Just as broken
The PML-N has not had a good record of honouring campaign promises so far in its third time in government. Tax revenues, which were supposed to finally go up ‘come what may’, have actually reduced – giving us one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world. Even the fight against terrorists ‘of all hues and colours’ was begrudgingly agreed to when the other Sharif put his foot down. If it hadn’t been for the Karachi airport attack last year, Nawaz would have let Nisar continue to enlighten us on the virtues of talks for a while longer.
But nothing betrays their divorce from reality, and the suffering of the common man, more than the power crisis. This Ramzan is the best example. Surely the water and power secretary (whom Nawaz grilled for public consumption on Sunday), and the PM’s nephew in the ministry, and others more senior and burdened with other ministries as well, must have known that temperature, and subsequently power demand, would rise as the hottest part of the year approached. Everybody supposed, rightly, that the demand pull was factored into the PM’s promise of reduced load shedding in Ramzan. Everybody but the bureaucracy, power ministry and the PM’s office, it seems.
Clearly the government has failed to address the power problem. Strangely, they continue to mislead people about the core problem, which is still not lack of generation infrastructure. That, too, is natural, since their attempt to tackle the circular debt was shrouded in mystery and backfired very quickly. There’s still no record of the Rs500 billion that went to money heaven, as the debt bounced back to Rs300 billion in no time. Just like taxes, they are unable to check defaults, hence the bottle neck at the beginning of the pipeline. Part of the problem, of course, is that the biggest defaulters roam the most prestigious corridors of power. It is for these reasons that ordinary people will spend another agonising Ramzan, deprived of electricity. They are beginning to realise that this is just another promise the government is not going to keep.