Jobs, contracts, gas!
There are few things more predictable than PML-N gambits when it feels the heat, or when elections are near, or both. Just like this time. With Panama still hovering like a dark cloud, and general election only drawing closer, guess what the federal cabinet pulled out of the hat? Much was controversial, of course. Like lifting the ban on new gas connections (in place since then PM Gilani signed it in ’10). The decision had to be taken because demand-supply was completely off scale; not the least because we had just spent much of the previous decade burning one of the world’s largest natural gas endowments as car fuel.
But gas has become a traditionally abused election tool in Pakistan. Even the PPP government, fuming now, extended the ban in ’11 and ’12, not but in election year ’13, for similar reasons. This time Nawaz, reportedly, violated the moratorium sometime in ’16 and wanted to keep the game limited to family and associates. Only upon the Sindh government’s pressure was the ban formally lifted countrywide. Not only has the predictable initiative caused the predictable inter-provincial spat – Sind produces 70 pc of the country’s gas and gets nothing, etc – but also further formalised further waste of the precious commodity. Little surprise, really, that supply drops into red even before traditional annual demand rises.
Then there’s the issue about outsourcing three airports. Granted, public-private partnership is the order of the day in much of the progressive world, and nothing like CAA acting as a regulator and private parties managing airports to improve the books, etc, in theory at least. But what about that other habit of ours; of influencing appointments and personnel on the public as well as private side? So close to the election, who will check if this, too, does not become just one more big family/party concern? Also, what better way to guarantee more votes than filling government offices with more employees? Somehow, every five years every ruling party completely forgets its campaign promises about over-staffed PSEs, among other things. So far, therefore, some of the PML-N’s most blatant campaign moves revolve more around itself than the people.
