Shots in the dark, the cut motions of the defence budget in the National Assembly. As opposed to other departments, there isn’t much clarity about what goes where. Just that the boys want their toys. A lot of them. The assembly just approved, amid much tumult, a budget of Rs 505 billion for them. Even if this figure were, indeed, the amount that our defence forces actually need in these times of great strife, there is no way to verify this.
Not many good things are said about the civil bureaucracy and this is not without a reason. But consider the contrast. Every division in every ministry at the federal level has its own federal secretary. This official is, in addition to the architect and engineer of policy, the principal accounting officer of the division. After he or she clears the accounts, the audits and accounts service has a look at the books and every project therein is evaluated. Come budget time, the legislators can demand a report on any project they desire. If the concerned division declines to do so, it will have a privilege motion in the house on its hands. A stark contrast from what goes on in the military accounts. True, there is a ministry of defence, and it has a military accounts department, but these check the more basic dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s than anything else. Individual project evaluation, especially at the national assembly stage, is unheard of.
The military might huff and puff at all this and claim it has got an internal system of checks and balances but that is a claim that the ministry of population control could make as well. Till press time, this was a representational democracy. The idea here is to empower the representatives of the people to check and question anything and everything. This is a scheme of things not unheard of in the world. The armies of the world realise the balance between operational secrecy and democratic transparency.
Our military establishment can get away with such secrecy because of the curious dispensation of power in the Republic. Let no one buy any other justification for it.