Asad Umar A Scapegoat!

Today news of removal of Asad Umar as finance minister came as a shock. Though there were rumors about it but I was not expecting this and definitely not so early. Now he has submitted his resignation.

Now the question is that: Was this the right decision to make??

My answer is NO and I will present my case in this piece.

Now delve into all the circumstances which compelled IK to do this. Starting from his performance, his performance was not bad as it got pictured on media by the brigade of anchors on tv daily 7-11pm. He did what needs to be done at that emergency level, he took tough decisions which are unpopular i.e hike in the electricity, gas, petrol prices. He was doing all the firefighting stuff which needs to be done. One can question the delay in the decision of going to IMF and his own contradictory statements (related to that after getting some loan from friendly countries).

Root causes of this decision are different and one of them is internal party politics in which reportedly Tareen group was against him due to not giving benefits to sugar mafia and party groupings. To run an economy smoothly finance minister must have the support of the energy and petroleum ministries which in this case he did not have. In this case they were not performing and their non-performance also became a reason to add pressure on the govt. Both ministries are facing circular debt and nothing was done to make the recoveries and decrease the losses but on the contrary performance of petroleum ministry has become a burden on the govt by first increasing the gas charges wrongly (wrong slabbing) and by overbilling the customers due to which govt had to face huge criticism from public when they received huge bills. Excessive amount of spokes persons for government increased the chaos and those who are not spokesperson they also tried to become one which further increased confusion in the markets which cemented the directionless attribute of the govt. All the opposition parties who themselves had taken all the step which are taken by the umar have taken full advantage of the confused/ directionless attribute of the govt and further added the pressure on the govt.

All this episode seems to be related to game of perception and tackling pressure which is on the govt. Other main reason is the non-working condition of Punjab due to bad decision of appointing Buzadar as CM which is not able to work in that province especially when you have placed two big power seekers in Punjab in the form of Ch Sarwar and Pervaiz Elahi which have made their own groups in assembly and in Bureaucracy. If Punjab govt is not working it effects more than half of the population of the country which add to the bad perception of the govt and further pressurize it. Peshawar Metro bus project now Peshawar metro scandal and latest hike in medicine prices made this govt more unpopular.

So these were all the factors behind the removal of Asad Umar but the question remains is this a right decision??

Country’s economy is run a set of ministries esp finance, energy, petroleum and when other two are not working properly rather than their become a burden on the govt, how can you expect that Asad alone can drive the country out of economic crisis and so quickly?

When govt in the largest province of the country is paralyzed and not working which should be a helping hand for federal govt in normal circumstances, then how can you expect the things will improve so soon.

Desired actions to improve the situation should be removal of non-working chief minister and ministers in both province and federal level which are Usman Buzdar, Omar Ayub, Ghulam Sarwar, Faisal Wada, Zartaj Gull and some more.

Imran Khan by taking this decision has proven himself wrong. He should have appointed good working ministers on the key posts which could become helping hand for Asad Umar to improve economy by doing their part, this decision seems to be removing key and working minister of the govt which is disastrous. Even than those ministers pointed above and specially Usman Buzdar will have to be changed by the IK sooner or later if he wants to run the govt. 

By removing Asad this govt has done nothing more than to shed the pressure of their shoulders which was produced by the mistakes of somebody else and they find best scape goat in the form of Asad Umar especially when they have no other option available in the party.