How Industrialist Greed is a Good Thing a.k.a. Why You Should Vote for the PPP Again

You have to give Prime Minister Gilani credit for finding a silver lining where none seems possible. The sugar crisis is apparently a godsend for Pakistanis. You see we consume way too much sugar. At 25 kilos of sugar per person per annum, we beat sugar consumption of Indians (14 kilos), Bangladeshis (11 kilos) and the Chinese (10 kilos) by a mile. And you know nothing good comes from having sugar. Just cavities, diabetes and obesity. If the News is to be believed, Mr. Gilani is very alarmed. He is worried sick about this nation’s health.

It can only be a good thing then that the government has failed to stop the price of sugar from skyrocketing to around Rs. 50 from Rs. 25 earlier this year. Right? Lets make the people pay through their nose for their gulab jaman and jalebi addictions. They’ll only thank the PPP later when they are saved those costly trips to the dentist. Come to think of it, maybe this should be the centerpiece of the government’s health policy. And its education policy. Kerching!

And just to show us how serious Mr. Gilani is, he has told his cook to cease and desist: no more sweet dishes on the Prime Minister’s table till further notice. In one fell stroke, Mr. Gilani has rid himself of inflated sugar bills and cavities. Genius!

But wait! There’s more. If we all follow Mr. Gilani’s shining example, sugar consumption will plummet and the greedy industrialists will have to bring their prices down. See? The Pakistani people will get something even sweeter than ras gullahs. Revenge!

Repealing the Blasphemy Law

In other news, Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti told Dawn that the government was working on a bill to reverse the discriminatory laws enacted by Zia. Can this tantalizingly vague remark be construed as a promise to repeal the blasphemy law? Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's earlier but equally vague statement about reviewing laws "detrimental to religious harmony" seems to lend some credence to this conjecture. It would certainly be a very appropriate move after all the criticism the blasphemy law has attracted post-Gojra.

But already the right-wing spin doctors have declared Gojra to be a meticulously orchestrated conspiracy against the blasphemy law by unnamed sources who are set on undermining Islam. The rhetoric is appalling in its bald-facedness but is also quite familiar. The downer is that the Pakistani public too seems in synch with the right on this issue. A recent Pew Institute poll found that 78% Pakistanis support the death penalty for apostasy. While there were no questions on blasphemy, the apostasy question should serve as a gauge for Pakistani opinion on the issue. The survey was conducted before Gojra though and perhaps opinions have shifted thereafter.

Nonetheless, repealing the blasphemy law seems to be a politically tricky task. But a few years earlier, the Hudood Ordinance seemed just as much of a sacred cow. The right was certainly fulminating with more venom back then but the amendment still went through. Then again, the Hudood Ordinance was amended by a dictator who at that time at least was somewhat impervious to public opinion. The only hope that I see is in the Pakistan Peoples Party's commitment to human rights. It did put aside its differences with Musharraf to support the Hudood Ordinance amendment. It also recently passed a law against domestic violence. But it still hasn't followed through on its promise to abolish the death penalty. So overall, the PPP's record is a bit mixed. But maybe, just maybe, now too it will take a politically risky move and rid Pakistan of the blasphemy law. One can only wait and see, I suppose.

Ministerial Glut

After the Feb 2008 elections, many of us had hoped for a change in governance and for a move away from nearly a decade of cronyism, corruption, ineptitude and failed government policies at the hands of Musharraf and the PML-Q. And while the new PPP government has brought new faces into power, it is continuing many of the old Musharraf-PML-Q government policies. It is certainly continuing the PML-Q tradition of appointing a legion of ministers, a practice which is both costly and unnecessary.

Yesterday, 40 new ministers were sworn in to the federal cabinet bringing the total to a whopping 55. This means that now 16 percent of the 342 members of the National Assembly are part of the cabinet. 53 percent (50 out of 94) of PPP MNAs are also now part of the cabinet.

Why does Pakistan need 55 cabinet members when a 15 member US cabinet governs a country of over 300 million people? The answer of course lies in the perks of being a cabinet member. While an MNA gets a monthly salary of 17,000 rupees, a Federal Minister gets 40,000 rupees and a Minister of State (a junior cabinet member) gets 37,000 rupees. Here are the other legal perks of belonging to the cabinet(1), (2):

1. Monthly payment of rent by the state up to 19,550 rupees and 17,825 rupees for official residences of Federal Ministers and Ministers of State, respectively;
   
2. Monthly payment of rent by the state up to 19,550 rupees and 17,825 rupees for personal residences of Federal Ministers and Ministers of State, respectively;
   
3. Monthly utility allowance of 15,000 rupees;
   
4. Daily allowance for gas and electricity of 550 rupees;
   
5. The free use of a 1600cc car for the minister and his/her family;
   
6. One free telephone line for the office and home, with free calls inside the country;
   
7. Subsidized air travel;
   
8. A one time 5,000 rupee equipment allowance;
   
9. A one time furnishing allowance with a maximum limit of 100,000 rupees;
   
10. An annual discretionary grant of 600,000 rupees and 400,000 rupees for Federal Ministers and Ministers of State, respectively.

There is of course the unquantifiable but surely not insignificant perk of bribes in holding a position in the cabinet, too.

Not counting the bribe or perks 5-10, the annual expense to the people of Pakistan for each Federal Minister is 1.33 million rupees and for each Minister of State is 1.25 million rupees.

No wonder everyone in the National Assembly wants a piece of this pie, and the PPP government seems more than happy to oblige. The facts that we are in a major fiscal crisis and that we desperately need to balance our government budget and stop government borrowing from the SBP to bring inflation down from over 30% seem to be lost on our government. It is very happy to withdraw subsidies from struggling Pakistanis and slash developmental expenditure for the sake of government frugality but sees no contradiction in feeding the greed of the ruling coalition's MNAs out of the taxpayer's pocket. Pakistanis will now be paying over 71.8 million rupees in salaries and perks to cabinet members every year.

This is a far cry from 15 August 1947, when a 6 member cabinet was sworn in under Liaquat Ali Khan. Instead, this expanded cabinet is shockingly reminiscent of Shaukat Aziz's 66 member whale of a cabinet.