Rich and the powerful unite: You have nothing to lose except stolen wealth: By Fayyaz Baqir

You have read me right. I am making this proposal in all seriousness, sincerity, and honesty without aiming to point fingers at any one group, party, a section of the elite or power player in Pakistan. I don’t want to use anyone as a scapegoat. We know that people in power in Pakistan have partly become rich by stealing from the public exchequer. We also know that this charge cannot be proved against anyone, and it will take more expenditure than the amount of stolen wealth to recover it. This theft takes place in the public sector. So, one solution is to stop taking loans, invite direct foreign investment, and open trade with the neighbours and ‘enemies’. Move from geopolitics to geoeconomics. This can only happen through legislation on seeking foreign loans, documentation of the economy, transparency, whistle blowers’ protection, progressive taxation, devolution of political and fiscal power to local government, inner-party elections, and separation of party leadership from the government leadership and respect for the constitution and legal framework. Legislation on these issues will allow the competent people in our elite to become rich by making profit and stopping stealing. This will create businesses, and jobs in the economy and help common people also. It will help everyone.

Why is it not happening? Because our elites settle differences by twisting the arms of their competitors and refusing to engage in a cool-tempered, even-headed dialogue on national policy making. Twisting arms is possible through the concentration of power in a few hands, so they keep their opponents away from any role in a dialogue in the name of patriotism, religion, democracy, and ‘character’. We are trying to use a democratic system of decision making with an autocratic mindset. It doesn’t work. Then we draw the conclusion that democracy or a ‘foreign conspiracy’ has failed us. If we don’t agree to disagree and don’t learn the art of negotiation, we don’t need a foreign conspirator to ruin us. We can do it ourselves really well. This is one area where we don’t need to ‘borrow’ ideas. In the absence of any serious effort for a national dialogue, our power players have started shadow boxing in the public square. It serves 2 purposes. It keeps our entertainment-starved nation busy with the media and social media and it buys time for our elite to keep postponing a serious dialogue on key policy changes. This is a new form of addiction selling in the name of political correctness. Some serious politicians have noted that we are not so poor to keep asking for loans anymore. We can create wealth and bring prosperity to everyone.

It is important to remind my readers that we are at the crossroads of world trade. We provide passage to key economic players in the world economy. We can benefit from our location if we have peace and stability, law and order, and legislation for ease of doing business in Pakistan. There is an abundance of capital resources in the world to invest in Pakistan. We don’t need to sign any more loans. Countries as small as UAE, and Singapore have moved from the Third World to First World by opening up and well regulating their economies. The giants like China and India followed the same path. We can provide a corridor for the energy, gas, and oil from Central Asia and Iran to India. We know that we can provide a big profit generating corridor for Chinese goods to the rest of the world. We can provide a passage to goods originating in India to Central Asian markets. We cannot fool our people by saying that we will not open trade with India to guard our national honour. We are already doing trade with India through Dubai. It adds to the profits of companies registered in Dubai and increases the market price of goods for our consumers. Our power elites have to abandon the old mindset of slaughtering the cow and relishing kebabs and learn to milk the cow and acquire riches gradually through a merit-based decision making system. It can happen. Americans have conspired to get us out of the FATF grey list. We should note waste this opportunity by focussing on internal bickering. There are people in our corridors of power who know how to negotiate. Let them take the lead. Merchants, not warriors can provide leadership at this point in our history.