Why should there be such a brouhaha over the solitary Mercedes Benz imported by prime minister Benazir Bhutto? As the law minister has clarified, the rules of government allow the person of the prime minister to import any one car for “personal use” without paying any import duties or taxes.
It is also well known that previous presidents, prime ministers, chief ministers, governors, judges, army chiefs and other senior government officials and representatives have invariably cashed in their duty-free privileges while in office. As a matter of fact, former President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was more than favourably disposed to “buying back”, at knocked-down prices of course, several of the many valuable “gifts” he received from foreign heads of state while touring abroad in his official capacity.
Prime ministers and chief ministers, in particular, have done much worse than skim the rules to evade import duties. Armed with “discretionary” powers to “relax” the rules, they have doled out state largesse to grovelling cronies and bureaucrats with reckless abandon. Who hasn’t been appalled by the scandals attached to grants of valuable real estate by Nawaz Sharif, Ghulam Haider Wyne, Jam Sadiq Ali and Manzoor Wattoo? Who doesn’t recoil from the cynical exploitation of the Jahez and Bait ul Maal funds by leaders of the Muslim League to line the pockets of accomplices, partners, cohorts, allies, chums and assorted “well wishers”?
Given this background, Ms Bhutto’s ire at the opposition for trying to make a mountain out of a molehill is perfectly understandable. In turn, the government has now trotted out all the spanking new Mercs imported by Nawaz Sharif and put them on display, including two jazzy sports cars in which the former prime minister of Pakistan loved to gallivant in the hills of Murree and Nathiagali singing sweet nothings to his companions. Like Imelda Marcos’ endless rows of bright and burnished shoes, the 53 Mercs of Nawaz Sharif have become an apt metaphor for these “chamacky” times.
Here is a poor country wallowing in debt. We don’t have the money to educate our people or provide for their health. Our roads are clogged with traffic and full of pot-holes, our industry is starved of power and short of skilled labour, our crops are thirsty for water and sick with viruses. Yet our leaders are squandering away billions of our hard earned money in refurbishing their official homes, importing fleets of cars, taking planeloads of friends on foreign junkets. Fiddling while Rome burns, as it were.
No more, we say, we will not stand for it any more.
Benazir Bhutto talks endlessly about her party’s scrupulous standards of behavior. She insists that her family and friends occupy a higher moral ground than those of Nawaz Sharif. If she wants to be credible, she might consider putting her money where her mouth is.
The prime minister could begin with her husband’s favourite Merc which has become the subject of much scorn. The import duties on this car are peanuts. She should set aside the rules — for once in the right cause and cough up the dough. If Nawaz Sharif could write a personal cheque to Bosnia for twice that amount, Ms Bhutto can steal the thunder for a song on this front. This could be followed up by auctioning, preferably in foreign exchange, most of the Mercs imported by Nawaz Sharif. More good can be done by channelling the proceeds of the auction into a maternity care hospital for the poor in Islamabad. Can you think of any other timeless reminder of how a caring prime minister was able to transform the ill-begotten policies of a plundering predecessor into a peoples’ cause? Here is a good and positive way to stay on the front pages of the press. Surely Mr Hussain Haqqani can drum up a media campaign to extract maximum mileage from such a well-meaning gesture.
Ms Bhutto should also take a leaf from Mr Moeen Qureshi’s book: she could float a proposal in parliament curtailing many of the privileges, rights and discretionary powers of senior government functionaries and elected representatives to bestow or receive state largesse and patronage. Imagine the discomfort of Mr Sharif & Co when they are asked, before a full gallery, to cooperate with government in making it an act of law!
Ms Bhutto should also think of sending the same sort of signal to all those who continue to default on bank loans. We had been given to understand that new laws were being drafted to bring defaulters to book before special banking tribunals. What has happened to them, we wonder? Isn’t it time tax evaders were locked up? Isn’t it time some corrupt bureaucrats were fired?
Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif don’t like Mr Moeen Qureshi because he has set the yardstick by which we, the people, now tend to measure our elected representatives. If they want us to banish him from our hearts and minds, they will have to give us good and honest government. If they don’t, they mustn’t expect us to chose between the two of them when they bring the system into disrepute next time round.