It is true that the PML-N government has not succumbed to political expediency on the eve of general elections in the country as it has decided to raise the prices of POL products regardless of its electoral prospects. No doubt, it was a very difficult decision for a government that is going to contest the general elections in the absence of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as its head. Federal Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has therefore plausibly argued that the approved rise in the price of petrol and products is 50 percent of what was recommended by Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) and this decision was taken on the instructions of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
The PML-N government seems to have drawn a lesson from a profoundly horrendous decision that the PML-Q government had taken in relation to POL products' prices on the eve of the 2008 general elections. Acting against the rising global oil prices it had not allowed to pass on the impact to people in Pakistan in order to avert any real or perceived threat to its electoral prospects. How ironic it was that it still lost the elections by a very wide margin.
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