Not the president’s mantle

Civilian presidents in Pakistan are usually figureheads. This is what they should be, neither more nor less. Article 41 (1) of the Constitution requires them to “represent the unity of the Republic”. They must avoid controversy and partisanship. President Mamnoon Hussain’s recent conduct is unbecoming of his mantle. His excessive generosity at state expense in giving away tips amounting to thousands of dollars during a foreign trip has made him controversial. This is especially lamentable in a country whose finance minister keeps on admitting ad nauseum that the country is in a debt trap — he has to borrow, not for development, but to service past loans by contracting new ones.



It is not as if the president is unaware of the state of the country’s finances. While addressing the inaugural session of the population summit held in Islamabad in the first week of this month, he departed from the written text to repeat the debt story about the previous PPP government that the PML-N peddles, which was completely out of context for the occasion. According to the story, the PPP government, in its five-year tenure, added more debt than the entire debt accumulated since independence.

The president also gave some absolute guesstimates. He was trying to recollect what Ishaq Dar had claimed in his first budget speech. The finance minister had told parliament that public debt was Rs5,602 billion when the PPP took over the government in March 2008. By June 2013, this figure had increased to Rs14,284 billion or, as a percentage of GDP, from 52.6 per cent to 63.5 per cent. The starting point of March 2008 is fair, but the end point of June 2013 is not. In that month, the PML-N government had been installed and had already indulged in heavy borrowing to clear the massive circular debt. The caretaker government had taken over in March 2013 when public debt was Rs13,626 billion or 59.5 per cent of the GDP.

Comparison on the basis of absolute figures does not make sense. The standard comparison is in terms of the share in GDP, which shows an increase of 6.9 percentage points in five years, not 10.9 percentage points that Mr Dar claims. By June 2013, debt had increased to Rs14,574.2 billion, an addition of about a trillion rupees within three months. At the end of June 2015, public debt stood at Rs17,751.4 billion. An amount of Rs4,125.4 billion has been added since the PPP left the scene. The party, Mr President, is only beginning to warm up to what is being described as the historic opportunity presented by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Once again, the debt accrued by the government will exceed the total debt piled up by all previous governments.

The president also failed to represent the federation. His proposal to create a task force to review, every six months, the state of the population to achieve a balance between demographic features and resources, seemed to assume that the 18^th Constitutional Amendment — which devolved the subject of population to the provinces — had never been passed. Little wonder then that the representative of the Sindh government protested. As a result, a conference organised to present a hard-won consensus on a controversial subject turned into an exercise in special pleadings, with minister after minister issuing clarifications that only worsened the confusion.

To add fuel to fire, the president turned up some 90 minutes late at the moot, which was attended by a large number of donors and diplomats, who had to be there an hour before the announced arrival of the chief guest. A country with a begging bowl in hand and a serious image problem can ill-afford such a symbol of the federation.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2015.

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