ISLAMABAD: The country’s two major opposition parties have lashed out at Prime Minister Imran Khan for announcing Rs500 million development funds for each lawmaker just weeks before Senate elections and called it a “political bribe”.

The leaders of the Pak­istan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) termed the announcement yet another U-turn by the prime minister, recalling that while in the opposition Imran Khan used to denounce the act of the distribution of development funds among lawmakers.

Talking to Dawn here on Thursday, PPP secretary general Farhatullah Babar said the PPP condemned this announcement because it had been made at a time when Senate elections were just weeks away.

He said the funds had been announced for “political wheeling-dealing” before the Senate polls.

He recalled that before the elections, Mr Khan had once stated that the job of the lawmakers was to do legislation and carrying out development activities was the responsibility of local governments.

Similarly, PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar termed the government move another U-turn by Mr Khan and alleged that “at this point of time, the move seems to be a political bribe for lawmakers belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) so that they don’t slip away and vote for the party’s candidates in upcoming elections”.

“Whatever the PTI stood for before elections, it seems that it is a different PTI which is ruling the country now. Before elections it was a different Imran Khan and now we have a different Imran Khan,” Mr Khokhar said.

At that time, he said, Mr Khan had promised that he would not give funds to lawmakers and would strengthen the local government system. Today, he said, the PTI governments in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were about to complete half of their terms, but there were no local governments in the two provinces.

Fulfilling the long-standing demand of the ruling PTI lawmakers for development funds for their constituencies, Prime Minister Imran Khan, while presiding over a parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday, had announced a grant of Rs500 million for each member of National Assembly and provincial assemblies under sustainable development goals so that they could carry out development schemes in their constituencies.

PML-N secretary general Ahsan Iqbal also termed the step a “U-turn” by Mr Khan and a frustrated move by him in an effort to keep the ruling alliance intact in the wake of the anti-government campaign of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) and to ensure that the party MPAs vote for “friends of Imran” in the upcoming Senate elections.

Earlier, during a news conference, Mr Iqbal alleged that the government wanted to bring the bill in the parliament to amend a few selective clauses of the Constitution after knowing that the PTI lawmakers did not want to vote for party candidates in Senate elections.

“He (the PM) wants Senate elections through a show of hands as he knew that in the secret ballot, the PTI will lose the Senate polls,” Mr Iqbal said. Moreover, he alleged, the government intended to amend some clauses of the Constitution to allow dual nationals to contest elections of the parliament to favour a few individuals.

“If the government is serious in election reforms, it should announce comprehensive electoral reforms and discuss it with the opposition in a parliamentary committee,” said Mr Iqbal, whose party had already announced that it would not hold talks with the government outside the parliament on any matter.

The PML-N leader said that instead of doing amendment to the Constitution in piecemeal, the government should discuss the alleged rigging in the 2018 elections and the steps needed for preventing such incidents in future.

Mr Iqbal said that his party was not ready to become a part of any such game of Constitution amendment. He, however, said that a final decision in this regard would be taken in the meeting of the PDM heads which would take place on Feb 4.

The PML-N leader also lashed out at the government over the report of the Transparency International (TI) which, he said, had exposed the corruption of the present government in the last two years.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2021