Country cannot afford another corrupt govt: PEW

The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Sunday said future of the country cannot be entrusted to politicians who have remained involved in massive tax evasion. The Election Commission of Pakistan should take concrete steps to stop politicians involved in tax evasion from contesting elections, it said. Around 70 percent of politicians, many billionaires, don’t pay taxes to discharge their obligations and at the same time ask masses to pay taxes to finance their luxuries, said PEW President Dr Murtaza Mughal. The behaviour of politicians is highly inappropriate which indicates that they take politics as a profitable business and consider country as their landed estate, he added. Dr Mughal said that people would never pay taxes voluntarily in the unfair tax system as they know that politicians having billions evade taxes, get exemptions and look for foreign donors for help. The efforts of the FBR to improve tax-to-GDP ratio and other reforms will remain futile as tax compliance in Pakistan will have to start from the top and work its way down, he observed. The salaried class, business community and some professionals are paying taxes to some extent but many industrialists and landed elite are evading tax while feasting on national resources pushing country under unmanageable debt. He noted that the plunder of national resources and robbing people has reached to the proportions where the survival of country seems at stake while the ruling as well as opposition parties seem totally unconcerned. Pakistan cannot afford another democracy run by incompetent leaders politically and economically, he said, adding that incumbent rulers have proved themselves biggest obstacle in making Pakistan a real democratic country. Dr Mughal said, “Pakistan has a chance if the ECP succeeded in partial implantation of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution otherwise we will face a crushing defeat without a war.”