Articles of the year 2017
Published on February 18th 2017
The Nawaz government focussed all its energies into creating infrastructure projects, and missed the more important aspects of the economy. The primary interest should be the creation of jobs. This can only be done by expanding the industrial production within the country.
The last few years have seen exactly the reverse. With the resurgence of the MQM we witnessed the outflow of industries. First to the Punjab. And then to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Today Pakistan has created competition for our export markets of cotton products to the world, where once we dominated. This outflow was accompanied by the export of knowhow and the management, which had taken years to develop. Our political governments did not realise the damage they were doing to the future economics of the country. By destroying an established leader in the cotton trade, without a replacement.
The emergence of the Sharifs on the industrial stage saw the focus shift to the sugar industry, which was their forte. The basic flaw in this thinking was the limits in the export of this product. Sugar could never be competitive in the world markets, but for the Sharif family nothing else mattered, and the entire textile industry was sacrificed to the desires of the Sharifs. While cotton and its products were a highly developed industrial line with many variants, sugar was relatively a dead end with no future, and an extremely competitive field, with giants such as Cuba Brazil and Eastern Europe ruling the roost. The Sharif family pressed on regardless with their imposition of the sugar industry becoming the Industrial leader. The other important advantage of the textile industry was its labour requirement. Being labour intensive it,was highly desirable in a populous country like Pakistan.
However the Sharifs, to focus on sugar put an emphasis on the sugar mill machinery and the steel for its manufacture. Regardless of the cost of manufacturing. Or of the low selling price of the end product. The Inputs for Sugar mill machinery, i.e. Steel, and power are both expensive, with low labour requirements. Exactly the opposite of what Pakistan has on offer, or needs.But the Sharifs were up to the game, and they lowered the import tariffs for their own requirements but raised the duties when their ships had been cleared. There is a case pending against them in a court of law, on issuing SROs for their own purpose.
The Supreme Court is fast approaching the end of the trial, where the third term of Nawaz is being challenged by Imran Khan. In the main, the corruption of the Sharifs has exploded into the open, worse, the frivolous projects infrastructure are being touted as game changers, while industry is on the back burner. Coupled with huge amounts being squirrelled away making all the projects uneconomical. It is fairly obvious that the prime purpose is no longer the viability of the project, but the amount to be pocketed making the value of the project irrelevant. It is now common knowledge throughout the country, that the entire country is convinced of the guilt of the Sharifs. While the lawyers get more shrill, the level of threats to the Supreme Court Judges from the Government benches, desperate to protect their kickbacks is mounting. All semblance of court niceties were abandoned and the PMLN spokesmen in their daily summing up stopped just short of accusing the judges of bias. We must await the judgement in its final form.
The performance of the PMLN government has been scrutinised closely. It is quite clear that while Pakistanis may be high achievers, they are sadly lacking in observing the law. In thirty odd years, the Pakistani politicians have shown that they cannot be trusted to manage the affairs of state. They must first be brought into the ambit of the law. They must also be made aware of the responsibilities that go with power. The greater the power the greater the responsibility, and the greater the penalty. The Sharifs are lucky that for political misdemeanours there is no capital punishment. This should be changed, and the penalty for malfeasance by the Prime Minister should be the death penalty. The associates should also face severe penalties, and appropriate amendments should be made in the law to incorporate these changes.
It is time the supremacy of the law was enforced so that all Pakistanis should become law abiding, more importantly law fearing.