By Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
THE transgressions of the civil-military elite in this unfortunate country have made it an even sorrier place because they have no redeeming characteristics that could alleviate the suffering or soothe the pain they generate.
They as a class are socially, politically and temperamentally programmed, geared and fine-tuned for unrestrained loot and plunder.
They have plundered with abandon and when detected they have squirmed out with deals, deception, bluff and bluster. One has to hand it to them for their finesse and audacity when it comes to looting with impunity and lording it over the people in the bargain.
The years preceding Musharraf were disastrous enough but since his arrival it has been one long unmitigated disaster which has left the country in shambles. His unchallenged rule saw worsening on all fronts.
I will very briefly outline some of these elites’ very dubious accomplishments. Though the coffers were nearly empty, they spent as if there was no tomorrow and both internal and foreign debt reached terrifying proportions. Their extravagant ways and loan write-offs were mainly to blame.
Pakistan’s total public debt increased by Rs1.465tr to Rs4.411tr in 2007, a phenomenal rise from Rs2.946tr in 1999. Last year it was disclosed that loans worth more than Rs33bn had been written off since 2003. Then there were subsidies to sick units totalling Rs24bn, making a grand total of Rs57bn.
Their priorities were warped to say the least. Why else would Rs249.858bn be spent on the defence sector in 2006-07 but only Rs5.964bn and Rs22.6bn on health and education respectively?
Foreign loans to the tune of $16.5bn were taken out between 1999 and 2007, and total outstanding external debt stood at $37.3bn last year. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves hit an all-time high of $16.486bn on Oct 31, 2007, but then fell sharply and total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at $13.499bn on March 22 this year. The trade deficit was $16.805bn in the first ten months of the current financial year, up by 50.78 per cent from $11.17bn last year. Some progress. The country survives but at the mercy of handouts and remittances.
The caretakers too borrowed recklessly, Rs58bn per month or Rs2bn a day, from the State Bank of Pakistan. In the first four months of the current fiscal year, Rs126bn were borrowed from the State Bank while the caretakers who took charge by mid-November borrowed Rs233bn, taking the debt to Rs359bn by the end of February. The exploits of the caretaker prime minister would require tomes.
A recent Dawn report says that inflation surged to an all-time high of 17.21 per cent in April but no measures were initiated to bring it down. Food inflation, measured through CPI, ballooned to a record 25.50 per cent in April, the highest not only in the country but in the entire region.
The rulers, having bankrupted the country, did not tire of proudly declaring that reserves had risen to almost $14bn, which in fact was insufficient to run a country leave aside shouldering the debt burden. This $14bn (the figure is even lower now) is measly when compared to the resources of — no, not Japan — a multinational, Exxon Mobil to be precise. Some people will have objections to this analogy though.
Exxon Mobil Corporation set records for annual and quarterly profits in the year 2005. For the year, the company earned a net income of $36.1bn. Full-year revenue stood at $371bn, or just over $1bn a day. The rulers here are capable of spending a billion dollars a day but not of earning it.
Henry Hubble, Exxon Mobil’s vice-president, reported that the company had returned about $23bn to shareholders in 2005 through dividends and share repurchases. At year-end 2005, Exxon Mobil’s worldwide workforce numbered some 84,000 employees. In 2005, Exxon Mobil paid $12bn in salaries and benefits to employees across the globe. The company has increased its dividend for 29 consecutive years.
In comparison, in 60-plus years here, the 160 million shareholders have been doled out a saga of broken promises, palace intrigues, brute force, denial of rights, bartering of sovereignty, abject surrenders, bogus referendums, brazen rigging, sham accountability, scandalous NROs, promiscuous cronyism, disgraceful judgments, wanton corruption, food poverty, increasing rich-poor and urban-rural divides, rampaging inflation and enveloping gloom.
This ‘qatta’ of Sheikh Saadi the sage aptly describes them:
Haich saikal nako na danad kard / Aahanay ra kay bad gauhar bashad / Choon bood asal johari qabil / Tarbiat ra dar-u-asar bashad / Sag ba darya-e-haftgana bashoi / Kay cho tar shud paleed tar bashad / Khar-e-Essa garish ba Mecca barand / Choon bi aayad hanoz khar bashad
It means:
The best whetstones will useless be / If the swords of pig iron sharpened be / Training and tempering serves only those / Honourable of soul and mind if they be / A dog bathed in seven seas isn’t a whit pure / For the wetter it gets the uncleaner it turns out to be / If Essa’s ass for a Meccan trip taken be / An ass it was and an ass it will always be
The mess that we are in wasn’t created suddenly like a tidal wave. It was a creeping tsunami of misgovernment, corruption, legendary inefficiency and obscene self-righteousness. These eternal power outages, increasing food prices, the worsening law and order situation, demolition of institutions, undermining of the judiciary and repression of minority provinces are all the joint legacy of the rulers who have enjoyed life immeasurably at our expense since 1947.
The new dispensation has to prove its worth with positive steps towards ameliorating the country’s growing problems. History does not judge people by the number of full-page newspaper ads they bombard the hapless public with but by what they do in fact. Those before them were culpable to the hilt, and if the new lot also fails then history will never absolve them.
mmatalpur@gmail.com
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