There was, and is, no way to do this right. The government can try to present its side of the picture but the mob shall hear none of it. Where is our cheap fuel, ask the citizens of a nation that produces a paltry 15 percent of the fuel they consume.
Oil prices, the government reminds us, are still the lowest in the region. And that all has to change if we are to free up some fiscal space for welfare projects.
The president might be able to accomplish the impossible – in the imagination of his supporters and detractors alike – but a godlike command of the international oil markets he most certainly does not wield. The age of cheap fuel, like that of cheap food, is over. If the president of the US is nervous about raising fuel prices in what is an election year for him, would the saviour on horseback that the media routinely imagines as ideal leadership for us manage to do any better?
The reaction of the media in the whole affair has been far from ideal. First of all, the rather lazy word play of “petrol bomb” doesn’t really look like it’s on its way to retirement. The whole process has sort of become as mechanical as the Ogra process itself. It is a testament to our vacuous media that there has been no attempt to get an oil markets expert to weigh in on the subject. For the TV channels, to go “vox pops” or man-on-the-street on the subject is much easier and that is indeed what they will do. Asking for folks who are filling in their vehicles what they think of the price-hike is going to yield a predictable, passionate and vastly ill-informed response.
Much is made of the government taxation on oil. With individuals who dodge taxes being pegged at around 97 percent of the population, an insistence on avoiding indirect taxation is laughable. We need some grownups directing public discourse. The waxing and waning of the international oil markets are an unactionable variable. It’s about time we deal with the issue rationally.
