Election politics

In order to regain its worth among the masses, the government, it is rumored, is mulling to introduce a massive relief package in the upcoming budget.

It is quite understandable, as this is most probably an election year, and the incumbent will want to put out all the stops to compensate the people. Apart from criticism, such spending drives are koshers in today’s politics.

However, the question is that how much should be spent in this regard. The government should be aware of that this is slippery and tempering slope. In its reverse effect, the government would have gained popular irresponsibility.

Considering the power crises, the incumbent can make it all go away. In quite an appeasing move, no power outages will be observed in a couple of months ahead of the elections.

However, it would achieve this by fixing a significant amount of the circular debt doing the rounds in the power sector and ensuring uninterrupted electricity. However, this would not be a sustainable project.

One of the many factors of the power crisis is the variance between the electricity tariffs and its costs of generation. Furthermore, the inefficiencies and transmission losses that need a huge amount of money to remedy.

All the amounts, in the popular approach, will have been spent and consequently the circular debt would ratchet up again.

A part of the blame will also be placed firmly on the media and its biased manner in which it covers the economy if the government does not behave responsibly during the pre-election campaigns.

The media concentrates to a gallery that does not want any sympathy for the government instead of conveying to the polity the scope and nature of the problem. Similar case is in the gas shortage.

The masses believe that the only crisis is that of incompetence, not that off genuine scarcity. The public in the RGST issue thinks that the incumbent plans to raise the GST (General Sales Tax) rate in the country.

Here is to hoping some sense, not just in the federal government but also the provincial ones. Let’s not do a Musharraf on the next government.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=13287

Posted by Faisal Farooq on Feb 20 2012. Filed under National, Opinion, Pakistan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.