A City without Leadership
For a person who led a relentless struggle in the 80s decade for the restoration of unadulterated democracy in Pakistan, Ms Benazir displays a remarkable obduracy in refusing to recognize the ground realities of the increasingly anarchical situation in Karachi. Though it is true that fate intervened rather fortuitously to her advantage, one cannot take the credit away from Ms Benazir’s struggle against dictatorship (and vestiges thereof) with respect to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. The then Establishment tried to stop her in her tracks by the cobbling together of the IJI by Maj Gen (later Lt Gen Retd) Hameed Gul, the then DG ISI, but the people of Pakistan gave her enough NA seats to be the prime contender to form the Federal Government. Skepticism notwithstanding, enough MNAs lined up behind her in non-grudging support to translate her lead into a majority in Parliament by the flawed means that is acceptable to us presently as the Constitution of the land. Even when the sizeable MQM bloc changed sides in late 1989, she survived a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly, mostly because both the intelligentsia and the masses continued to believe in her recurring song of democracy.
During her long stint in the cold, Ms Benazir had repeatedly pointed out that with drugs and Kalashnikovs flooding into the urban cities of Pakistan, particularly Karachi, there was a dire necessity to usher in democracy immediately to “counter the dangerous vacuum created by Martial Law and dictatorship at the grassroots level because of the lack of leadership duly elected by the people.” Her contention rightly was that a mixture of ethnic and sectarian bigots along with mobsters, drug barons, foreign-trained terrorists etc, would flood into this void, anybody who could wield power through the power of forcible suggestion, more potently, through the barrel of a gun. Ms Benazir Bhutto had very rightly advocated that the only solution to avoid apocalypse was to have free and fair elections at every tier of government so that credible, authentic leaders would emerge, with their roots in a rock-solid base because of the peoples’ confidence in their abilities and person.
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.