But for the din that the Opposition benches kept throughout, the just concluded sitting of the National Assembly would have been unremarkable. Their ire was directed at what they called “unfair distribution” of development funds among the parliamentarians by the PML-N government for the current financial year which closes in just two months.

Defence of the government’s distribution plan from the treasury benches only infuriated the Opposition MNAs more and they boycotted the sittings for three consecutive days.

Leader of the Opposition Syed Khursheed Shah blasted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for providing Rs20 million to opposition lawmakers while doling out Rs50 million to the lawmakers of his own party for development work in their constituencies.

Women members occupying reserved seats in the assembly were ignored altogether for they sit there as nominees of their parties and don’t enjoy political clout of their own.

Two cabinet ministers rebutted the criticism with the argument that the PML-N government has disbanded the old practice of putting the funds at the disposal of the members of parliament.

Instead, the federal minister for planning and development Ahsan Iqbal informed the critics that the funds would remain in the hands of the government to be spent on community development that a public representative communicates his constituency needs.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sheikh Aftab sought to explain that this would ward off the misuse of ‘development grants’ observed in the past when the funds were provided to individual members. He said local level leadership will be playing “crucial role” in the new concept of community development.

If the government has done away with the decades-old practice of distributing largesse to influence or benefit lawmakers, why should the opposition criticize a good move?

Perhaps the devil lies in the detail.

Opposition members revealed that the PML-N government has already released about Rs12 billion for carrying out community development through district coordination officers (DCOs). According to the government leaders, local community will have the opportunity to give its input what development it needs and the district bureaucracy will carry that out with the funds placed with it.

“Who doesn’t know who has chosen this lot of officers and whose wishes they would carry out?” said a PPP MNA when asked about the new route to community development. “Elected representatives will be completely sidelined in managing these funds.”

PML-N’s favourite DCOs have been put in charge of everything, according to him.

PTI MNA Shafqat Mehmood, a former bureaucrat, says he had personal experience of what the PPP MNA feared.

“I have been hearing that development grants have been transferred to DCOs concerned. For the last couple of days, I am trying to get in touch with my DCO in Lahore, but the gentleman is unavailable to receive or respond to my calls,” he told Dawn.

“If this is how the government intends to carry out development schemes, elected representatives will have no say whatsoever in providing their input on the nature of schemes their constituents need.

To him the government had already shown its bad intentions by allocating the members belonging to the ruling party two and half times more fund that to an opposition member. “It is public money, why the preferential treatment?” Shafqat Mehmood asked.

Gen Ziaul Haq introduced the development grants for MPs in 1985, primarily to buy their loyalties for his military rule. Unfortunately, succeeding democratic and military governments continued the unsavoury practice for the same reason. Indeed, the last PPP government had to pay heavily politically for doing that as the media blasted the largesse former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani doled out in the run up to the 2013 general election. Stench from the misuse of funds still rises occasionally in the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly which is stuck with damning audit reports about the PPP’s foulplay.

A senior government official, who has long been involved in the release of funds for ugly politics, finds not much difference between the PPP’s Peoples Works Program and the community development model devised by the present PML-N government.

According to him, in the end, the same government departments and contractors notorious for their corruption, run the show.

“Ideally speaking, community development is the job of local governments, for they can effectively control and monitor the schemes. Instead, in their absence, politically ambitious MNAs and MPAs have come into play,” the official said

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2015

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