Nemtsov was to be one of the key leaders at an anti-war rally on Sunday the 1st of March dissenting from the nationalistic bombast and foreign meddling of the establishment hierarchy. With the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the Boris Yeltsin years opposed to Russian action in the Ukraine, that narrative has a domestic focus too. This is why Germany and France negotiated a ceasefire deal in the Ukraine overwhelmingly favourable to the Kremlin because Putin and the security establishment to which he is beholden, would not permit anything interpreted as a loss of willpower. Vladimir Putin was stationed as a KGB officer in East Germany and was one of those withdrawn, returning to a country in chaos. When Professor Kennedy wrote those words in the mid-1980s, he surmised that were the USSR to withdraw its forces from its Warsaw Pact satellites in Eastern Europe, the Red Army General Staff feared that ‘it may be seen as indication of Moscow’s loss of willpower’. Professor Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. However, following directives of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the government made a partial increase of Rs2.5 per litre in the price of high speed diesel, which is mostly used in agriculture and transport sectors.‘To the decision-makers in the Kremlin, heirs to a militaristic and often paranoid tradition of statecraft, Russia appears surrounded by crumbling frontiers…. On last Saturday, the government raised the prices of petroleum products by up to Rs4.71 per litre. He said that the government has made another drone attack on the public in the shape of increase in the prices of petroleum products because of which dearness will further rise. The rulers have accepted their failure by increasing prices of petroleum products and other daily use items for several times thereby damaging the national economy, devaluating Pakistani rupee against US dollar and irritating the public as well,” said PPP Punjab leader Tariq Mehmood and others told the media. “The people who voted Nawaz League candidates into the parliament are now feeling regretful over their May 11 decision. PPP Punjab leaders said the government has conducted another dearness attack on the public in the shape of increase in petroleum products’ prices showing that the PML-N government has completely failed, thus, the people have fed with the present rulers. They said that the public was being forced to take to the streets by increasing prices repeatedly. They said that the present rulers had remained out of the country for a long period therefore they don’t know the financial condition of the people.

Similarly, Tanzeem Aima Masajidul Ahle Sunnat Tehsil President and traders’ leader Rana Abdullah said that the decision to increase prices was based on the government’s enmity against the public. But, they regretted, the government had failed to fulfill its promises. The PTI leaders recalled that the PML-N asked the public for votes on the promise of controlling price hike, eliminating loadshedding, unemployment and lawlessness after coming to power. Thus, the masses were facing difficulties to survive, they added. They said that the government had been dropping drone missiles of dearness every month on the public since the PML-N came to power. Likewise, PTI leaders Rafiq Haider Leghari and Shafiq Haider Leghari condemned the raise in the prices of petroleum products, electricity and gas. He said that the nation had pinned high hopes on Nawas Sharif, the prime minister, but the people were now disappointed with the present government as well. He said that the present government had broken records of the past governments with regard to price hike and now the dearness genie was out of control. He said that the government earns tens of millions of rupees as revenue from the transports but in return no facility was given to them. He was of the view that the burden of POL price hike directly fell on the transporters who were now unable to bear any further tax burden. Because of the raise, he said, the transporters are forced to increase transportation fares thereby causing everyday skirmishes between transporters and passengers.

PTA President M Afzal Warraich said that the government had destroyed the transport sector by increasing prices of petroleum products repeatedly particularly in the last three months. Leaders of the Pakistan Transporters Association, PTI, PPP, traders and of a religious organisation on separate occasions flayed the recent increase in prices of petroleum products, gas and electricity and demanded early withdrawal of the hike.

Heed the hue and cry