anwer.mooraj@tribune.com.pk
Only two things in life are certain, according to the person who coined the saying — death and taxes. In Pakistan, there is a third — the ever present, wholly irrational fortnightly rise in the prices of all commodities.
The poor suffer in silence. They have no alternative. As a community, they have transformed themselves into a cul-de-sac of impotent rage. There are strikes and days of mourning for different reasons, but no Egyptian-style protests. And so, all that vacuous, empathetic, feel good perception and euphoria after Nawaz Sharif’s victory in the national election has been mugged by this fact.
We now have a situation in the country, where the only people who pay taxes, are being asked to pay more taxes, and citizens who have invested their savings in fixed deposits in banks and schemes managed by the government have discovered they are now getting back less than they did last year. It’s rather like a squeeze in the game of bridge where the declarer has all the tricks but one. And to make things worse, shopkeepers have become quite blase about regularly raising the prices of their goods, which at times, has nothing to do with the value of the dollar.
The former PPP government is largely to blame even before their leaders had become accomplices to their own annihilation. They are also pointing to deficit financing as a cause for the malaise. Some are blaming the Americans, who these days, are being censured for everything that is going wrong in the country. Talking about deficit financing, the collective bill to the exchequer for the elected representatives has also risen by at least 40 per cent over the 2008 figure.
I don’t have the latest figures, but in 2008, a concerned citizen posted the average five-year cost per member of the National Assembly (after adding up all the generous perks). The figure came to Rs60 million. He then multiplied this figure by 534 and the debt came to Rs85,440, 000,000. Mind you, this does not include the bill for the salaries and perks of the freeloaders in the Senate and the provincial assemblies. So, when the government is not generating enough income to pay for this small army that is supposedly running the country, is it any wonder why the cost of the dollar has jumped from Rs60 in Musharraf’s time to Rs100 when Asif Zardari was being wheeled out as a saintly patrician do-gooder?
I wish Nawaz Sharif well. I believe that at present he is the only political leader who will be able to effect improvements in the economy and in exports. Currently, we will just have to live with the state of uncertainty and anarchy and the terror attacks financed by certain foreign governments, which as compensation, throw a few crumbs our way.
He might also just get it into his head that the time had come to make a full-throttled attack on the militants. For that, he will have to wait until certain people in the main strike force retire from service and he gets a nod from protecting the terrorists.
In his recent “sauna” in Pakistan, in the company of Nawaz Sharif, against a cluster of partisan rants in the distance, David Cameron said “Pakistan’s enemies are our enemies”. Of course, he meant the militants, not the Indians. What I would like to know, however, is whether the Pakistani prime minister asked his British counterpart for assistance from Scotland Yard or MI6 to fight the invisible enemy. We just can’t do it on our own.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 7th, 2013.
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Anwer Mooraj Sahib,
I don't think NS's TWO previous stints in power offer much hope that this third stint will be better/different on the economic front. He is still obsessed with grandiose projects and wacky ideas. Where will the money come from since he is averse to taxing his constituency -- the rich, powerful and well-heeled, starting in the richest province, the Punjab?
It will come from borrowing, domestically and/or externally.
People have short memories. The last time the PML-N went to the IMF for a "bail-out" is when NS bankrupted the economy after he imported too many yellow cabs. I think that was a first in the history of the IMF where a balance of payments crisis in a member-country was triggered by yellow cabs (with a couple of thousand Mercedes Benz's thrown in, masquerading as yellow cabs), and not due to some unanticipated, adverse exogenous shock.
Not to be deterred, he swore that when he came back he would introduce yellow tractors.
I don't want to get into his Foreign Currency Deposits (FCD) racket. I never found out who came up with that idea because it was a ticking time-bomb. Twelve billion dollars of demand liabilities in foreign exchange versus one billion dollars of reserves in the State Bank to back them up?
I have never forgotten my late father's wise words: "Beta, you can never change a man's character".
I, being one of the effected can understand exactly what you have so clearly written. The one point that needs stressing is where you have mentioned about the silent rage building up in the people. Those who live in a distant land called Islamabad and their counterpart who live in Rawalpindi, need to open their eyes. On Nawaz Sharif the similarity with the ' if they don't have bread, why don't they eat cake ' is alarming, when one reads of his dalliance with the 'high speed train '...........amazing !
So even the Anwer Mooraj believes in conspiracy theories.