Upholding a promise?

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting' advertising supplement proclaims that all promises had been upheld.

Unlike some of his predecessors, Mr Zardari appears to have a rare, uncanny gift for pacifying his detractors and for achieving compromises between his party and the MQM. And unlike some of his predecessors, he has matured and grown in his role of president. In one regard, he has been rather lucky. He has a prime minister who doesn’t spend his time intriguing against him and often gives the impression that he is more than satisfied in being a camp follower. In fact, the two are a self-supporting, self-generating, self-adoring team, who share that most blessed and eager attribute of politicians — the ability to be able to hang on to one’s seat.

Though a party loyalist would maintain that the PPP has done a great deal for the country, Mr Zardari’s main achievement has been that he has managed to survive and keep a democracy going in spite of the smirking animosity of his adversaries, and there is a strong likelihood that the PPP will complete its term in office. Unfortunately, both he and his prime minister possess this manic enthusiasm for wanting to let the world know how well they have been doing. That’s how the ministry of information and broadcasting inundated the country’s newspapers on March 25, with an advertising supplement that proclaimed that every promise that had been made to the people of Pakistan had been upheld.

Every promise? This writer can think of a lot of commitments that were made and not kept, the most recent of which is the one made by the prime minister to the grieving family of the slain minister for minority affairs caught up in a relentless drip of depression. “The killers will be apprehended and hanged” he said, looking straight into the lens of the TV camera. Well, the killers haven’t yet been caught and probably never will be. In Pakistan, as we all know, all inquiries get ritualised. The nation still hasn’t been told who was behind the killing of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, or Sindh Governor Hakim Said, Justice Nizam Ahmed or Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. The killer of the PPP governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was unlucky to have been caught on television, otherwise there is a strong chance that the case would have ended in the department of Dead Ends. Mr Gilani, however, did call on the family of the deceased. But neither he nor the president went on national television to condemn the incident.

The achievements certainly look impressive. Who can possibly argue with the Benazir Income Support Programme, the Benazir Employees Stock Option Scheme, the Gilgit and Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order and the development work that has been done in Balochistan? Unfortunately, most of these schemes have been made possible through excessively heavy deficit financing. While the fall in the value of the rupee has boosted exports and built up foreign exchange reserves, it has made it prohibitively expensive for a Pakistani to travel abroad. Some of the other achievements which have been listed are economic reforms, farmer-friendly initiatives, gender development, the Seventh National Finance Commission Award, constitutional reforms and tackling the war on terror. But where the government has failed miserably is in its ability to curb the violence that is taking place in Pakistan’s largest city, which shows no signs of abating.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2011.