No lessons learnt
Rashed Rahman
Pakistan is a unique country in which the authorities seem incapable of learning from past experience. Here we are in the middle of trying to unravel the Independent Power Producers’ (IPP’s) ‘Take or Pay’ conundrum, the wisdom having dawned three decades after this idea was mooted that it does not take cognizance of market fluctuations, thereby landing the country in impossible financial trouble. The initial 1994 induction of IPPs taught us nothing, and was duly followed by another round in the 2010s, landing us with further burdens of paying for electricity whether taken or not. Some sceptics allude to murkier reasons than simply an inability to learn from the track record, corrupt practices being top of the list. Someone, somewhere, they allege, made a lot of money out of this (repeated) skullduggery.
Now we are confronted with the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority’s (OGRA’s) brilliant suggestion that the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) adopt a ‘Take or Pay’ model in their fresh Sale and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) to either lift their allocated petroleum product quotas from local refineries or pay penalties for failing to do so. This is ostensibly meant to support local refineries by ensuring them a guaranteed offtake, thereby reducing excessive fuel imports that were undermining domestic production, causing reduced capacity utilisation and financial losses. An added grey area is the accusation by some OMCs and refineries that a specific OMC was being favoured by OGRA through approving petrol and diesel imports despite sufficient local stock availability. As the criticism of OGRA mounted, it proposed the new brilliant ‘Take or Pay’ arrangement. The Oil Marketing Association of Pakistan (OMAP) has expressed grave concerns regarding this suggestion, pointing to the significant risks posed to the OMCs’ financial sustainability and arguing that such an arrangement will only serve (at best) the interests of refineries and large OMCs at the expense of smaller players, perhaps driving the latter to closure and consolidating further the monopolistic control of the big fish in the oil sector, which would end up severely hampering competition, discourage new entrants and ultimately harm the overall efficiency (if not existence) of the petroleum supply chain. OMAP pointed to the refineries’ opportunistic behaviour in routinely withholding their product when price increases are anticipated, thereby forcing the OMCs to resort to costly imports. Conversely, when prices are expected to decline, refineries attempt to offload maximum stocks to the OMCs, resulting in financial losses for the latter. (This is a tenuous claim since the timeframe of domestic price fluctuations and imports do not come even close to matching.) In essence this controversy shows our inability (i.e. in this instance OGRA’s) to learn the appropriate lessons from the past (the IPPs experience) and arguably militates against the current ‘consensus’ (in official circles at least) on free markets being allowed to work their ‘magic’ unhindered.
As though the above were not enough to prove our learning deficit, we are confronted by a conflict on the Torkham border between us and our Afghan neighbours, whom we once lauded as ‘freedom fighters’ and supported over many decades in our Afghan adventures. Now that our Afghan ‘friends’ are in power, they have returned our generosity by continuously violating agreed protocols on the Torkham border (the main trade route between the two countries and further with Central Asia and beyond). These violations, consisting of constructing posts at the border on the Afghan side, have led in recent days to severe clashes between the militaries on both sides. Now a joint tribal jirgacomposed of elders from both sides is bending its back to restore peace and confidence on the border to relieve the millions of rupees trade losses. Not just this ‘aggressive’ stance on the Torkham border, the Afghan military has been trading fire with its ‘brother’ Pakistan Army at various points along the mutual border, sometimes to support their other ‘brothers’, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in its campaign to overthrow the state in Pakistan and impose a Taliban-type regime. Remonstrations to Kabul to cease such ingratitude has met with diplomatic fobbing off (at best) or downright rejection of the charge of supporting the TTP operating from Afghan soil (at worst). And how did the TTP land up in Afghanistan? This occurred courtesy our brilliant military strategists when they failed (allowed?) to prevent the TTP from retreating across the border to escape our military offensive against them following the Peshawar Army Public School massacre in 2014. Clearly, there is room to argue that we have misconstrued the real nature of the ‘friendship’ with the Afghan Taliban (‘transactional’ to use the current Trumpian phrase) as well as badly failed to prevent the Pashtun tribes on our frontier from transmogrifying over time from logistical supporters of the Afghan religiously inspired fighters to their ‘comrades’. No lessons learnt?
If there was any room left to mourn our mental density, it is more than filled by the report of an international human rights platform, Civicus Monitor (CM), that ‘elevates’ Pakistan into the company of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Serbia, Italy and the US, a list describing countries in 2025 that are experiencing rapid declines in civic freedoms. Pakistan’s status on CM’s website is listed as “repressed”. According to CM’s report, Pakistan has been awarded this honour due to narrowing civil space, human rights activists being arbitrarily targeted by the authorities, and the media being clamped down on through draconian laws. The report adds: “Pakistan’s recent criminalisation of activists, stifling of opposition and minority protests, and digital space restrictions have resulted in the country being added to Civicus Monitor’s watchlist.” It goes on to point to the government’s “trumped up charges” against Dr Mahrang Baloch, the leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, and human rights lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir. Mahrang, the report says, “faces multiple criminal charges, including under the Anti-Terrorism Act, for organising sit-ins (peaceful, one might add) across the country and attending gatherings” (!). Mazari-Hazir was “targeted on terrorism chargesfor actively supporting legal redress for victims of violence and persecution and advocating for the rights of persecuted religious and ethnic communities.” CM comes to the logical conclusion that the charges against both ladies are a political witch-hunt and attempts at silencing dissent. CM also underlines the government’s tender treatment of opposition, Sindhi and Baloch protests.
Standing up peacefully for the ‘disappeared’, fighting legal battles for the oppressed, and agitating peacefully for rights, it seems, are not allowed in Pakistan. Why does all this sound so drearily familiar? Lessons not learnt perhaps?
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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