Your editorial captioned "Privatise fast, Mr President" was on target in calling a spade a spade. There is nothing to be proud of partial and perhaps dubious resurrection of moth-eaten and near-death national entities at the cost of the exchequer with the financial burden eventually percolating down onto the shoulders of the common man.
The finance minister's advice (which the President turned down following his instinct, as he put it) was therefore eminently sensible under the circumstances.
The Governor of the State Bank had given similar advice some two years ago in respect of KESC which was losing Rs 50 million per day at the time. As you have pointed out, one entity was bailed out through a non-transparent and expensive 10-year contract for transport of crude oil, while another was given injections of a colossal amount of money by way of additional equity and in a third case by the exchequer (read common man) assuming responsibility for the cost of a huge debt burden.
Running and management of big (specially strategic and public service) enterprises in the public sector is not wrong per se in my opinion. One has only to recall the highly successful socialist agenda installed by England's first post-war Prime Minister Clement Attlee who replaced the war-time super hero Sir Winston Churchill immediately after the war (World War Two) was won.
The public sector management system put together by Attlee saw the war-ravaged England through its recovery phase. It took Margaret Thatcher, some 50 years later, well over a decade to dismantle the system once the consensus was reached that it had outlived its utility. In Pakistan, however, with its history of squandering of national resources for selfish, personal profit, continued (mis)management of business enterprises in the public sector is a formula for disaster.
"Privatise fast, Mr President", I would echo your call, until such times as we, as a nation, are able to say that our governments are capable of honest management of national assets.