For Bush, much seems forgiven and forgotten: WASHINGTON NOTEBOOK

IT WOULD be interesting to see what the year-end reviews in American newspapers have to say about the Bush administration’s first year in power. September 11 and subsequent events have so dominated the US (indeed, the world) scene that it is with some difficulty that you recall the first seven months of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Few remember the bitterness and contention amidst which Mr Bush was sworn in outside the Capitol building on a cold and blustery January morning after the most controversial presidential election in US history. A media investigation into the poll results appears to have confirmed that Mr Bush, who lost the popular vote, had won the electoral college by a whisker. Looking at his ratings now as he wages war against terrorism, it is hard to believe that he had got through by such a narrow margin and that Americans were split down the middle on supporting him.

Democrats had feared a gradual right-wing shift after the liberalizing years of the Clinton administration, but no one could have predicted that a single incident would put the president and America as a whole so quickly on the road to aggressive patriotism and military confrontation or that Democrats themselves would wholeheartedly endorse this policy.

It looked as if there would be months of fractious debate on issues such as Mr Bush’s avowed unilateralism and his contempt for global treaties, his insensitivity to the problems of the underprivileged, his move to initiate tax cuts that would be loaded in favour of the rich, and his lack of concern for the environment. The Democrats gained some confidence that they would not let Mr Bush have entirely his own way by the victory they snatched in Senate elections, which gave their party a one-vote majority in the upper house. But the domestic political agenda will now for a long time be shaped by Sept 11, and dissent will remain muted.

When Mr Bush had recalled stalwarts from his father’s administration to serve as close aides, such as Mr Richard Cheney as vice-president and Mr Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary, liberals had felt their worst fears confirmed. There was a hue and cry from civil libertarians when Mr John Ashcroft was made attorney-general. But now Mr Cheney is credited as being the steady hand on the tiller from his secret hideout and Mr Rumsfeld has become the darling of the Pentagon press corps. Mr Ashcroft’s draconian proposals to curb individual freedoms and almost institutionalize racial profiling have been accepted with just a few murmurs of disagreement. Even the creation of military tribunals, with powers exceeding those of comparable courts set up earlier, has been endorsed by the public and by opinion-makers.

There was a tendency to mock at Mr Bush’s limited intellectual gifts and to predict that he would be a pedestrian president, full of Republican cliches. Now, his declarations affirming America’s right to rule the world, to use whatever military means he believes proper to establish this right, and phrases like “you are with us or against us” are accepted without demur. Those who had forecast a chain of mis-steps by the Bush administration now go about with a slightly sheepish look. Barely eight per cent of African Americans had voted for Mr Bush in the November elections; now one out of four approve of his performance as president. Much of the liberal opposition has become defanged.

The quick displacement of the Taliban regime and the liquidation of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without any significant loss of American lives have further enhanced Mr Bush’s stature. As long as the campaign against terrorism lasts, he is assured of a comfortable stay in the White House. The sense of shock and anger that gripped the nation after the attacks on New York and Washington was so great that there have been few questions about the administration’s overwhelming military response.

There are signs that economic issues may put strains on the bipartisan consensus that Mr Bush has enjoyed since September 11. The Senate has refused to be bulldozed into approving his economic stimulus bill, and gone into its winter recess. Voices may also in time be heard about the immense authority that has been acquired by the president and the executive in recent weeks, and its implications for future governance. If current recessionary trends last, people’s attention may re-focus on bread-and-butter questions. Internationally, it is already becoming clear that Russia and continental Europe have not abdicated their right to independent policies because of their support for Washington’s campaign against terrorism and will not be happy if it is extended to Iraq or elsewhere. There is bound to be some reaction if US backing for Israel emboldens the latter to the extent that it begins to dictate who will attend Christian gatherings in Bethlehem and who will be kept out. (Incidentally, in reporting the meeting of a delegation of Christians from Bethlehem with Chairman Yasser Arafat, the US press in many, many weeks implicitly acknowledged the fact that the Palestinian movement is a broad, secular church.) Domestically, a free society may again assert its right to question and to criticize. It may get over its present jingoism. America may recover from the trillions it has lost in stock prices and from setbacks to the airline and tourist industry. This could be the year when America finally realized that despite its economic and military power, and all the king’s men and all the king’s horses, it would remain vulnerable in a world marked by oppression and injustice, where the legitimate aspirations of the weak are crushed by the arrogance of the mighty. So far there are no indications that this aspect of globalization has made any impression on the minds of the American establishment, and terrorism continues to be treated as a phenomenon by and in itself.

However, the take on current developments may change when the media fog clears, as has been aptly pointed out by an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Frank Rich. He writes in the NYT Magazine dated December 23: “Such was the power of (the films) Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939) that the Civil War was viewed for decades as a battle over style and class: the patrician, genteel aristocratic South versus the vulgarians from the proletariat North. Slaves were happy. Southern women were hot. Men were men. Death was noble even in (especially in) a losing cause. It took a TV mini-series more than a century after Appomattox, the 1977 ‘Roots,’ to inform a shockingly large chunk of America that the war might also have had something to do with race and that maybe the salves weren’t so happy after all.”

But for the moment, those who attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon have ensured that 2001 will be remembered as the year when an opportunity was provided to America’s right-wing to implement its political vision as never before in the country’s recent history. The Republican agenda has become a reality without debate and without challenge.

A VALIANT effort to draw attention to factors that breed terrorism and political violence was made by Michelle Flournoy of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in recent testimony before a Senate foreign relations sub-committee investigating the “Global Reach of Al Qaida”.

Ms Flournoy said while American’s current focus was on Al Qaeda, the causes that gave rise to extremist trends should also be considered, particularly in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, and in each case, she said, the problems were different.

In Saudi Arabia, the basic issue was popular participation in the political process; in Egypt, in addition to political participation, there was the question of real poverty; and in Pakistan, besides economic issues, the education system and educational institutions that taught fundamentalism had to be tackled. With relation to Saudi Arabia, Ms Flournoy said while in past a certain amount of fundamentalism that was not directed against the US was tolerated, that should no longer be the case.

HAS news of a remark made by France’s ambassador to Britain that set off a minor political scandal reached Pakistan? The ambassador, Daniel Bernard, was reported to have said at a private dinner that the current troubles of the world were all because of Israel and why should the world be in danger of World War III because of the Israelis.

Unfortunately for the ambassador, the dinner where he spoke was at the London home of Lord Conrad Black, who owns The Daily Telegraph and whose wife writes a column for the paper. In a column shortly after the dinner, Lady Black, without identifying Mr Bernard, reported his comment and attributed it to the “ambassador of an EU country”. But the Telegraph’s rival, The Times, quickly identified the envoy by name.

His comments have rankled friends of Israel, but he has stood by them, saying only that they have been distorted and reported out of context. The French newspaper Le Monde sprang to the ambassador’s defence, saying he had become “the latest victim of the indiscreet lady Black, a woman “deceivingly alluring with her fine facial features, doe eyes and proud bearing”.

HEARD on the TV programme Politically Incorrect: If Jesus Christ were alive and had occasion to travel to America these days, he would have encountered racial profiling because of his Middle Eastern origin.

Afghanistan’s peace prospect

DESPITE Afghanistan’s chillingly notorious history of ethnic troubles, turbulence, turmoil and treachery the prospect of a durable peace in this war-ravaged country has improved after the UN-sponsored Bonn accord and the defeat of the Taliban by the US-led military forces.

Christina Rocca, the US assistant secretary of state, said that ‘the Bonn Accord on the interim government (effective from December 22) in Afghanistan could not have occurred without the help of Pakistan.’ Hamid Karzai, the head of the interim government in Afghanistan, deserves support in the difficult task that lies ahead during his mandated rule.

The Bonn accord is the first vital step in the long and arduous journey to peace, rehabilitation and reconstruction in Afghanistan for which foreign aid worth at least $20 billion would be needed. The aid flow may commence after an internationally acceptable level of peace and security returns to the country destroyed by two decades of inter-Afghan infighting and war. President Pervez Musharraf has promised full cooperation to the interim administration ‘for the gigantic tasks’ faced by it.

Hamid Karzai-led interim government is Tajik dominated, a tribe that is barely 27% of the population of Afghanistan. On the other end of the spectrum, the largest ethnic group, Pakhtuns — 47% of the population — are under-represented in the interim government largely owing to the follies of the now vanquished Pakhtun-dominated Taliban. Additionally, the public acceptability of the ministers nominated by former King Zahir Shah in the interim government remains uncertain. Also, some smaller ethnic groups have voiced concern about their non-representation in the interim government.

The exclusion of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and General Rasheed Dostum from the interim set-up brought sulking response from both. The Hazara tribe is indignant. The Taliban representative calls it a puppet government. Notwithstanding such reservations the Bonn accord, a compromise of conflicting interests of many ethnic groups, is a well-conceived document and a step in the right direction. The world welcomes it. So does Pakistan. It deserves a fair trial.

Some ministers nominated in the interim Afghan government showed impropriety by travelling to India (even before the government was formed) where they made public statements accusing Pakistan on self-serving frivolous grounds. The expression of personal views on controversial issues in a third country exposed their ignorance of diplomatic etiquette and behaviour. Pakistan is not unaware of the reasons of their exuberance and has shown maturity by ignoring their undignified outbursts.

Looking ahead, Pakistan should provide land-locked Afghanistan with generous moral, material and economic support for its recovery and development plans besides giving transit facilities for normal imports and trade. It should not meddle in Afghanistan’s internal politics. It is for the people of Afghanistan and its leadership to live with their ethnic and tribal diversity. We must never fish in Afghanistan’s troubled waters. Instead, we must play a visibly positive and constructive role in enabling the Afghan government and the people of this country in creating unity out of their diversity.

Many Pakhtuns in Afghanistan reside in the border belt along the Durand Line. Some tribes are stretched on either side of this international border. It is natural for the people of Pakistan to sympathize with the Pakhtuns and other Afghans who suffered because of the rigid and bigoted policies adopted by the now-defeated Taliban government. Such policies earned the ire of the world, brought miseries to the people of Afghanistan and caused the defeat of the Taliban government.

Under-representation of the Pakhtuns in the interim government is the price paid by them for their defeat in war. It may be prudent for the Pakhtuns to accept the fait accompli gracefully and prove to the world by their conduct and response that they as much suffered from the tunnel vision of top Taliban hierarchy as the rest of the Afghan groups did.

Sooner than later ground realities will take charge in Afghanistan and it will become obvious to one and all that no government can survive in this country on a durable basis if it ignores the reality of the Pukhtuns representing nearly one-half of its total population. Pragmatically speaking the Pakhtuns suffered heavily and bore the brunt of foreign diplomatic pressure and military onslaught. Such a realization will enable the Pukhtuns to join the mainstream of politics and earn a rightful place for themselves to play their full role in the internal and external affairs of their country.

The friendly nations, Pakistan included, can help the people of Afghanistan in cementing their ethnic ties for the common good of the people of this country. The fighting ability of Afghans is proverbial and well recorded in history. It does not need fresh introduction. Let the people of Afghanistan demonstrate by their conduct and deeds that they can also unite under a central leadership. At this critical juncture in history it is futile to waste time and effort in debating which ethnic group in Afghanistan is how well represented in the interim government. Every country has its ups and downs. While facing adversities the constituent parts of a nation are at times required to make sacrifices to preserve and promote national unity. Today, Afghanistan faces such a situation. Six months is a small time. Let everyone look beyond this temporary phase and put in place a permanent system that may bring durable peace and progress to Afghanistan.

Developments in Afghanistan have taught a lesson or two to the people and government of Pakistan. It may be wise for this country to reflect on them fully, openly and without reservations. The recognition of Taliban government by Pakistan was a hasty and a loosely coordinated decision. Even at this belated date we must find out the reasons for ignoring the rules of business and for not taking into confidence all those organs of the state that should have been normally consulted when this important decision was made.

Secondly, Jihad ended in Afghanistan when the military forces of erstwhile Soviet Union vacated this country in 1988. Thereafter, an internal struggle for power caused havoc in which no holds were barred. The infighting in Afghanistan during the period 1988-2001 was a lust for power, not jihad. Those in Pakistan who misguided and prompted young people to participate in Afghanistan’s so-called holy war should be held accountable for their acts. Some of these young enthusiasts were brutally murdered in cold blood by the troops of Northern Alliance in the presence of the US troops and press reporters who photographed the gory incidents.

After their surrender the Pakhtun members of Taliban found refuge in their country but the non-Afghan personnel were left in the lurch to fend for themselves. a few Pakistanis managed to trek back home. Others were gunned down. Yet others, over one hundred in number, were captured by the Northern Alliance and later airlifted to India ostensibly for ‘interrogation.’ RAW may implicate these prisoners in subversive activities in the future to defame Pakistan. This whole episode provides a food for thought to the exuberant youths and their exploiters.

With Mulla Muhammad Omar hiding and Osama bin Laden untraceable, the war in Afghanistan is not yet over. Mulla Omar, if alive, may eventually seek refuge with the people of his tribe who, in accordance with Afghan traditions, shall be honour bound to protect him. Osama bin Laden falls in a different category. If alive, he will be fished out sooner or later. With his Al-Qaeda outfit in Afghanistan in a shambles and no country willing to give him refuge, Osama bin Laden is already a diminished person, if not a cripple. He will face immediate arrest if he makes the blunder of entering Pakistan.

Afghanistan has turned a new page in history, or so it appears. But nothing can be taken for granted in this country. The war may not be over unless the Pakhtuns are brought back to the mainstream of Afghanistan’s national politics. The government in the post-interim period should seriously address this situation. The best way of promoting peace and security in this region is to start the rehabilitation and reconstruction of destroyed Afghanistan to divert the attention of the people from war to peace. The cycle of war and internal insurgency must end. Let the process of peace take charge.

The writer is a retired general of Pakistan Army.

An occasional murder: OF MICE AND MEN

I AM told that a retired federal secretary met three brash young men at a society wedding in Karachi some time ago and asked them what they did. “We are dakoos, Uncle,” said one of them with a straight face. He wasn’t joking and told the horrified gentleman how, being unemployed, they committed a dacoity every three months or so and had an enjoyable holiday abroad on the takings, usually in the Gulf. For day-to-day expenses they still relied or their parents.

Maybe it’s a sign of progress that more and more young people every day are taking to larceny, dacoity and an unavoidable murder as a permanent vocation. At this rate a time may soon come when families who have no son engaged in any of these activities, will have to hide themselves with shame.

It is heartening to note also that the intellectual level of persons engaged in larceny, dacoity (and the occasional murder of course) is gradually rising. It is no longer the monopoly of those rejected by society, the riff-raff and the good-for-nothing from the lower classes, who hadn’t anything better to do. Gone are the days when a man involved in these activities wore a guilty look and was avoided by the genteel and the noble, even if they were poor. He would rather have died than admitted his nefarious profession. Happily it is no longer so.

In Sindh, it was once said, half the jungle dacoits were graduates. In Punjab nothing could have done more to impart respectability to these enterprising professions than what happened some time ago in Multan, the city of saints, where apparently the saintly part of the population is all below the ground, safely dead and buried.

The police discovered that a group of four lawyers had been master-minding robberies and other such work requiring legal finesse. The four were also alleged to have killed a companion who had ratted on them, and thrown the dead body in a nearby forest. They might have been justified in doing so, for he was only a student of BA and had joined the group on false pretences, without first becoming a lawyer. Since he was not academically qualified, he had to be disposed of. It was as simple as that.

Lawyers are men of law. In a way they are the most ardent opponents of crime and criminals. With lawyers joining the most popular profession, its ranks will be greatly strengthened. It will be just like important MNAs deserting the opposition and teaming up with the ruling party during normal political times. They say that the number of applications for admission to the law colleges in Punjab has doubled.

The incursion of lawyers into the crime business is going to have its repercussions. It is true that lawyers are always the first everywhere including politics and the defence of democracy, but do you think the other professions are going to take this complacently? I am sure they are already watering at the mouth. In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if the really intrepid among, say, doctors have not become jealous enough to decide on an immediate change of vocation. Doctors have an added advantage, for, apart from dacoity, they should do well in murder. I’ll tell you why.

The Multan lawyers were caught when they killed a companion and hid his body in a forest. This is so because they couldn’t ascribe his death to such Latin phrases as “corum non judice” or “mutatis mutandis.” On the other hand a doctor wanting to get rid of a snake in the grass has only to say that the man died of something called “virus agitatus” or due to excess of “antiphlogistine” in his blood and the body will be given a decent burial.

And if someone bold enough were to shout “murder!” and the body was ordered by a court of law to be exhumed for a post morten examination, who would conduct the autopsy? You are right. The very same doctor or one of his friends.

Would engineers want to be left behind lawyers and doctors? How can they when otherwise they are the foremost in making money on the sly. The very day they enter a job after graduation and start working, their honest old parents look forward eagerly to the son’s first motor car. And engineers are somehow so altruistic and unselfish that if you don’t pay them their salaries, they don’t mind.

And they are so obsessed by the thought of public works that they just want to build and build and go on building. Right in the Mughal tradition. They construct a road one day and re-construct it again after three months. Same is the case with public buildings like schools and hospitals. In this respect they are absolute perfectionists. At the same time they are conscious of the fact that going to all this trouble provides employment to thousands of poor people. Again just like the Mughals.

Teachers may be slow to react. As it is, very few of them are able to realise that they are there to teach. By the time the realisation sinks in they are too old for anything. But if they too decide to go the lawyers’ way it will at least be for good reasons. Their salaries are meagre, and the element of fazl-e-rabbi eludes them somehow. Actually if you go by economic necessity alone they should have been the first to take to larceny and decoity and the occasional murder.

You see, lawyers and engineers and doctors are already termed as dacoits by unthinking people. I’m sure they don’t do anything to deserve this appellation. At least I have never been held up at pistol point by any of the three. On the other hand the poor teacher has always had a raw deal from cruel fate and an unsympathetic public. The latter, instead of being grateful to him for keeping their children from the harmful effects of modern education, treat him like a poor relation.

And do you think maulvis and pirs are going to be left behind while everybody else makes merry by taking to crime as a side business, or even as a regular vocation? Certainly not. But let me keep them for some other day. They’ll need a whole column to themselves.

Laws for an epidemic

THE perplexity surrounding recent anthrax deaths has done little to quell fears that a more-contagious epidemic would create chaos.

And the darker side of what has happened with anthrax — the confused lines of authority, the conflicting medical and public health and containment messages — has led public health experts and lawyers to contemplate a different type of readiness for a possible “next time.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a description of steps the federal government would take in a smallpox epidemic, from the distribution of vaccines to emergency workers to the last-resort use of quarantines or sealed-off “cordons sanitaires.”

But in the early stages, at least, management of epidemics historically has been local and regional; federal authority to override states in such circumstances is uncertain. With that in mind, several public health lawyers have drafted a model law that states could adopt, giving governors sweeping powers to quarantine, confiscate property, compel vaccination or isolation and otherwise protect the public health in an emergency.

The basic idea is unnerving but hard to gainsay. Stemming the carnage in a true emergency such as a smallpox epidemic would require near-universal citizen compliance, and if government could not compel that compliance in a pinch, it would be rendered essentially helpless. Devising laws for such a worst-case scenario requires careful definitions, especially of what exactly qualifies as a triggering “public health emergency.” Carefully spelled-out protections also are owed to people being compelled to accept restrictions on their freedom to save others.

State officials and civil libertarians already have pushed successfully for a round of revisions to a draft law prepared by public health law specialists at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown. In early discussions, for instance, they agreed to give state legislatures the power to override a governor’s declaration of emergency and specify for those who resist vaccination the option of remaining in isolation instead.

More revisions should, and will, be contemplated as state legislatures take up versions of the draft.

—-The Washington Post

Lessons from Argentina

THE melodramatic events in Argentina which led to the death of 28 persons in violent anti-economy street rioting and the emergence of a third president within four days, have valid lessons for Pakistan with its varied economic problems.

Many in Pakistan dismiss that validity or heave a sigh of relief saying Argentina’s external debt is 132 billion dollars (after it had been 145 billion earlier) while Pakistan’s external debt is only 38 billion dollars. And the IMF is now looking at us benignly, and the Paris Club of creditors has agreed to reschedule 12.5 billion dollars of that debt for a long period of time and at concessional interest rates.

But Argentina which is the third largest economy in Latin America has a gross domestic product of 300 billion dollars, which is five times that Pakistan’s GDP of 61 billion dollars. Argentina, because of its small population of 38 million has a per capita income 8,000 dollars which is about 20 times Pakistan’s per capita income of 425 dollars because of its population of 145 million. Hence Argentina’s ability to overcome its economic crises is greater ordinarily than Pakistan’s.

According to the “World in 2002” published by the “Economist” of London Pakistan has the lowest per capita income among significant countries in the region, except Vietnam which has a per capita income of 403 dollars. India which used to lag far behind Pakistan in this regard, has now a per capita income of 504 dollars — or 79 dollars per capita more than Pakistan’s — while Thailand’s per capita income is over four times that of Pakistan.

Argentina which was a shining growth model for developing countries, and its economy minister Domingo Cavallo a super economic wizard, has suffered 42 months of recession. The rate of recession since July has been 11 per cent, resulting in a high unemployment rate of 20 per cent. So the people were rioting in the city streets, banging their cooking utensils and crying for food.

Unable or unwilling to reverse his full free market economy policies and snap the Argentine pesos linkage to the US dollar and its one-to-one party Carallo resigned and along with him went the finance secretary. The vice-president too resigned and finally came the exit of the president Fernando de la Rua who took a helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to avoid the crowds besieging it in absolute fury. The result has been the emergence of the opposition Peronist Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, a long-time provincial governor, as interim-president who will rule until the March 3 elections.

Some of the economic problems arose out of the peso’s one-to-one parity with the dollar that began ten years ago. Initially that linkage was held as a symbol of the success of the Argentine economy but during the last four years that had become a millstone around the country’s neck. Exports became non-competitive and foreign investment dwindled and the country found it too tough to repay the record foreign loans.

The new president has announced moratorium on repayment of the external loans and argued the foreign creditors would welcome that as Argentina would now open negotiations with them. Prior to that it had reduced interest payments on foreign loans to 4 per cent while paying 7 per cent interest on domestic loans.

Instead of opting for devaluing the peso or ending its parity with the US dollar, he says, he is introducing a new currency along with the peso which is pegged to the dollar. He says that with the money saved by the moratorium on repayment of loans he would create employment for a million of the unemployed. Along with that he has cut public salaries above 3,000 dollars, including for members of Parliament, announced sale of official cars and the presidential jet to appease the masses.

Critics of the government so far had advocated absolute dollarization of the economy or devaluation of the peso as a remedies for the economic crisis. President Saa has rejected both and come up with his new currency proposal.

The IMF’s austerity package and heavy repayments to it have been blamed for the economic hardships of the people. Last Friday Argentina paid 1.1 billion dollars of its heavy external loans, but far heavier repayments are due this month which it cannot afford. Hence the moratorium. On repayments of foreign loans altogether. The IMF on its part has offered to negotiate with the new administration.

Political upheavals for economic reasons are not something new in Argentina. In 1989 Paul Alfonsin had resigned as president after the mobs began looting supermarkets protesting against hyper-inflation. Clearly the people are ready to put up with hardships up to a point, and not forever even in a rich economy like Argentina’s.

What is even more striking is that the top people in authority are ultimately willing to accept their failure and quit their officers in large numbers, as happened this time as well, when the situation gets totally out of control.

President Fernando de La Rua had declared a state of emergency in the country to control the street rioting and looting of shops but that was for a month only, unlike the kind of indefinite state of emergency we are accustomed to. Clearly rulers there prefer to resign rather than shoot more of their people or arrest too many of them, like the 2,000 arrested there before the government fell.

The suggestion that instead of devaluing the rupee frequently Pakistan should have the dollar as its currency as Argentine had done has been made here from time to time. But a weak economy can’t have the dollar as its currency unless we have a domestic dollar, more like Singapore’s. The suggestion that Argentina should switch over to the dollar altogether has also been spurned with the argument it does not have enough dollars to repay those who want it. But in spite of the debt crisis in Argentina it has a foreign currency reserve of 18.1 billion dollars.

Pakistanis should not feel too relieved by the fact the Paris Club has agreed to reschedule 12.5 billion dollars of its total loans. We have a multilateral debt of 15.4 billion dollars to cope with or a total of 26 billion dollars to service after the Paris Club rescheduling which is pretty high based on our deficit in foreign trade as well as current account payments.

Above all, we have a domestic debt of Rs 1,783 billion as on June last which should have risen to Rs 1,850 billion by now. and the interest payments on that alone is Rs 198 billion in spite of the reduction in interest rates, and is about one-third of the expenditure on revenue account, and is much too heavy.

Now the IMF is reported to exert pressure on us to reduce the interest rates on national saving schemes, including Defence Savings certificates and Khas deposits by about 2 per cent, while the people are already protesting against the reduction of interest rates by about a third compared to the earlier rates. They do not find inflation as low as officially claimed. Such reduction along the rates of interest paid by the State Bank on Pakistan Investment Bonds and treasury bills can cause a good deal of unrest in the country, but the government wants to follow the IMF conditionalities rod, hook and sinker.

Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz says we are being rewarded heavily by the IMF, World Bank and donors in general for our good conduct as prescribed by the IMF. And the IMF now wants the 15 per cent General Sales Tax on all agricultural inputs and on electricity which will push up the cost of living, production and export. And the people are arguing while the government is becoming rich by getting grants and other aid from donors, it is impoverishing the people in the name of low inflation.

The fact is inflation is not low but the increase in inflation may be that too only for the lowest income groups. The accumulated inflation of decades has been very heavy, and if over that the current increase is not too high that is not a matter for rejoicing. Steps should be taken to bring down prices through the right fiscal and monetary mix, instead of saying the increase in inflation is low and hence the people should relax.

For that matter, inflation in Argentina is a minus 1.6 per cent, and that did not make the 20 per cent unemployed there feel any better. Electricity rates are to go up from January even without the levy of GST on that. And higher gas rates are to follow. And yet we would be told we are having a very low inflation.

If on one side the government wants to please the IMF and get more out of the donors, it is also cocksure it can come up with any kind of levy on the people to raise more revenues.