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First 100 days, next 100 days? Business as usual

Mian Nawaz Sharif need not necessarily be faulted for the sense of disappointment being felt by his supporters in both the intelligentsia and the masses at his government’s performance during the first 100 days. Blame can be levied at us in the media for projecting him as an economic superman he was not (and on the strength of what we have seen in his second tenure is dependant more on circumstances beyond his control), blame can be levied at the public for having such high expectations when they should have been more content with a much lower threshold that equalled the sum of Sharif’s actual achievements during his first tenure and finally blame should be levied at Benazir’s government for being as bad as they were so that nothing could have been worse and anything in comparison to the previous regime would seem to be spectacular. Relative to Bhutto, Sharif’s credibility, in the economic field has been heightened of men of character, integrity and purposeful intention like Sartaj Aziz. Nawaz Sharif’s performance in the first 100 days is a mixed bag of innovation, consolidation and compromise with his excellent economic team crumbling to keep us afloat after the disaster inflicted on us by the Bhutto regime. While we are far better off than we were in early November 1996, we are far from where we expected to be six months later. Perhaps we should be content with the fact that we could have been far worse had Leghari not had the courage (and the legal recourse) to send Bhutto into temporary oblivion.

We now know for sure that the PM’s “debt retirement scheme” did not deliver to its potential despite early promise, that the accountability process has become so personalised that the entire bureaucracy is in an unofficial “pen down” strike, that the passing of the “Ehtesab Bill” is flawed inasfar as the period under cynosure has been shortened without credible explanation, that the “atta” crisis that could be blamed on the previous political regime has hardly been over when a scandal has hit wheat imports in which a friend of the PM in the US does not escape adverse attention, that having learnt no lessons from his first tenure in tinkering with the Armed Forces hierarchy the process continues (albeit in the Navy Chief’s case with kudos for purposeful intent to root out corruption), that the brute majority in Parliament brought about an unlucky 13th Amendment that opens up a Pandora’s Box instead of suitably restructuring the 8th Amendment to make the President legally vulnerable in an unsuccessful Reference, that the PM’s Pakistan seems to revolve around a BMW on the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway extending to Model Town on one side and Patriata on the other, that lowering taxes without adequate safeguards is excellent for reviving our dormant industries in the long run but in the short run has resulted in a severe shortage of revenues in an already acute shortfall situation, that putting Baby Brother Shahbaz Sharif as CM Punjab despite his being an effective politician and administrator smacks of rank nepotism that seems to symbolise the PM’s inner core, that when Shahbaz took off for London with his ailing father irrespective (and despite of the) sectarian fire in the Punjab Province there was skepticism as to what really comes first the family or the nation, that it would have been far better to let the MQM go with the PPP in Sindh to form a government rather than be blackmailed so that the Sindh government today is well and truly paralysed, that after the economic crisis it should have been incumbent for the PM to recognise that Pakistan’s economic capital should have got pride of price in priorities instead of having the PM come to Karachi only on “touch and go” visits, that the proposed Kalabagh Dam has not gone down well with PML’s ANP allies in NWFP and has the potential to split the Federation, that barring such business or bureaucrat cronies who could easily be identified with Asif Zardari a fair number have mostly wormed their way back into the ruling nest as “friends” of the new ruling elite, that in effect the public perception is that we are rapidly reaching a state where we can easily label the present ruling hierarchy as being different from their predecessors in style only, in fact only cosmetic change from the Zardari regime, giving the feeling of “business as usual”.

No doubt that the major problems facing the Sharif regime internally and externally are mainly because of the sins of our earlier rulers being visited on the nation. The baggage of history continues to act as a deadweight, that vis-a-vis India we have not yet sorted out whether trade gets preference over Kashmir or vice-versa, that “sweet old man” Indian PM IK Gujral’s proposed sub-regional grouping within SAARC seeks to isolate Pakistan, that the high-speed fly-by by an Indian MIG-25R and positioning of Prithvi missiles in proximity to the border is meant not only to keep our population in fear and on edge but to deliver a rather blunt message, that in Afghanistan we have managed to annoy all the parties and their mentors except the Taliban and even they seem to be wary of our support, that we have alienated our two closest friends and neighbours China and Iran so much so that for the first time they are giving us equal status with India, that our relations with the US is anything but a happy one considering that we were a “cornerstone of US foreign policy” less than a decade or so ago, that our foreign trade has reached an unfavourable imbalance with every country on a bilateral basis and no fall-back markets have been developed, that economically adrift from IMF’s costly Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) @ 6% or more, it is only the superb salesmanship by Sartaj Aziz’s and the re-structuring of the economy by the proposed long-term reforms that has IMF’s Camdessus make a commitment of sorts for the much softer Extended Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) @ 0.5% or less, that again it is our economic team that has ensured “damage control” so that the pledge of Aid-to-Pakistan Consortium’s support as is usual every April has been delayed at our own request given the availability of aid in the pipeline and the proposed reforming of our future objectives after the Federal Budget, that the critical requirement for upgrading of our air power has been left hanging because of the reluctance of western powers to give us state-of-the-art weapons and/equipment and the exorbitant cost of French equipment.

The government has done well in stemming the rot in our body economic but we still in a hole in the body politic, in the context of social inter-action we also remain very much in a hole. Blessed with tunnel vision among our leaders, this government has been lucky to have survived the first 100 days without any major mishap, the next 100 days will be that much more crucial with the Federal Budget having pride of place with respect to critical appraisal and economic survival thereof. Even with a commitment of US$ 1 billion plus from friends like Saudi Arabia, UAE and China, Mr Sartaj Aziz has limited choices in the current scenario, he has to keep taxes low in order to bring economic booster shots instead of rabbits out of the proverbial magic hat. If this government should to through the next 100 days without potential crisis hanging over our heads like a Sword of Damocles, we will begin to breathe that much more easily.

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