20 June , 2008
After Musharraf, More Musharraf?
It is rather ironic that after hollering for Musharraf’s head for the last eight years, the nation’s politicians have done nothing of substance since assuming power. In every key aspect, they have affirmed, instead of reversed, the policies of Pervez Musharraf. But no good deed goes unpunished, and instead of admitting to the fact that everything they denounced for so long is now the only way to go, they continue to blame all that is wrong on Musharraf while clamoring for credit for anything that is positive. Of course, to some extent, this is the nature of all politicians, but Pakistan’s are particularly hypocritical, given how over the top their anti-Musharraf rhetoric had been.
Let’s look at some key areas such as foreign policy, relations with India, energy policy, economic policy, social policy, and terrorism. In foreign policy the key decision of the Musharraf government was to break with the Taliban and move into a firm alliance with the United States. That basic framework remains intact, despite the killing of Pakistani soldiers recently in a US air-strike.
On the India front, it was Musharraf who shut down the Jihadi movement and opened up a dialogue with Delhi on Kashmir. However, Musharraf insisted on some reasonable compromise from the Indians that has not been forthcoming. The new government has maintained that basic policy and has not signaled its willingness to accept the LoC as the basis of the final settlement, which is what India has always wanted.
Energy policy has been a major stick with which to attack Musharraf. But the primary choices facing Pakistan and the correct solutions have already been pursued by Musharraf. Pakistan has limited fossil fuel resources but ample hydroelectric potential that remains untapped. In the long run, the best power policy for Pakistan is to fully exploit its hydroelectric resources, which generate the cheapest form of electricity. Musharraf pursued exactly that, but the problem is that dams take 10-15 years to go from initial studies to completion. As such, there was no immediate political benefit to this approach, but Musharraf correctly saw it as the right one. He did not go for the expensive band-aid of more power plants run on crude oil. The most economical fossil fuel for electricity is natural gas, and right next door in Iran sits 15% of the world’s natural gas. It only makes sense to build a pipeline to Pakistan to power the country. Musharraf carefully pursued the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which had the side-effect of making India’s energy policy to some extent dependent on Pakistan. The tedious negotiations over this pipeline are almost completed, and hopefully work on the construction of the pipeline could begin in the next 12 months. The new government, while trying to claim credit for 2 more gigawatts coming on line later this year that they inherited and had nothing to do with, are also committed to several dams and the IPI pipeline project.
In economic policy, the just released national budget is a simple imitation of Musharraf’s economic policy. There is not even one significant deviation from the framework that Shaukat Aziz had constructed. You would think given how the politicians were so aggressive in their condemnations of Aziz’s economic policies that they would be full of alternatives, but in reality they could not come up with a single major new idea. The free-market, private sector dominated policies of Aziz remain intact, as does the independence of the central bank and the privatization of vast swathes of the previously state-owned economy. The best proof of that is the PPP decision to raise the sales tax that hits the poor hardest and is the most regressive tax, while leaving the exemption to tax on stock market profits intact. The new government has even accepted in totality the entire statistical framework of accomplishment that the Musharraf government would trumpet, and that would routinely be denounced as fabrications by the politicians. If they were fabricated, why hasn’t anyone stepped forward with the proof? The current government has even endorsed Aziz’s fiscal responsibility law, limiting total national debt, and has endorsed that the per capita income is now over 1,000 dollars.
In social policy, every major accomplishment of the Musharraf era has also been accepted rather than repudiated. The repeal of the Hudood laws, the abolition of separate electorates for minorities, and the reserved seats for women in the Parliament are all secure reforms. In addition, the local bodies system, which was so fervently denounced by the politicians, are now being accepted. Even the newspapers are saying that they should be “fixed” but not eliminated.
On the terrorism front there has also been no change in policy. The same mix of negotiations and army deployments continues. The new government will have to learn for itself that negotiations with the Taliban will always fail as the Taliban are unwilling to truly stop their war on the Pakistani state and in Afghanistan. Just recently the government announced that a major triple suicide bombing in Islamabad was averted at the last moment. Terrorism did not start with Musharraf, nor has his departure caused it to end.
So why has there been so little material change several months after Musharraf was driven from power? In most countries that experience a dramatic political change, the first few months see a flurry of activity as the old ways are discarded and new fresh approaches are introduced. So why has this not happened in Pakistan? For two reasons: First, Musharraf has genuinely followed policies in the last eight years that were in Pakistan’s true long-term interests. So even with Musharraf gone, the next government has no significant rationale to truly change direction. Secondly, none of the political parties have a core political philosophy that they wanted to implement, and could be translated into legislation. While in America, Democrats stand for human, social and cultural freedom, stronger social safety net, and support the lower economic classes, and the Republicans stand for low taxes, limited government, and a muscular foreign policy, Pakistani political parties lack core philosophies. They are mostly vehicles for the ambitions of their leaders. As they have no core to guide policy, there was no real policy alternative in the waiting for the politicians to use once they got power.
During Musharraf’s eight years, the per capita income doubled, telephones became available even to those in poverty, the poverty rate plunged, over 10 million people were added to the labor rolls, basic consumer goods such as motorcycles and air conditioners became available to a wide strata of society, the national debt was cut in half as share of the economy, exports doubled, literacy rate rose from 45% to 55%, life expectancy jumped from 59 to 64 years (higher than India) and the telecommunication industry by itself was paying 100 billion rupees per year in new tax revenue. And yet many still insist that nothing got better under Musharraf, except for the very rich. They should actually read the Economic Survey of Pakistan put out by the PPP-led government and then state their case. Until they do, they are speaking out of bias and ignorance, rather than real knowledge.
Comments can reach me at nali@socal.rr.com
