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Law makers or sugar thieves?
(Published 20.8.2009)
http://www.dailynationalcourier.com/national_courier/aug2009_daily/20-08-09/artical/artical1.htm
Sugar was retailing at Rs 36 a kilogram just two months ago. Today it is selling for Rs 55 and in a few days will be selling for around Rs 60, may be as early as you will be reading these lines. Thanks to our Law makers, nay law breakers.
Almost all the sugar mills in Pakistan are owned by politicians, serving or out of parliament, directly or indirectly. The fact that there is a glut of sugar mills is a proof that politicians value sugar making as a highly lucrative business. These sugar-runner politicians are known for their unethical business practices bordering criminal indulgence: They never pay official, forget fair, price to poor sugarcane farmers on the one hand and are always looking for pretexts, no matter how lame they could be, to sell the commodity at a premium no matter how unreasonable it may be. Many a sugar farmers have stopped cultivating sugarcane altogether because these influential sugar mills owners just do not pay the farmers at all for sugarcane that is usually bought n credit.
In short, sugar is one of many businesses of choice for powerful and rich Pakistani politicians simply because sugar is an essential commodity and thus offers great potential for price manipulation on the flimsiest of the pretext as has been proven year after year.
Pakistani politicians, at least the majority of them, are nothing but cheats and fraud. They are evil incarnated unleashed to devour the flesh and blood, labor and toil of the people. They pillage and plunder the people at will without the slightest remorse. They live in luxury that could shame leaders of the most powerful and the richest nations of the world and this luxury is ensured through systematic and ruthless exploitation of the people- financial, political, social, cultural or otherwise.
In any civilized country such hardened and habitual criminals would have been serving long sentences for black marketing and massive fraud. In our part of the world they sit in the parliament as lawmakers- nay the law unto themselves. These so-called lawmakers and petty politicians have defrauded the people of billions by hoarding sugar to create an artificial shortage in order to push the price of sugar to record Rs 55 a kilogram. Manzoor Wattoo, the federal Minister of Industries, has emerged as the biggest abettor and supporter of this criminal clique of politicians- he has 'solved' the 'sugar crisis' by fixing the wholesale price that this mafia just love- Rs 49 per kilogram.
Watto, a 'peoples representative', evinces no qualms whatsoever to accord superficial legality to the criminally manipulated price hike- now all kosher and all official. Suddenly becoming extremely proactive he informed the reporters of He fixed the price as if in extreme hurry to protect the 'interests' of a criminal coterie of which he is a part and a parcel. In short, the "peoples' representative" has sold the people to appease his brethren sugar baron politicos.
Here is how the rulers and politicos protected their own: the government has bend backward to allow sale of sugar in open market at over Rs 55 a kilo. And Watto has also announced to suspend the legitimate crackdown against millers and traders. And here is the punch line of the absurdity of it all: Though the government has fixed the ex-mill price of sugar at Rs48 per kg in Sindh and Rs49.75 in Punjab and the NWFP, the retail price will be Rs55.68 in Sindh and Rs57.71 in Punjab and the NWFP after levying 16 per cent general sales tax (GST). Unscrupulous sugar millers and traders will continue going all the way laughing to the banks.
Pakistani politicians provide a unique opportunity for political analysts anywhere to make Pakistan the top case study of criminalization of politics. Where else could you find such a bunch of politicians, occupying seats in the parliament as well as roaming free outside it, that fleece their own people so ruthlessly.
And these bunch of criminal politicians, all of whom profess to be God fearing, deem it fit to fraudulently mint billions on and prior to the advent of the Holiest Fasting month of Ramadan. Woe to all of them. May Allah make their life thoroughly miserable for making lives of millions of poverty-stricken masses of this land of the exploited so bitter by pushing the price of such essential commodity as sugar out of their reach. May their lives be as bitter as the criminal sweetlessness they have dissolved in the lives of millions of faithful in the Holiest Islamic month of Ramadan.
And now the government, and particularly Mr. Wattoo, will start singing like a canary for the 'crucial role' they played in 'stabilizing the price of sugar. What a stabilization indeed.
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