Good governance

The inability of the two main political parties constituting the coalition government to resolve their differences and get on with the business of the state with some seriousness, provided a credible opportunity to President Pervez Musharaf to come out of his self imposed hibernation of the last few months and lecture a responsive audience of his cronies and businessmen of Karachi on good governance.

The 2008 budget has already been branded by most economists as a continuation of the old policies except that it failed to anticipate the severity of the upcoming economic crunch. The delays in implementing fiscal controls to reduce trade deficit that has climbed to a record 20 billion dollars and control the decline of rupee that fell to 73 to a dollar, the compulsion of a gradual elimination of subsidies as demanded by the donors and to pass on the resultant inflationary burdens have subjected the common citizens to unbearable hardships instead of providing relief, food and shelter to the poor.

The operation in Khyber agency followed the same script as routinely staged by the previous government with monotonous regularity on the eve of a visit of the officials of American state department to Islamabad and came as an about turn on the much trumpeted policy claims of negotiating political solutions of disputes in the tribal areas after debating in the national assembly, by political representatives of the people. Our security forces continue to be stationed in the tribal areas firing occasional shots where the war lords run parallel governments, unperturbed by their presence and routinely kidnapping or killing innocent people. The incidents of terrorism have revived once again after brief post general elections calm, with bombings in Islamabad and Karachi where the terrorist organizations executed their attacks with precision and total impunity from ever being detected or caught.