not distribute them may have settled the matter in a court of law, the issue has political ramifications for the premier who now must placate his angry party legislators who feel understandably short-changed.

The announcement of the “development funds” in the first place was the result of the pressure on Khan’s PTI to perform well at next month’s critical Senate polls where he has to retain his legislators’ loyalties if his beleaguered government has to complete its tenure.

This is easier said than done when he himself accuses his own legislators of taking heavy bribes to defeat their own party candidates and help their opponents win. To prove his point, his government just released a damning video showing his own legislators from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa receiving bags full of money to vote against their conscience in the last Senate elections.

While the risk of use of development funds as political bribes may not have materialised in the latest instance, the issue itself remains alive as a stain on Pakistan’s polity. The use of public money is the job of government, not legislature or parliamentarians. It is a betrayal of public trust to undermine the executive by denying it the resources to finance pre-determined development plans by giving it to legislators, not to mention outright political cheating.

Pakistan already allocates and uses almost four-fifths of its budget for non-development expenditure, thereby guaranteeing stunted growth and socio-economic progress. To address this problem the political classes majorly amended the constitution in 2010 to devolve power and financial resources from the federal control to its provinces. But like his predecessors since then, Khan has been unfaithful to this reasoning.

Falling prey to short-term political expediencies to the detriment of development is criminal in a country whose growth rate has nosedived from a healthy 5.8% when Khan took power three years ago to almost zero today. If the PM feels he is being blackmailed by his MPs, he should checkmate them by holding long overdue local government elections in the provinces and shift development triggers and resources to the districts where development will actually take place, making him popular-- and no bribes or blackmailing will be necessary.

- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.

Twitter: @adnanrehmat1