PML-N’s slow slaughter

Of all the stupid 101 ways to politically die, Nawaz Sharif and his party have chosen the stupidest. And the most painful: slow slaughter.

Of all the stupid 101 ways to politically die, Nawaz Sharif and his party have chosen the stupidest. And the most painful: slow slaughter. They are already facing a historic twin-crises of constitutional legitimacy and public approval; their ways in power are now nothing if not suicidal. They are watering extreme public anger, nurturing unrest and even popular rebellion of the sort that you saw in the AJK, while inflicting upon themselves mortal injuries.

The budget is a case of a self-held blunt knife moving sideways on its jugular and that of ‘ordinary’ Pakistanis, who are the real Pakistanis. The document, prepared to a T to IMF sensitivities, imposes a whopping additional Rs75b taxation on the salaried class. Pretty much everyone will now pay nearly double of what they paid last year. This is minus consumer goods becoming steep as input costs increase and the burden is passed on to the buyer. Then there is inflation itself. If you put it altogether, nearly half of the earnings of this overtaxed class will evaporate.

As if this weren’t enough, two days after the budget, the Shehbaz government electrocuted the budget-stung public with 20% increase in the electricity rate. At the same time—process this now—it reduced the per unit cost for the industrial sector (his buddies and the state’s pampered brats) by Rs10.69. Extorting from the poor and spoon-feeding the privileged barons. Classic colonialism. The central government refuses to push taxation of the super-rich and insists on battering the lives of the classes facing unparalleled crunch in their lives.

Nearly 40% of the Pakistanis live below the poverty line. Around 7m more are on the edge of the line. The so-called expansion in the Benazir Income Support Programme is sop to the People’s Party that is threatening to cause the collapse of the government. Also, the enlisted persons under BISP are not true sample of those in urgent need of help. The BISP’s registration process leaves out millions of wretched of this earth who are not politically connected.

The PML-N’s other and more important base, Punjab, too is too timid to tax the rich. Its budget was headlined as being tax-free, surplus and people friendly. In its Rs842billion development outlay, however, nearly every scheme is driven by the chief minister’s plans that are discretionary and are designed to cement her image of a doer.

But consider the priorities in Punjab. Rs246b plus go to infrastructure (goldmine for the contractors) and Rs65b to education, of which schools get Rs45b (mostly maintenance) and higher education Rs15b. It leaves the IT sector hanging in thin air and yet distributes laptops to the young.

It wants to see health improve but spends the least amounts on water supplies and sanitation, the cesspools of festering diseases. It wants to empower the people but enhances the court and stamp paper fees allowing scamsters outside courts to milk poor litigants of the last bits of their savings. It invests big time in the agriculture sector but does not tax the sector to raise funds because the sector in-charges are all political allies and party members. It relies on the federation’s donations (NFC award formula for all provinces) and does not want to enhance its revenue through its own resources because that would hurt the pockets of the very people it represents.

But the Punjab is at least spending in the hope that this will keep their constituencies happy. (The Modi example should be instructive here. His most appealing success story did not resonate with the public because the teeming millions of India’s toiling masses saw him as a representative of the billionaires and a heartless lord of constituency politics.)

The federal government, on the contrary, is only taking and taking and taking. And taking from an overly-robbed middle classes wrecking their lives, torpedoing their hopes, making it doubly difficult for them to feed their children: 18% GST on locally-produced, infant formula and children fortified nutrition milk powders. Or buy medicines: new duties on pharma raw materials.

The salaried class, the backbone of the middle class, is urban-based, has ambitions and drive for upward social mobility, is deeply tuned into political developments via a booming social media, and is generally more aware than the average Pakistani about how the country has been run aground by a rapacious elite. This class cuts across all sectors of the economy. All fully or partially employed are its members, and has no way of escaping the grasping Shylocks of an endlessly demanding state because all taxes are deducted at source. They can’t do under-invoicing, hedging, fudging, dodging, and parking of earnings in this or that basket of exemptions. The are sitting ducks for the predatory taxation drakes to feast on them.

The Shehbaz government’s repeated promises to “not touch the salaried section” are now dirty dust in the face of this class because they have again been asked for a maund of flesh. Rs75b additional tax on this class is the same amount that the federal budget allocates for the parliamentarians “development schemes”. So the salaried class, roughly 80 percent of all tax filers in the country, is forced to pawn their children’s future for some form-47 MPA or MNA who wants to put his own picture on the board of a sewerage line so that in the next polls he could become a form-45 public representative.

This wouldn’t be so bad if these public reps actually contributed anything significant from their own pockets to the tax kitty. I am embedding the parliamentarians tax directory for 2019 released in 2022 for you to skim through to know how much they all pay back to the country. The list reads like tax dodgers directory. But at least this in cold print.

The most scandalous of the untouchables are not mentioned anywhere. They shift money abroad as easily as texting messages and have massive landholdings across the country and in different parts of the world. In their world of lace and lavender money is funny and resources abound like mud. FBR babus are tied to their pinkies and happily dance at the flickers. They fund politics, are connected with every power corridor through shared businesses, matrimonial relations and the common commitment to protect the thieves’ honour code. Pakistan’s coffers open to them as Ali Baba’s Hofuf Caves without them even saying Sesame to enter and take what they want. They are never touched. Not even in this budget. Nor in any other in the future. IMF or no IMF.

The awareness is increasing at every level that the country is run by AIDS—Axis of Immunity Dependent Sardars. The cabal that has captured this land and its resources is above the paygrade of the finance minister who doesn’t have the guts to even mention tax evaders and yet has the temerity to shamelessly tell the people on tv that he cannot give them ‘relief’ because of there is no “fiscal space’.

The PML-N has become the face of these terrible things happening to the public’s challenged lives and their future. It has nothing but bad news to give and inane excuses offered by political pranksters like Ali Pervaiz, minister of state for finance. Its party head Nawaz Sharif—who can’t seem to get enough of Nathia Gali and Murree even as the people burn in the hell of economic woes—has increasingly become pointless.

The party is a mere façade of a fractured system that is cutoff from reality and is attempting to survive another day. This political cost of serving the rich, torturing the middle classes, and trampling the poor will be huge. And this for a party that has nothing but red cents left to pay for its mega blunders. Slow political self-slaughter is not slow anymore. The PML-N might soon discover.