Record wheat prices add to Musharraf woes

Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf, battling civil unrest and a surge in terrorist attacks, is facing growing discontent caused by record wheat prices and power cuts in Pakistan.

"The flour crisis is bad, but in ordinary times it would not have been an impossible policy problem," said Adil Najam, professor of international relations, at Boston University.

"But times are not ordinary in Pakistan and it has become not just an additive to Musharraf's problems but a metaphor for all that is wrong in his regime."

Pakistan's opposition parties hope to gain votes by highlighting the long queues of people waiting at government fair price shops across the country to buy subsidised flour. Power outages in the past month caused by a water shortage have also led to protests.

South Asia's second-biggest economy is not likely to achieve its 7.2 per cent economic target in the year ending on June 30, because incidents of terrorism hurt industrial growth, Dawn newspaper reported yesterday, citing a briefing given to Musharraf by the finance ministry.

The price of wheat flour rose to a record Rs2,150 (Dh124.7) for a 100kg bag because of hoarding and smuggling to Afghanistan, said Iqbal Dawood, chairman of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association. Pakistan harvested a record 23.2 million tonnes of wheat in 2007, and has set a target of 24 million tonnes for this year, according to the farm ministry.

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Opposition politicians say the plight of Pakistan's 164 million people has worsened during Musharraf's eight-year rule.

"Flour shortage, electricity shortage, gas shortage: Is this your performance!" read an advertisement by former premier Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League in Jang, an Urdu newspaper.

Flour, in short-supply across the country, isn't available at most stores in the biggest city of Karachi. The government sent troops to guard flour mills last week to prevent illegal hoarding and smuggling and said there is enough wheat to avoid a shortage.

"Musharraf and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam have been discredited because of lawlessness, unemployment and inflation,"' said Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. "After all, this is what the people look for before voting for any party."