KARACHI: This is with reference to Dr Pervez Tahir’s article “IMF and political transitions” (January 18) in which he refers to the IMF’s Structual Adjustment Facility (SAF) and states that former president Ghulam Ishaq Khan “kept the letter of intent ready for the first Benazir Bhutto government to sign”. This is incorrect. The SAF loan agreement was signed and sealed a few days before the first Benazir Bhutto government came into office. I have seen a photocopy of the document. It has been signed by caretaker finance minister, Dr Mehboobul Haq, and the then governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Mr Imtiaz Alam Hanfi. A few weeks before the first elected government of Ms Bhutto was unconstitutionally dismissed, noted journalist MA Zuberi published the entire text of the document, along with signatures, in his reputed newspaper Business Recorder.
The signed letter had the same date as that of the general elections that were held in 1988. Obviously, Ghulam Ishaq Khan intended to deny the elected government a genuine opportunity to negotiate with the IMF. My information is that the letter was, in fact, signed four days later, when it had become clear that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had emerged as the largest party even in those rigged elections. The date of the general elections had been put on the document to circumvent any legal objections that could be raised on its validity by the new government. I could not help noticing that the date of the letter had been typed on a typewriter different from the one with which the rest of the text had been typed.
The conditionalties contained in the SAF letter pre-empted the implementation of the PPP’s manifesto the nation had voted upon and so, it was unable to undo the wrongs that General Ziaul Haq had committed against the working classes. The PPP had a valid case of challenging the document on the grounds that the caretaker finance minister had signed it on the election date. But the signatures of Mr Hanfi had given legal validity to the document.
Taj Haider
Secretary General of the PPP, Sindh
Published in The Express Tribune, January 22nd, 2013.
