Neither Shehbaz Sharif, the Opposition Leader, nor the youthful Chairman of Pakistan Peoples’ Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, were present in the House when the Imran government decided to table “The Finance (Supplementary) Bill 2021” in the National Assembly of Pakistan Thursday evening.
In the absence of their leaders, the opposition legislators did try to delay its presentation. But their attempts looked definitely half-hearted if you recall the chaotic scenes the current National Assembly had often been generating since August 2018. Without any exception the opposition as a whole rather looked visibly overwhelmed by a defeatist mindset. And you can’t hold the government responsible for it.
After abandoning the grassroots politics, the leading opposition parties of Pakistan now prefer playing power games by seeking support from powerful quarters of our deep state. They strongly believe that the so-called peoples’ power doesn’t make or break a government in this country. The political scenes are rather conceived and executed by powerful quarters of the deep state. Without winning their patronage, you keep drifting in the wilderness. Imran Khan has thus been constantly described as “selected” by them, who had not reached the prime minister’s house due to his own steam energised by any popular support.
Hooked to “selected aspects” of our political scene, the opposition leaders had eagerly been waiting for the moment when “the selectors” might develop enough-is-enough kind of feeling about the current government. They genuinely believed that developments since October 6 of this year had finally furnished this much-awaited moment. Simply for the reason, that Prime Minister Imran Khan took considerable time to appoint the head of a powerful state institution.
Then came the local bodies polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the presumed home base of the ruling party. PTI candidates endured humiliating drubbing in these elections. The ceaseless wave of inflation was the obvious cause of it. But the opposition parties preferred to imagine as if “the selected” had now turned into an unbearable liability for “selectors.”
In the given context, they also presumed that the Imran government would not dare to present the Finance (Supplementary) Bill in the National Assembly. In popular parlance such a bill is called the mini-budget and governments always feel shy of introducing it. The Imran government couldn’t elude it, however.
For many months after assuming power in August 2018, the Imran government had firmly resisted the idea of approaching the IMF to seek support for its economy. Asad Umar, once considered the ultimate economic wizard by PTI leaders and supporters, miserably failed to find alternate sources, kick-starting the revival of our economy.
Eventually, the government felt forced to induct a technocrat, Dr Hafiz Sheikh. He negotiated a bailout package with the IMF. The ultimate regulator of the global economy promised to provide us with $6 billion in various installments, until September 2022, through the negotiated arrangement. Until then, the state of Pakistan is also required to take certain ‘prior actions,’ ostensibly aimed at reforming and restructuring our systems of fiscal management and tax collection.
The strategy Dr Hafiz Sheikh had employed to comply with IMF conditions surely unleashed a massive wave of inflation and sluggish business activity in Pakistan. And then came COVID-19. Sheikh was exclusively held responsible for generating the feeling of doom and gloom; eventually sacrificed as the scapegoat. Shaukat Tarin, a banker turned politician, replaced him.
Presenting the current year’s budget in June this year, the finance minister kept boasting that Pakistan’s growth rate had furnished a rude shock to doomsayers. That should also motivate the IMF to reconsider its recommended medicine for Pakistan. But the IMF refused to budge and forced him to revisit his budget scheme. He is now forced to withdraw tax exemptions on almost each item of daily consumption to generate 350 billion more rupees. In addition to this, he is asked to massively reduce the funds allocated for multiple development schemes.
You don’t need to be an acclaimed economist to fear that enforcement of the measures introduced through the mini-budget would unleash another wave of extremely unbearable inflation in the country. And the political government has to pay a heavy price in the end.
The opposition parties also presumed that fearing the possible blowback, many members of the National Assembly currently sitting on the benches, allotted to the ruling alliance, would refuse to vote in favour of the mini-budget. And the possible rejection of the same might pave the way for anxiously awaited in-house change. The government believed otherwise.
The Prime Minister and the huge brigade of this government’s spokespersons consistently drum the theme that Pakistan’s economy has been growing fast due to the creative and honest management by the current government. Various cash crops had shown record-making yields. The prosperity they triggered is visible by the record purchase of new motorcycles and vehicles. In pricey restaurants, you have to wait for hours to get a decent space to sit.
The real or trumpeted “recovery of the economy” has visibly encouraged Shaukat Tarin to withdraw tax exemption on around 144 items of everyday consumption. He and his colleagues seem confident that the mass of our people would bear the additional taxes after usual cribbing.
They seemed to have proven somewhat right. Before letting the finance minister table his mini-budget before the National Assembly for approval Thursday evening, Prime Minister Imran Khan also presided over the parliamentary meeting of the ruling party and its allies. After talking to around ten persons, sitting in the said meeting, I don’t feel shy to report that not one member of the National Assembly dared to forewarn the Prime Minister that enforcement of the mini-budget would unleash an unbearable wave of inflation.
A group of landowners, however, felt more disturbed about the non-availability of fertilizer in the sowing season. And the prime minister heard them sympathetically.
After attending the parliamentary meeting, the ruling party legislators entered the House with an unusually charged and vigorous mood. While sitting on their benches, they also kept taunting the opposition legislators by passing rude and loud remarks. I hardly saw any ruling party member feeling visibly worried about the possible backlash of measures the government seemed adamant to enforce through the mini-budget.
Yet among the ruling party legislators, around twenty members were missing from the house; during a headcount the government could only show the presence of 145 members on its benches. But the missing legislators must have been identified by now and they would easily be managed through some phone calls and arm-twisting by the local administration.