Initial Reviews
The visible primary difference between Caretaker and elected governments is that being unaccountable to the people and with no lasting commitment to the nation, the MQ Regime could enact any number of reforms and give forth any number of pledges in the comfortable knowledge that neither were these strictures binding on the successor government nor were they answerable to anybody. In a space of 90 days, a sophisticated image building exercise raised the expectations of the people, this was bound to become an albatross for any elected government in comparison. What was conveniently left unsaid was that though every elected government may have similar ambitions they are constrained in the implementation of their promised policies post-election by political realities.
Having been in business only about 45 days or so, Ms Benazir Regime should not be expected to conjure up any economic miracles. Furthermore, economic initiatives seldom make immediate headway towards their objectives even though measures that seem punitive will always get an instantaneous antagonistic response in the streets. Most of the “dirty work” as regards imposing additional limitation at the behest of the IMF had already been done by the MQ Administration, but the additional conditionalities agreed to by MQ is unfairly shackling the present incumbent for a three-year period. For the record, the revenues acquired by the extra MQ measures of taxation are projected at almost Rs 10 billion, an almost 50% backbreaking increase on the Rs 20 billion proposed and voted for in the annual Federal Budget guided through by the then Federal Finance Minister Senator Sartaj Aziz. Many more IMF conditionalities were accepted by the MQ Regime than were by former Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz in April 1993 but the IMF has still not released the Standby Facilities. In effect the IMF has conned us into a three year captivity without giving anything in return and now want more from the Bhutto Regime. The quality of life of our citizens will thus deteriorate further as their spending power decreases. In hindsight we should not have let IMF-pensioner MQ negotiate with his parent institution. Further the tax burden should have been better focussed towards the higher income group.
