It is now official. The IMF won’t help the government out of its current hole, and will not relax any of its conditions for its Stand-By Agreement, particularly the ones which have led to the hike in electricity bills and the consequent protests. The ramifications are not restricted to the current protests, which have died down, but are probably going to flare up at the end of the current month, when the new bills come in. The ticking of the timebomb has grown particularly loud because the next month may see an even greater level of default, because those who used the last of their resources to pay off last month’s bill, will not have any more resources to call on for this month’s. The defaults will grow, as will the number of disconnections. As people have their meters cut off at the end of September, when the heat has not yet come to an end, there will be suffering enough, but there will also be frayed tempers among already desperate people, and potentially violence.
The IMF may be right to maintain a rigidly Shylockian stance, because it has been let down too often by governments trying to weasel out of its conditionalities. However, it should realize that this is not temporary unrest which just needs the stakeholders, and especially the government, to hold their nerve until the froth of public resentment settles. This is the kind of hardship which might break the entire system. However, it is not so much the IMF’s problem, so much as the government’s. One solution, that of bringing to an end the free units given to various officials, has been examined, and it has been realized that government servants will merely demand the monetisation of that free electricity, so the public exchequer remains as burdened as ever. Even if government offices, which have run up arrears secure in the knowledge they can’t be cut off, were to pay up, the problem will still not be solved, for the money will be squeezed from the people in taxes.
The caretakers might still try and come up with a temporary solution, but it seems that only handing over the whole mess to an elected government may be all the caretakers can do. It almost seems as if the desire to overstay was unwise. Sticking to the timeframe of 90 days seems not only constitutionally correct, but also the safest thing to do.
