Pakistan's Load Shedding VS PMLN Regime: Let there be light!

Lal Khan

If it were all about praying to Allah for the masses to end their woes and get their emancipation, how easy it would have been.

The present right-wing regime of the PML-N came to power with a disputed, heavy mandate. The crisis-stricken state was accepted by the battered imperialists, giving it the false legitimacy it craved for. The ongoing lull, fatigue and despair within society and lack of movement and leadership to counteract the onslaught of reaction meant the masses accepted it as a fait accompli. The defeat of the PPP was its utter failure to deliver and provide the basic essentials to the people. The most excruciating pain that this regime inflicted upon the masses was the electricity load shedding or the power outages that intensified the miseries of the ordinary people.

Nawaz Sharif and other leaders of the PML-N made extravagant promises for ending this scourge in anywhere from three months to three years. These promises sounded hollow even during the elections but after coming to power their body language very quickly exposed their utter incompetence, lack of vision and direction with their chaotic and pathetic attempts to address this issue. Sharif’s first action was to reward the power cartels that have been holding the country to ransom by handing over Rs 500 billion circular debt to erase this torment without any conditions and assurances from the IPP bosses.

This provided a certain respite to the masses for a brief period but the pain and misery of these punishing power outages have returned with a vengeance to an agonising norm and, coupled with IMF forced price hikes, life has become even more harrowing. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The resultant rage in the womb of society is generating a heat that is destabilising the polity with increasing unrest and the stirrings of internal contradictions of the state. The regime and ruling party’s conflicts are now in the open with ministers daggers drawn and Sharif having to personally intervene to resolve the impossible task of patching up the unravelling factional clashes within his cabinet and party leaders. This has ferociously shaken the regime and there is a roaring turbulence in the government despite Sharif’s deceptive posturing of calm. His cemetery smiles often betray the false confidence he tries to flaunt.

Perhaps the time has come for confessions and the wagging of twitchy fingers within the hierarchy of the PML-N. In a press conference on July 14, 2014, the federal and state ministers confessed their failure and pleaded forgiveness for not even being able to provide electricity during Ramzan. A Daily Times report (July 15, 2014) said the following: “Federal Minister for Water and Power Khwaja Asif on Monday apologised to the nation over prolonged power load shedding. Addressing a press conference along with state minister for power Abid Sher Ali and Secretary Nargis Sethi, the minister said that there is a shortfall of 7,000 MW of electricity, while the demand has increased to 19,000 MW, which has resulted in massive load shedding. He said that the crisis further intensified in the past three days, as two grid stations of 1,500 MW in Lahore tripped. He appealed to the masses to pray for rain so that the load shedding could be reduced. He said the system could not bear load of more than 15,000 MW of electricity. If the load exceeds 15,000 MW grid stations start tripping. He said it would take three to four years to rectify the entire system. He said that the circular debt is hovering around Rs 280 to Rs 285 billion.

The power minister cautioned that the power shortfall would witness a further rise if the ongoing spell of heat did not subside. He appealed to the people to conserve electricity so that all areas could be provided with it. He said the government could not give a time frame for ending load shedding, as we do not want to make any more false promises, which would cause us to be embarrassed in front of the nation.” The report further narrates his pathetic stance, “Allah will rescue (help) us during the next two to three days and the situation will be improved.”

He says it all, does he not? How pathetic. If it were all about praying to Allah for the masses to end their woes and get their emancipation, how easy it would have been. Then what was the need for scientific research, governments, parties, leaders and democracies so much revered and touted as sacred scriptures by these stooges of capital who are supposedly the leaders of the nation and torchbearers of development and prosperity in society? Poverty, misery, disease, deprivation, crime and other social and economic vices inflicting society are created by this system and not by God. It is these exploitative capitalists and feudals who are fleecing humanity, responsible for these devastations and the agonising life that the vast majority of the people are forced to live. It has become a common practice of our rulers and their pedlars in the media, clergy and intelligentsia to blame these tragedies as the acts of a divine force and exonerate themselves from these heinous crimes of socioeconomic genocide they are mercilessly carrying out to inflate their profits in a rush to fill their coffers.

Invariably, in natural calamities like floods and earthquakes, it is always the poor and the toiling masses that suffer. The mullahs call these disasters the “wrath of God” due to the sins committed by these innocent but deprived and oppressed people. The notion spread by these prostituting intellectuals and priestly vultures of capital is that these bosses sitting in their palatial mansions in the metropolitan centres and in the countryside are the most pious and commit no sins. In reality, it is in these palaces where the most heinous and criminal political and financial policies are manufactured. The working classes of this land and others have, most of the time, prayed and prayed for generations, yet their lives have gone from bad to worse. And now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are being asked by the federal minister for power to pray for rains and electricity? How abhorrent and reactionary.

The stark reality is that this ruling class, in almost seven decades of taking charge, has failed to build a modern infrastructure, the vital part of which is the generation and supply of electricity through modern grids and efficient transmission lines, crucial for human existence today. They have failed to complete any of the tasks of the national democratic revolution, from the creation of a unified nation state to the abolition of feudal remnants and the imperialist stranglehold. Their abject historical and economic failures are tearing apart society and paving the way for the kind of barbarism that threatens to destroy civilisation. Without the overthrow of this reactionary ruling class and its system, society will remain mired in darkness and no light will shine. Let there be light!