The Musharraf government has come up with a Budget, hoping to offset the negative impact of its financial policies for past seven years. Coming just before the forthcoming elections, it raises doubts about its implementation and any relief that it will offer to masses in terms of inflation and cost of living.
The regime will be judged on the basis of its performance and not what it proposes to do now, after remaining in power for almost eight consecutive years. What matters to the people of Pakistan is how the state has handled its constitutional and moral obligations regarding:
(a) maintenance of law and order;
(b) provision of clean drinking water and electricity;
(c) curbs on cartels and subsidising of basic food items like milk, ghee, wheat,suger and pulses;
(d) provision of adequate number of state owned universities, colleges and schools, offering subsidised quality education at district, tehsil and zila level to the poor;
(e) provision of basic health units and medical facilities offered to people by state owned hospitals;
(f) an independent judiciary and their power to enforce the rule of law;
(g) role of parliament and its sovereignity;
(h) accountability of individuals involved in plundering state assets;
(i) provision of subsidised housing to the poorest of the poor;
(j) restraint on misuse of state funds by ruling elite in terms of allotment of land, procurement of expensive luxurious limousines, luxury jets and non-productive all-paid for foreign junkets. etc;
(k) equal employment oppurtunities based on merit and qualification;
(l) performance of state owned semi-autonomous corporations;
(m) elimination of allotment of land to employees of the state paid, from the exchequer, excluding one plot for building a home only, with no right to sell;
(n) adherence to constitution and respect for human rights;
(o) disassociation of the state with groups or parties that promote ethnic and sectarian divisions;
(p) working of law enforcing agencies and their adherence to rules;
(q) respect for civil liberties and freedom of expression;
(r) respect for Quaid e Azam, founding fathers and Pakistan ideology in terms of type of government envisioned by them;
(s) financial and administrative irregularities if any and accountability of those involved without any exception;
(t) auditing of all state expenditures.
It is for the government to assess itself on all these obligations, so as to arrive at an honest decision. Let it be a judge of its own performance.