Who is pulling our strings?

Recent politics in Pakistan has aptly proven the adage ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’. When the present government ministers were in opposition, they used to rail against high inflation and hikes in petrol and energy prices. Now that they are in power, the first thing they did was to raise the prices of petrol and electricity.

Their excuse is that the previous government made an agreement with the IMF to do this. The question then arises: if everything is to be done on instructions from the IMF, why have elections at all? Wouldn’t it be logical to have a small cabinet to make the federal budget with defence, foreign and other ministers acting under instructions from one of the superpowers? The billions thus saved could be distributed among the poor.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi