Great Aspirations, Missed Opportunities
The present military regime came to power with greater potential in its leadership to do good for the country than its predecessor three martial laws, the professionalism of the hierarchy being more potent than their counterparts in earlier regimes. For the most part the senior officers are sincere and dedicated people, well motivated to do their best for Pakistan. The agenda unfolded by Pervez Musharraf aroused great aspirations among the people of Pakistan, and while much has been accomplished in the way of establishing good governance, the past 24 months has seen many missed opportunities, as the clock winds down to Oct 12, 2002, these will haunt the legacy of this military regime.
The economic record, priority No. 1 is a mixed bag. There is certainly financial stability when compared to the dark days of Oct 1999, yet in the President’s own words, “we are not out of the woods”, unquote. The banking sector is doing well but the initiative for reforms of the nationalized financial institutions was one of Mian Nawaz Sharif’s few achievements, it was he who brought back expatriate Pakistanis like Shaukat Tareen and Zubyr Soomro to run Habib Bank (HBL) and United Bank (UBL) respectively. But even the Sharif regime looked the other way while Allied Bank Limited (ABL) was being looted in broad daylight. And why did State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Governor Ishrat Hussain wait nearly two years before ridding ABL of crooks like I A Usmani and Jawaher Hussain, even now he has left their close henchman Tahir Saeed Effendi in place? And despite their public intentions even the Sharif regime decided reforms was too much of a good thing when they (and their friends) were asked to also return overdue bank loans and pay due taxes, they then started to target their own appointees. As far the present meltdown at NDFC, SBP was quite aware about Asif Saeed’s reputation before approving him as Chairman, so after he had taken NDFC to the cleaners, who allowed National Bank (NBP) and UBL to acquire his services as a highly paid Consultant? Hundreds and thousands of small depositors have been running from pillar to post, mainly pensioners with their life savings, yet we persist in giving protection to a man who is most responsible for their miseries.
