Pakistan - News and Discussion 6

[Naresh]

<b>Competing with Godzilla</b> <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<b>According to news appeared in a national daily the government is contemplating increase of 50 billions rupees in defense allocation in the next financial year to make new addition in military hardware so as to keep pace with the Indian forces which has been allowed a 27 percent rise in the budget 2006-07. For the past so may years, our defense forces are being provided sizeable increases in their annual allocations unfailingly.</b>

The amount usually runs in tens of billions of rupees. How and why such huge allocation are acquired is not a secret or mystery. In order to conceal the whopping actual increase, the pensions paid to armed forces was last year taken out from the defense allocation and transferred to civilian account. That is in addition to the salaries of non-combatant forces, coast guards and Maritime Security Agency who are all paid from the civilian budget. What’s more, there is a complete lack of transparency in defense spending. Probably Pakistan is the only country in the world where no question is asked about the manner which the money is spent, so much so that even parliament is not supposed to know the details and break up of expenditure.

Yes a select committee of the National Assembly was told something (we don’t know what) this year but its chosen members were not allowed to tell the parliament or the press what they were told. Nor was an open debate allowed even in this rubberstamp house. At this stage, when Pakistan and India are moving towards reconciliation (whether due to their own expediencies or under American pressure) there is absolutely no justification for such a huge increase in our defense allocation. But then that is an unfortunate reflection of the skewed priorities of world’s most militarized state.

<b>We are trying to compete with India, a huge country having four times the area of Pakistan with politically strong institutions, ingrained democracy, sustained economic growth, and foreign exchange reserves exceeding 150 billion US dollars. It has limitlessly deep pockets, and ambitions, to build its massive military into a regional behemoth. How can we hope to compete with it?-AYAZ HUSSAIN SHAIKH, Karachi</b>, via e-mail, May 27.

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