Ref: LETTER TO EDITOR Date: JULY 20, 1998

This is with reference to the letter on the above subject written by the MNA from District Central, Karachi, and published in your esteemed newspaper on July 19, 1998. The Hon'ble parliamentarian asks a relevant question: "To whom should we believe now? our gimmick maestro, the Finance Minister, or the glorious donor agencies, or the pressure lobby of US wheat growers?" The answer is there for him to understand.

The Finance Minister obviously has no idea what is happening to the country's finances. He is ensconced in an Ivory Tower, enjoying the perks and benefits, and trying to project himself as a super economist. He is absolutely unaware of the ramifications of his Ministry's myopic and antiquated policies. He is completely lost in the hurricane of financial and economic mis-management that has been brewing all these years. He is lording over the most inefficient, most incompetent, and most incapable, coterie of people who have their own personal agenda and have no pragmatic action plan to get the country out of the economic quagmire.

The Finance Minister has been overshadowed by the great theoretician from the Karachi University, and that he will now just be a figurehead entertaining the donor agencies with his supposedly super knowledge of the national economic scenario. He will be incharge of the begging bowl, will issue high-falutin’ statements, and will try to project himself as another great Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The truth is, unfortunately, out. He and his minions have made mincemeat of the country’s economy. That’s for sure.

The sad part, however, is that the parliamentarians sitting in the hallowed halls have become silent spectators and they have, obviously, chosen to be led on the imaginary path conjured up by the Finance minister and his Babus. They have allowed the Finance Minister and his team to massacre the country’s economy, to play havoc with the country’s finances, and to continue with the waste of the country’s wealth.

The MNA from Karachi Central should raise his, and his party’s, voice forcefully and firmly in the National Assembly and demand that the present failure of a Finance team is sent to greener pastures ……. preferably atleast 5000 miles away from the shores of Pakistan. At the same time, the members of the National Assembly should rip up the latest budget (and mini budgets) and demand that the Prime Minister get his act together, for his sake and for the sake of the 130 million (according to the farcical Census) citizens of Pakistan.

Sincerely:

MAJYD AZIZ