EDITORIAL: The proposal of the senate standing committee on cabinet secretariat, that the government withdraw all taxes on electricity bills to provide immediate relief to people, did get its members the spotlight and some cheers for the time being, but it smacks of the same kind of political opportunism that got the country into this mess in the first place.
They know, if anybody does, that those taxes simply cannot be withdrawn because of agreements with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), without which the economy and the people would end up in much deeper trouble, and trying to portray that the government is the only thing that stands between the people and relief is not only wrong, it also adds insult to injury.
Besides, didn’t all parties – duly represented in the upper house – agree with the lender’s terms, in individual meetings, before the SBA (Stand-By Arrangement) was signed? Yet, now that it’s time to pay the price for the bailout facility, senators are trying to escape responsibility by taking a convenient populist approach, which is a severe indictment of our ruling political elite.
The caretaker PM, too, ought to be less dismissive of the problem than brushing it aside as a “non-issue” as far as causing a serious law and order problem is concerned.
It is definitely not a non-issue because it has all the ingredients to spiral out of control; otherwise, his comments would not have incensed an already frustrated bunch of people into protesting harder and his own (caretaker) information minister would not have had to scramble to dilute the impact of his statement.
Perhaps the current administration, just like some of its colleagues in parliament, simply fails to understand that the lower end of society – mostly poor people – are unable to exercise their democratic right to protest unless they are driven right against the wall.
A lot of them wouldn’t be able to put a meal on the table without putting in a hard day’s work first, so they only take to the streets when they are utterly desperate. And the situation caused by highly inflated electricity bills, when people are already facing the worst inflation and unemployment trends of the country’s history, has now pushed a lot of them to that point of desperation.
Why would they burn their bills when they know that not paying them will land them in trouble? It’s because a lot of them do not have the money to pay them.
That is why the caretaker government’s first smart idea of breaking bills down into instalments to be paid in a staggered manner later was laughed right off the table. And it hasn’t helped, of course, that the government had to drop a petrol price bomb right in the middle of the protests over electricity bills.
Now inflation is going to rise yet more, and a lot more people will be bankrupted; pushed back below the poverty line.
The only thing that can realistically be done about this situation is offer the people a long-term correction programme, according to which the government promises to finally tax all the big fish whose powerful connections have enabled them to eat off the fat of the land all this time and, for the immediate term announce a massive cut in the current expenditure to create fiscal space to provide relief to the people.
That will bring a lot more money into the kitty, help pay back bigger chunks of our loans because of more fiscal space and, above all, finally ensure financial/tax justice. But since we have a caretaker government, and no mainstream political party will risk making such promises during the election campaign, nor risk going after those big fish after the election (if the past is any guide), there’s no telling what will calm the people in the immediate term.
One can be sure, though, that playing with people’s emotions for political gain or rubbishing the potency of their protests to cause an upheaval, as being of no consequence to the government and terming it a “non-issue” will definitely add to their ire and be exploited by the unscrupulous elements within.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023