KARACHI CHRONICLE: Here comes the budget

Come June, and I look forward to the annual budget announcement with the same impatientience as I used to await the arrival of a circus in town. I love acrobatics.
By the time I was grown up, circuses were becoming few and far between and, finally, the arbiters of public morality forced the closure of circuses which were dubbed indecent entertainment, especially the performance on highropes because the audience could see the underwear of the female trapeeze artistes.
At first I regretted the passing away of the circus, but soon discovered political speeches and budget announcements more than compensated for the loss. Especially the budget announcements. It is simply astounding; I have never witnessed such skill in acrobatics even from the professional acrobats. What flips, twists and turns, what breathtaking double and triple summersaults, what a terrific balancing act one gets to see in the budget announcement.
There was a down-side to the circus. At the end of the show one went home feeling depressed at the banality of our own lives and our lack of acrobatic skill. The end of the budget speech leaves me as depressed; I wish I was skilful at manipulating my meagre financial resources.
In our part of the world acrobatics were popular even in the olden days when it was called "Madari Ka Tamasha". In the Colonial period the Madari Ka Tamasha got overshadowed by the westernised Ring-a-Ling type of acrobatics in circuses. Soon the circus made the Tamasha art obsolete.
But, I believe, most of the artistes found suitable work in the finance department of the Colonial Raj and later in the finance ministries of independent Pakistan and Bharat. In fact I know it is so, and you will agree it is so if you have been listening to budget speeches since the days of Field Martial President Muhammad Ayub Khan.
In my childhood, besides real circuses films with circus themes were very popular, such as "Trapeeze" and "Greatest Show on Earth". I couldn't help thinking about those films as I waited impatiently for last Saturday's budget announcement to begin. Excitement had been built up through the half-page advertisements placed by the Ministry of Finance in English and Urdu dailies. The budget was billed as "Pakistan's Largest Budget" and Kahani Naheen, Haqiqat". This was pure theatre.
However, the budget speech was a bit disappointing as a show . I had hoped that since it was to be Pakistan's largest budget the star performer Prime Minister cum Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz would take the floor - I mean the tightrope. For the benefit of the younger generation of Pakistanis who are perhaps unfamiliar with circus jargon as we were, a tighrope is a tightly stretched rope or wire on which acrobats balance. The word is used metaphorically for a difficult situation which requires careful handling if a potential disaster is to be avoided. In this case the danger is the people may not vote for the ruling party at the next elections.
State Minister for Finance Omar Ayub Khan presented the budget for the next fiscal year 2007-08 in the National Assembly. Did Shaukat Aziz want us to forget he has been the Finance Minister for the entire period of Pervez Musharraf's regime, which is nearly eight years? Whether or not the President reinstates himself for a second regime, everybody believes it is the end of the line for the Prime Minister.
In short, he is the fallguy for the economic and political mess. At least that is the general opinion in this city which has suffered the most from the fallout of economic and political policies such as the sale of the Steel Mills, the KESC, the Buddho and Bundal islands which unleashed a wave of resentment, a sense of being robbed, anger at the loss of jobs and "guzargah" which led to mass public rallies and protests. Under the circumstance I think it was wise of him not to take the floor - I mean the tightrope and allow his understudy Omar Ayub Khan to do the balancing act.
Even though we would have liked to see the star acrobat in action, Omar Ayub Khan wasn't less entertaining as an understudy. I was especially charmed by his naïve questions. He wanted to know what was the reason past governments did not spend on development work despite their large fiscal deficit. Why Eurobonds raised by his government sold like hot cakes while those of the previous government in New York were shunned like stale bread.
He wanted to know why relief measures his government had given to workers was not given by the previous governments. He asked whether "some one" before had thought of people living in far off places, who had to travels long distances to get basic medicines at reduced rates. This last question had me stumped. I could not tell how far in time the State Minister for Finance wanted us to search for "some one" who had ignored people living in far flung areas.
Did he want us to go back to the time of his grandfather, or the government of Zia ul Haq, or Nawaz Sharif who was ousted by Pervez Musharraf? Also it was puzzling as to whether the State Minister wished to emphasise the need for providing basic medicine or was he focused on the cost of it.
Since this was a budget speech he probably meant one should not profit unduely in selling basic medicine to people in far off places and it was only fair that high prices be charged in cities where people could afford to be skinned.
There were many, many more questions, in fact the speech was peppered with direct and rhetorical queries in the above vein. I do not have answers to his questions but I liked the idea that he was inviting the audience to interact. I cannot answer his queries and leave it to the financial pundits to do it.
But I would like to ask a question in turn. Was this a budget speech or a political speech? Traditionally the annual budget announcement mentions last year's budget performance and proceeds to outline the budget policy for the next fiscal year.
The speech last Saturday gave a roundup of all that has been achieved by the Musharraf regime in its nearly eight years stint and compared it to what was not achieved by the past government, in particular the previous one of Nawaz Sharif. The comparisons went on and on through the speech. They are losers, we are winners - vote for us, he seemed to say.
If there was a ballot box anywhere nearby, I tell you I would have rushed to cast my vote in favour of any lampost who contested against the present incumbents. I was that disgusted. Boasters are boring, irritating, nauseating. It is bad form to beat a dead horse.