A consensus among the political parties on constitution of a special committee of the Parliament to investigate how much debts were added by various governments since 1985 was the only welcome achievement of the week long session of the National Assembly.
The committee would submit its findings within two months from the date of its constitution. The session convened for the passage of contempt law was prorogued on Friday only further deepening the apprehension about the survival of the system as passage of contempt law added more fuel to the fire.
The ruling party has bought some more time on the issue of NRO implementation case with chances very high that another Prime Minster may meet the same fate in the contempt case. Today, Pakistanis as a nation have been left much behind on account of social and economic development among the regional countries. Bangladesh is doing much better in terms of economy whereas leadership of Korea, Malaysia and other countries have made a big stride in a relatively less time to secure the economic future of their people. On the contrary, people in Pakistan hold their leaders responsible for the present disarray in the country. A common man feels that the political leadership is least concerned about his sufferings. The passage of contempt of court law is an example of this attitude, which has created a selected class as far as application of the law is concerned. The people were pinning their hopes on political leadership after Musharraf departure. They were expecting the political leadership would put their heads together to solve their problems but after four years down the road they feel completely led down.
In such a dismal state of affairs at the level of leadership and Parliamentarians, reaching a consensus and moving a motion to know about the reasons for rapid increase in country's total debt and record of reasons for such a huge increase in borrowings may lead to effective mechanism to control the government borrowings. Moreover, the government has been avoiding to give actual reasons behind such a rapid increase in the debt during the last four years. Those with little know how, are familiar to the fact that the government has been consistently missing budget deficit targets during the last four years and consequently relying on borrowings from the banking sector to finance it. The inability of the government to reduce current expenditure and mobilize revenue with dolling out huge subsides to the power sectors and other Public Sector Entities (PSEs) have all been responsible for the situation. Consequently, the public debt was doubled during the last four year which means that the debt servicing would considerably escalate and much would not be left for the social sector. This all was started after Ahsan Iqbal of Pakistan Muslim League-N, on a point of order after question hour session started reading out State Bank of Pakistan quarterly state of the economy report, laid before the house by the Finance Minister during the current session. Ahsan Iqbal, on pointing out that the total debt of the country doubled during the last year, was challenged by Minister for Religious Affairs and proposed that a commission be formed to expose the government that took higher volume of loans since 1985. The committee would submit its report within two months after collecting details.