The “Polish Incident”
The outrage perpetrated at the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday Nov 28, 1997 was an incident waiting to happen. For the past several weeks, tension had been mounting in the country as the government and the Supreme Court made moves and counter-moves. When the PM made an unprecedented appearance in person before the Chief Justice (CJ) in the Contempt of Court case and expressed his regrets, the normal course of events would have found a solution in his “honourable pardon”. With the framing of the charge-sheet, the only defence left to the PM for survival was the authority of the Parliament. This was readily given the form of an Amendment which gave the right of at least one appeal, assent to which was very deliberately delayed by the President. Agreed that the Amendment was flawed in some respects, if there was good faith in the Presidency the relevant clauses could have been immediately indicated for Parliament to correct and re-send to the Presidency. In the normal course a 30-day period is OK, but when the constitutional tensions were this high, was it responsible of him to do the abstinence act and sit over the issue? In fact, President Leghari has now come out, holier-than-thou, and made a vehement attack on the government in the form of a very intemperate letter to the PM. What the nation suspected for 30 days, and a lot of people knew much before that, has now been confirmed as a fact, the President has not only been a part of the conspiracy to destabilise the Nawaz Sharif Government, he has been the main perpetrator of the crisis that has brought the country to its knees. Without this behind-the-scenes manipulations, it is most unlikely that matters would have reached the stage it did, culminating in the outrage at the SC premises on Nov 28, 1997. In the “Polish incident” some innocent Germans were deliberately killed by Germans in the last week of August 1939 to make it look like the work of Polish Border Guards. This “incident” was then used by the Germany to invade Poland “to protect Germans”, thus started World War II as France and UK declared war as they had promised to do if Germany invaded Poland. Counting on the bully-boy tactics of the militant faction of the PML to rear its ugly head sooner than later, the President waited till the very condemnable and shameful fascist-type raid on the SC Building before shedding crocodile tears about “the dismal failure of your (sic Nawaz’s) administration than that provided by the shameful events of the last two days, “unquote. While the PML must certainly answer for this fascist-type incident, the President cannot be absolved of his responsibility. This was an outrage carefully choreographed, as much as a mouse is lured by cheese as bait into a trap, to show PML up to be monsters, to provide the “casus belli” for the demise of Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government. While deliberating (or dawdling) over a host of PML’s advice and Parliamentary missives for three weeks, the President came out of his hole in the Presidency like a shot once the CJ sent him his letter requesting for security from the Army and for Justice Siddiqui’s head.
A Budget with Substance
The knowledgeable are usually convinced by substance, form is for public consumption. The Federal Budget can only be eulogized when considered in the light of circumstances prevailing that caused the GDP to register a lowly 3% growth rate, in the sense that it comes out better than anticipated by the public at large and the intelligentsia in particular. A complete package of direct and indirect taxes was predicted but the relief on being spared draconian measures makes the proposals look comparatively rosy. While the Budget contains much of substance in keeping with the existing economic realities, on few crucial issues it was terribly short on form, that which influences public perception. One cannot defend the indefensible but showing flexibility and dexterity on these issues, the Finance Minister moved quickly to defuse such anomalies before they became politically volatile and contentious much out of proportion to the main thrust of the Budgetary proposals.
The unenviable task before the Finance Minister was to restore the momentum of the government’s liberalisation programme as well as the confidence of free enterprise because these form the main fuel for the IJI’s economic strategy. In order to do this, he had to continue with emphasis on development while reducing tariffs across the board, a veritable Catch-22. By giving further incentives to industry, he signals his commitment to generate employment, he also had to shuffle with alacrity to keep his indirect taxation proposals from adding to the inflationary pressures. The Opposition in the National Assembly was quick to level the accusation that the Finance Minister had fudged the statistics, particularly covering up the deficit, which they claimed was more in the region of Rs 110 billion in comparison to the stated Rs 85 billion. We may be in an imperfect world and if the Honourable Senator has under-estimated the actual deficit, we believe that the Honourable Opposition has rather exaggerated it. In either case, the deficit is too large by half and the Administration would do well to keep it within reasonable limits or we may have to use wheelbarrows to carry the volume of cash required to bring back a loaf of bread a la Germany circa 1928. There are certainly severe inflationary pressures, some due to circumstances beyond the Government’s control but some that could have been avoided by correct prioritization after a deliberate analysis.