An overwhelming majority of our famous and experienced politicians continue to consider Imran Khan as a complete outsider to power and parliamentary games. Doing this, they often forget that he also happens to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan these days. And being the Chief Executive, he has a huge crowd of experts from multiple fields and the state institutions, imagining all possible games for him. The image of being a “naïve outsider” rather perfectly helps Imran Khan to keep the opposition confused and relentlessly stun its leaders with ‘strange-looking’ moves.

 After recklessly abandoning the sweating demands of grassroots politics and desperately seeking patronage from powerful quarters of our deep state, most opposition legislators seldom care to even glance through a book, called the Constitution of Pakistan. Addicted to a very special version of ‘hybrid democracy,” the horde of commentators, presumably “influencing our minds” by nonstop babbling on regular and social media, also disregard the same book.  

Little wonder, almost each of them looked genuinely surprised when Qasim Suri, the Deputy Speaker, suddenly read the presidential order, which prorogued the National Assembly session, only after 14-minute proceedings of its sitting on Friday. Most legislators and parliamentary reporters felt surprised; for, they indeed were eagerly expecting an intense and chaos-triggering discussion on proposals, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin had tabled in the house Thursday afternoon.

 

The proposals Tarin had put before the National Assembly comprise “The Finance (Supplementary) Bill.” Through the same, the finance minister intends to collect an additional amount of around Rs350 billion by withdrawing tax exemptions that had been announced for more than 140 items of daily consumption, when he presented the annual budget six months ago. He also has to now enforce a massive cut on funds allocated for various development schemes.

 

The Imran government was forced to revisit its budget scheme to satisfy the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ultimate regulator of the global economy. To stabilise our economy, we need $6 billion from the same regulator. But the funds from there would only keep coming if we continue taking some “prior actions,” suggested or dictated, make your pick, by the IMF. That also required a massive tweaking of the budgetary scheme Tarin had introduced with arrogant pomp and fury in June this year.

 

The exercise of revisiting an already prepared and approved budget is popularly called “the mini-budget.” The government hates to own this term, however. Whatever the name, in parliamentary language “The Finance (Supplementary) Bill” is called “the money bill.” Only the directly elected National Assembly is empowered to pass or reject this Bill.  

 

Yet our Parliament also has an Upper House, The Senate. To establish its relevance and utility, all money bills, after being tabled in the National Assembly are then communicated to the Senate. The Upper House only considers the salient features of the Money Bill and finally transmits its suggestions regarding the same, in writing, to the National Assembly. It is taken for granted that while voting in favor or against the Money Bill, the National Assembly would seriously consider the Senate’s collective opinion about it.

 

After dictating that “a Money Bill shall originate in the National Assembly,” our Constitution also demands that a copy of it shall be transmitted to the Senate, which may, within fourteen days, make recommendations thereon to the National Assembly; and the National Assembly shall consider the recommendations of the Senate.”

 

In short, any serious discussion on the mini-budget should not start in the National Assembly, unless the Senate conveyed its suggestions on the same, “within the (next) fourteen days.” For the lack of any other business, the National Assembly had thus to be prorogued on Friday and it should not have surprised our experienced politicians and “mind influencing” commentators.

 

Sadiq Sanjrani, the Senate Chairman, had also surprised many of us Wednesday, when at the end of that day’s sitting he read the presidential order, proroguing the ongoing session of the Senate. It forced many of us to presume as if for fear of popular backlash, the Imran government had deferred, if not abandoned, the idea of presenting the mini-budget for parliamentary approval.

Yet the day after, Shaukat Tarin formally tabled the proposed amendments in the Finance Bill. The sudden prorogation of the Senate session didn’t make any sense after that.

 

After doing some leg work, I can now report with confidence that instead of submitting the mini-budget before a formal sitting of the Senate, the Imran government wants its Chairman to forward the same to the Finance Committee of the Upper House for constitutionally required deliberations. It doesn’t want the Opposition senators to furiously discuss the punitive-looking sides of the mini-budget while delivering bombastic speeches in a house, eagerly watched and reported by the media. It merely wants the Senate Committee on Finance to quietly deliberate over the mini-budget and pass its opinion to the national assembly.

 

The members of the same committee would also be persuaded to prepare their suggestions in haste to ensure that the IMF’s Board does meet, as scheduled on Jan. 12 next year, and quickly approves the release of $1billion to Pakistan.

 

For a legally ignorant person like me, our Constitution demands that the Finance Minister should personally appear before a formal sitting of the Senate to present the mini-budget. Only after his doing so, the Chairman Senate could pass the Money Bill to the Finance Committee of the Upper House. But a group of highly acclaimed lawyers are serving the Imran government and they must have found some lacunas to short-circuit the constitutional process.

 

After all, thanks to the brilliance of the same cabal of highly acclaimed legal minds the Imran government had already managed the National Assembly to approve extension in the time-period of some presidential ordinances Thursday. Khawaja Asif of the PML-N kept pleading and wailing that the said ordinances had already been lapsed for not being approved by any house of the Parliament, within the constitutionally stipulated period of 120 days. But the Speaker, Asad Qaisar, acted completely deaf to his pleas and the government eventually bulldozed its will thanks to vigorous ‘ayes’ resonating from the treasury benches.

 

I seriously believe that the patronage-seeking opposition is left with no energy and the will to check the bulldozing binge of the Imran government. The official handlers of parliamentary business rather seem pretty set to extract whatever they have planned for getting the mini-budget passed on a fastest possible track by arrogantly bypassing various ropes of legislative business, as prescribed in our constitution.