I refer to the news report on Prime Minister’s invitation to the public to contribute ideas towards 2017 Budget. (Source: http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/09/05/najib-invites-public-to-contribute-ideas-for-2017-budget/)
While participatory budget is a good idea, I am afraid this is but a publicity stunt by Najib Razak.
Participatory budget is not just asking opinion
First of all, participatory budget is not just about asking opinion on the internet.
As someone who is involved in introducing, promoting and later conducting Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting (GRPB) in Penang, allow me to provide the Prime Minister with some advise on the basic framework of participatory budgeting:
- There needs to be access to information to allow the people to make informed decisions. At this point, even Parliament finds it difficult to properly analyse federal budget with so many “off budget items” and “off balance sheet items”.
- There must be opportunity for policy appraisal, i.e. how a budgetary decision will affect a particular goal, for example, gender equality and social distribution.
- The most vulnerable must be consulted to find out their budgetary aspirations and goals. That means, going beyond the internet unto the ground. In Penang we organised focus group discussions in villages and low cost housing to ensure as much inputs as possible are gathered from these groups, including women and even children.
- The people must be allowed to continuously monitor government spending to ensure that the budget planned are adhered to, and to intervene when implementation is not achieving budgetary goals.
- Proper reporting and accounting must be done to allow evaluation of government spending at the end of the budget year.
Asking for opinions is not enough, the question is whether the opinions really mattered when the government draft its policy and implement it.
Asking for public opinion means nothing if even MPs are not given enough time and resources to debate on federal budget
In the upcoming budget session, Members of Parliament (MPs) are only given six days to debate the budget.
For the 35 ministries including ministerial portfolios within the PM Office, MPs are given nine days to scrutinise each ministerial budget at the Committee Stage.
Budget documents were not given before hand and MPs, especially opposition MPs have to read through volumes of budget documents to participate in the debate which will last only a few days.
Additionally, during last year’s budget debate, i have called for the establishment of an independent fiscal council to be the Parliamentary Budget Office to “inform the Parliament by providing independent and non-partisan analysis of the budget cycle, fiscal policy and financial implications of proposals”. Such outfit will also help the Opposition to formulate and properly cost its alternative budget.
If these are not done even inside Parliament, surely all talks and plans about participatory budgeting will fail.