Yet another blow to the poverty stricken, flood affected and helpless Pakistani public was inflicted as the US secretary of state Hilary Clinton has appealed to international donors to immediately stop all aid to Pakistan.
Whether this is a good thing or bad remains debatable. It would be totally bad if the entire confection was actually to be used to assist and rehabilitate the devastated people, which is an impossibility considering past examples and models of corruption.
Apparently the rationale behind this statement, among others, is the affluence of the political elite and leaders who have directed a huge sum of the state money right into their bank accounts bloating them to magnanimous proportions. The uninhabited and excessive spending of our leaders does not give the impression of being rulers of a state without sufficient funds to pay salaries for two straight months, while the houses they dwell in are no less than what befits a king.
The UN ambassador Angelina Jolie, too, received a great shock as she compared the extreme grief of the people against the grandiose display of extravagance and reckless lavishness that was bestowed upon her as a guest and the generous gifts that she received from them.
May be this is the foreign help that we had been waiting since ages that would enable us to stand on our feet as a nation. It has been proved that receiving aid for such protracted periods has done nothing either for our economy or for our self-esteem. In fact, it has made us retreat back into an abysmal despair of hopelessness. Without the prospect of foreign aid money, maybe we can rely on our own mental and physical capabilities after all, a habit that we had long forgotten.
MUHAMMAD ABDULLAH
Islamabad
