Barbarians at the Gate?
Facing a very serious economic situation internally and beset by the proximity of one externally, Pakistan must be thankful that the rather creditable efforts of the present government as well as the Governor State Bank of Pakistan, has kept us from going under. Kudos are also in order for former President Farooq Leghari, for if he had lacked courage in sending the Bhutto regime packing in late 1996, we could never have survived Zardarinomics — every person in his pocket, every pocket his own — a few more weeks. In the bad economic environment of Asia, economic survival has taken some doing. We may also thank our lucky stars that George Soros probably considers it beneath his contempt to play around with our meagre foreign resources. As for financial analysts, they are no different than weather pundits, how many eulogizing the so-called “Asian Tigers” a year ago predicted the Asian financial crisis? Given that economic forecast, particularly with false or unreliable indicators, is risky business, given that the present global electronic environment where flight of capital takes seconds only is hardly conducive, one thing is very predictable, the leaders of Pakistan have to put in a seven-days-a-week, 24 hours-a-day superhuman effort to escape economic apocalypse. The present 9-to-5 hours-a-day six days-a-week syndrome is hardly conducive to economic amelioration of the masses. Lip-service with flourishes of the ZA Bhutto-type rhetoric will not do, deeds are much more appropriate to the times, as far pragmatic and as much related to the need as possible. A recent presentation to the PM in Zurich by a group of Pakistani financial experts based in the US (who came all the way to Zurich on their own time and expense) brilliantly identified the causes of Pakistan’s economic woes, they also suggested pragmatic remedial measures. Where they got stumped in was in the implementation of the proposals made, that is our greatest failing, a continuing lack of success in executing plans well-laid. And even the plans fall short of being revolutionary, to quote the PM “it will take a revolution, to take us out of this mess”. Mr PM, if the situation leads to anarchy, that may well-bring about a street revolution beyond the means of any government to contain.
