The ministry of finance’s progress report for the third quarter poverty-related expenditures for the fiscal year 2002-03 includes mention that the full Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) will be ready by September 2003.
The release of the final PRSP has been consistently delayed since the original release date passed by in November 2002. When the Interim-PRSP (I-PRSP) was released by the military government in November 2001, the release of the final document was slated for exactly one year later so as to ensure that an ‘elected’ government would be in place to meet the requirement of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF), —the creators of the PRSP— that PRSPs should be backed by strong political support from within.
After it became clear that the parliament that came into being after the October elections hardly suited the needs of the powers that be, the PRSP secretariat in the ministry of finance has quietly been proceeding with its work, doing its best not to disturb the peace, and releasing glossy reports in the traditional mould for the bank and the fund. It was recently reported that an official from the PRSP secretariat confirmed that the PRSP had even undergone the rigours of a parliamentary debate in the same session in which the federal budget was released in early June. It is worth recalling that this was the same session in which finance minister Shaukat Aziz’s speech was heard only by those sitting within the five metre radius.
In the above-mentioned report it is also pointed out that a briefing session was held for parliamentarians in late June in which the PRSP was discussed and debated, and that such sessions highlight the fact that the government is engaging in an exhaustive ‘consultation’ process to ensure ‘country ownership’
As such, the defining feature of the briefing in late June was that it more or less mirrored the national assembly sessions of recent months in terms of the cacophony that prevailed. Opposition members of parliament were adamant that they had very little idea of how the PRSP process had reached where it had, and that they would not consider the document legitimate until it was admitted for a full debate in the lower and upper houses.
According to the third quarter report, provincial PRSPs are also near finalization with only Sindh yet to complete the final draft. Not surprisingly, there is little in the report to indicate how much ‘participation’ characterized the provincial charades. The PRSP secretariat clearly is convinced that the less said, the better. The point being made is that, regardless of how convinced one is by the chatter of the finance minister, the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and the international financial institutions (IFIs), the PRSP exercise has been a sham, even when compared to the rather flexible requirements that the bank and the fund have themselves outlined.
As has been said many times in the past, the basic policy framework that the I-PRSP, provincial PRSPs (at least those that are in the public domain), and the final draft of the full PRSP released at the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) in May, outline, is quite simply, no different from structural adjustment, and that which successive governments have adopted with varying levels of intensity since the late 1970s. More than 70 countries world-wide have been involved in the PRSP processes, and the vast majority of these processes have produced the final PRSPs that look very much alike. The processes themselves have also been quite similar to the process that has taken place in Pakistan. For all of the talk of ‘country ownership’, it is fact that a large proportion of parliamentarians themselves do not even know what P.R.S.P stands for.
As such, a handful of technocrats and consultants have prepared the PRSP, under the watchful guise of the IFIs. Meanwhile, the military has handpicked a sham government, and Musharraf has stuffed the Legal Framework Order (LFO) down the nation’s throat. And have the IFIs noticed? Even the European Union, so unapologetically critical of the October election, has been silent about the PRSP process, a reflection on the fact that the key decisions in the world really do come down to control and capture resources and markets, and all the liberal rhetoric about freedom and democracy is only about maintaining good public relations.
However, all of the above is still less than half the story. When push comes to shove, the real issue is that the fate of the 145 million people in this country can be dictated by a handful of people under the cover of a blatant racket that takes on the benign and seemingly compelling cover of poverty reduction. And this is a direct outcome of the fact that the present political opposition ‘at least in the formal, electoral sense’ is unwilling, and therefore perhaps, unable, to muster up the kind of people-based resistance to the establishment that is the one basic requirement for change to take place. It is a fact that the current economic squeeze being faced by the ordinary Pakistani is unprecedented. And it is a fact that the ordinary Pakistani is more willing than ever to volunteer that it is the rent-seeking of the elite that is the cause of the problem. But who and how can articulate this frustration?
This is the question that the opposition is supposed to provide an answer to. Now that the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) has exposed itself and the fact that its sloganeering is nothing more than hot air, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League constitute the only opposition that counts. But as much as any other political force in this country, these two parties have tasted the candy of the establishment many times before, and as such, have also complied with the conditionalities of the IFIs while in power. So principled opposition is hardly a possibility. But perhaps necessity can induce these parties to take a stand, for once, with the people of this country.
The neo-liberal economic model faces a considerable crisis of confidence given what has transpired in recent years in countries such as Argentina and Thailand, where adjustment policies were once held up as a shining beacon of progress. It is time to expose this crisis in Pakistan too, especially now that the basic needs of people are being stripped from them at a rapid rate. Those who still claim to be committed to the people of this country and the democratic spirit, must take on the PRSP in addition to the LFO, because ultimately it is the economic bite packed by the IFIs and multinational capital that underlies the domination of the military in the affairs of the state. And more importantly, challenging such frauds is the only way to preserve whatever remains of the notion that this nation was built for its people.
