Imran Khan in his speech on 17th August 2014 called for nationwide civil disobedience in Pakistan and urged his supporters to stop paying taxes and utility bills in order to bring the Government of Nawaz Sharif onto its knees. As soon as Imran Khan announced the civil disobedience movement, analysts and journalists around the country went crazy and termed it as the biggest blunder of Imrans political career. However, almost all of these intellectuals have failed to see the case that Imran Khan has built for his mass movement. In order to explain the rationale for the movement, one needs to first understand the concept of Odious Debt. Odious Debt: In international law, Odious Debt or illegitimate debt is defined as: National debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation. According to International Law, such a debt is not enforceable upon the state and are considered as personal debts of the regime/government that incurred these debts. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion. The concept of Odious Debt was formalized by Alexander Nahum Sack, a Russian Legal Theorist. The basis of Sacks legal formalization were precedents such as the repudiation of Mexican debts incurred by Emperor Maximillians regime and the denial by the United States of Cuban liability for debts incurred by the Spanish Colonial regime. According to Sack: When a despotic/dictatorial regime contracts a debt, not for the needs or in the interests of the state, but rather to strengthen itself, to suppress a popular insurrection, etc, this debt is odious for the people of the entire state. This debt does not bind the nation; it is a debt of the regime, a personal debt contracted by the ruler, and consequently it falls with the demise of the regime. The reason why these odious debts cannot attach to the territory of the state is that they do not fulfil one of the conditions determining the lawfulness of State debts, namely that State debts must be incurred, and the proceeds used, for the needs and in the interests of the State. Odious debts, contracted and utilised for purposes which, to the lenders knowledge, are contrary to the needs and the interests of the nation, are not binding on the nation – when it succeeds in overthrowing the government that contracted them – unless the debt is within the limits of real advantages that these debts might have afforded. The lenders have committed a hostile act against the people, they cannot expect a nation which has freed itself of a despotic regime to assume these odious debts, which are the personal debts of the ruler. Ecuador Debt WriteOff in 2008: In 2008 Rafael Correa, President of the Republic of Ecuador, declared that much of Ecuadors $3.9 billion in foreign debt was illegitimate odious debt that was contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. Ecuador managed to successfully reduce the price of foreign debt letters significantly before it paid off the remaining debt. Imran Khans Masterclass Against Nawaz Sharif That The Entire Nation Failed To Understand: As soon as Imran Khan announced his Civil Disobedience movement the entire opposition and twitterati erupted into a tirade of jokes asking questions such as, how would PTI supporters not pay GST on milk, bread and other groceries. Or that if they wont pay the utility bills the utility services would be disconnected and so on.However, none of these so-called intellectuals were able to understand that what this Civil Disobedience movement is aiming to do is declare Nawaz regime a dictatorial regime and hence render all foreign debts that the regime would contract as unenforceable. As, I have already explained that a debt becomes illegitimate if a) the regime that contracts it is despotic and/or dictatorial and b) it was not spent on the betterment of the nation. The entire long march is based on the premise that Nawaz Sharif and his party rigged the 2013 General elections and hence the regime is dictatorial and illegitimate. Before announcing the Civil Disobedience movement Imran Khan went into elaborate details of how the Sharif has previously used foreign debt to fill his coffers. What Imran was trying to do here was to establish a case that the foreign debts which this regime would incur would not be spent on the nation but would rather be laundered out of the country to power the business of the Sharif dynasty. In simpler words Imran has told the entire world and specially the foreign lenders aka (IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank) that any loans incurred by the Sharif regime would not be enforceable on the future governments of Pakistan. To make it abundantly clear to our intellectual elite, Imran is telling the foreign lenders that if he ever came to power, he wont pay back the loans that the Sharif regime would borrow. This means that the foreign lenders has only one option left before them and that is to decline all future loans to the Sharif regime. Since, the Sharif regime relies heavily on foreign lending to finance its budget, the move would cripple the government and will bring it down to its knees without any bloodletting on the streets. I once read a quotation that Brilliance hits a target that no one can hit, Genius hits a target that no one can see. Imrans masterstroke against Sharif is such an act of genius that the entire nation is unable to see the target that it has hit. All that PTI and its horde of social media jihadis now need to do is explain this to the entire nation that: Since, we consider the Sharif regime as illegitimate, all foreign debts that it would incur would be illegitimate odious debt and hence would not be paid by the future Pakistani governments. Imran Khan himself needs to do a better job and explain this to the foreign lenders that since the Sharifs always loot and plunder these loans for their personal gains, future PTI/Pakistani government would consider the foreign loans received by the Sharif regime as illegitimate. Once this is made abundantly clear to both the national and international audiences, it does not matter an iota if the civil disobedience movement fails to reduce the amount of taxes collected at the National level. via - Hammad Cheema
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 09:19:57 +0000
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