Open letter to PM Shehbaz Sharif
SINCE I also belong to the same generation with the only difference that you both brothers went to Saint Anthony School and I took pride in my coming from Urdu medium Chishtia High School to rub shoulder with English medium & Cambridge boys in GC, I along-with Olympian Tanvir Dar and Cricketers Shafiq Papa and Tariq Cheema who was 12th man in Lahore test match but couldn’t earn his Test Cap due to poor family background, came to join Government College during its Centenary celebration with other classmates including Mian Nawaz Sharif, Sadique Khan Kanjo, Khawaja Asif, Hasan Akhtar Mokal, Tariq Sadiq having tall dreams of taking Pakistan to great heights as a prosperous nation.
Today where we are is due to our own doing; no one else to blame. Having remained active in PNA, MRD & PDA alliances, I quit politics in my mid-forties in 1996, highly frustrated and disheartened when I realized that political expediency has become the hallmark of our leaders in every walk of life.
Since 1985 under Zia-ul-Haq rule the curse of adhocracy and mediocrity was patronized and Mehbub-ul-Haq rescheduling our loans on very high interest rates for the donors’ advantage to break the backbone of our economic future. Till date we are playing for these donor galleries.
Our ousted Prime Minister has been misleading the nation from day one that due to his charismatic personality Pakistan will become hub of foreign investors and milk and honey will start flowing in our rivers but wizkid Asad Umer landed our economy in quagmire, and he blamed PPP and PML(N) for destroying our economy and day-in and day-out blamed your party and Ishaq Dar for doctoring of figures and artificial currency manipulation that led to present current account deficit and lack of investor confidence.
But then he broke all the previous records of foreign and domestic borrowing of loans for royal style in governance and making unexplained and invisible expenditures, only his stimulus packages and development funds need detailed scrutiny.
There has been some hope among people that after your coming into power the policy of the previous government would be reversed to arrest unprecedented inflation to make life smooth and easy, especially with regard to Pakistan’s dependence on borrowed money from institutions like the IMF and taking dictation from FATF, these harsh conditionalities from IMF were accepted by Hafeez Sheikh and Shaukat Tareen by levying of unprecedented indirect taxation to break the poor man’s back to starve to death.
But renegotiating by your Finance Minister on these packages with the IMF without withdrawing previous increase in GST rates and claiming it a friendly deal seems to be another far-fetched dream as this approach of the new Finance Minister is no different from his predessors.
Well one should not have hoped knowing the fact that you came into power with the machination of the same lobby that you seem to have compromised and now allowing to continue with the same anti-people policy.
Our big misfortune is we never promoted a team of economists to manage our economic & financial policies; dependence on accountants and business tycoons to formulate economic policies is never a good idea. But this is not the end of the story, be aware!
The history of Mir Jafar of Bengal who sold his soul and allegiance to the British for money and power was made king by the British Raj, but the people revolted against him in spite of the British support, this is a lesson for all those aspiring for power on borrowed crutches to understand that foreign-promoted kings do not last long!
Coming to my point of addressing this letter to you is that all business & industrial tycoons and leading trade body leaders have started campaigning for personal gains to open trade and commerce with India.
I was thinking, if they were patriotic Pakistanis, then they should have learnt from Indian business tycoons who always play their positive contributory role in bailing out the country from serious financial crisis.
In 1991 India was confronted with a similar situation and the government couldn’t pass the budget when WB & IMF came into play leaving no option than to mortgage the entire gold reserve to avoid default on payments when the Hinduja Brothers never being shy in promoting their business interest had sought to be helpful to the country in times of need like first oil crisis, the balance of payment difficulties in 1991 by arranging helpful appointments with foreign institutions and dignitaries.
Do we have any example of such patriotism and spirit of sacrifice coming from our business and financial tycoons during the last five decades?
Mr. Prime Minister, it’s time to call a spade a spade and work on home-grown remedial plans without trying to find foreign lobbies to draw our plans, just try to restore the confidence of the nation in your government and institution by taking bold steps and scrap all laws imposed by Hafeez Sheikh and Shaukat Tarin.
In a bid to secure their seat they imposed unimaginable indirect taxes on the poor strata of society where prices of essential items of daily use such as edible oil, ata, daal, rice and baby milk increased by 200 to 300%, where the poverty and inflation graph sky-rocketed.
During the last few years we only saw window dressing while unemployment increased, the gap between rich and poor widened, poor man is unable to arrange two square meals, while if we study the imbalance in our salary and pension structures, we are matching with developed nations’ level.
More than half of our financial deficit issues can be resolved by taking drastic measures by stopping this extravaganza of successive governments taken in personal interest or under political expediency.
A good omen for your government is that the most controversial Governor SBP has abandoned his plan and left.
Now scrap the SBP autonomy law enacted in 2021 that gave leeway to the Governor in implementing the IMF agenda to destabilize our economy.
The SBP failed miserably in balancing growth and inflation, rather interest rates touched over 14% on the recent T-Bills sale.
Mr.Prime Minister, remember it’s time for action otherwise the common man is not interested in your fiscal and financial gimmicks, they need inflation arrested, prices are brought down to pre-2019 level, all plunderers made to face the bar of justice.
Petroleum subsidy or no subsidy, why a crippling economy is allowed a superfluous life style, introduce rationing of petrol by private cars, and launch food stamps scheme for lower income groups and daily wage earners, as your minimum wage decision couldn’t sustain for a week, so come forward and formulate an income expenditure table to bring them out of the present survival crisis.
Inculcate the spirit of work and work to produce more, once you are able to win the hearts and minds of our people, they will not let you down and will stand like a wall of steel otherwise remember history is not respecter of any Kingship.
May Allah bless Pakistan & Humanity.
—The author is a former Central Information Secretary of PML (Khairuddin & Qasim Group).
