Adil Najam
These pictures are of the violence and mayhem that erupted outside the Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad Stock Exchanges on Thursday after the market plunged yet again, to a 18-month low. Look at them carefully. What is wrong with them?
What are they protesting? Showing anger, you say. But against whom? And what good will any of this bring? To whom? Will burning a tyre today make the market rise again tomorrow? If it could, New York would have been alight all of the last many weeks!
Here, is how the news report in Dawn explains the events:
Investors at the Karachi Stock Exchange resorted to violence on Thursday, ransacking the bourse’s furniture, pelting the glass doors and windows of the trading hall with stones and raising slogans against the government and the KSE management. Two people were slightly injured with glass splinters flying all over. The bourse management called in police and Rangers were also at the scene for a brief period, but the law-enforcement personnel stopped short of using force as the crowd dispersed after over an hour of violent protest.
Investors at the Islamabad and Lahore stock exchanges also went on the rampage, chanting slogans, pelting stones and lighting bonfire. The protesters demanded the end to ‘lower locks,’ which they said had greatly eroded the value of their investments. The investors’ frustration gave way to rioting as they watched the KSE-100 index on an unstoppable downward drift for 16 trading sessions in a row.
The market opened on Thursday with a massive 400 points decline in the KSE-100 index, adding to the earlier loss of 5,200 points that the market has seen in three months since the current meltdown began on April 18. Overall, the index has slipped by 35 per cent, but some of the individual stocks have shed as much as 50 to 70 per cent of their value. “I had invested Rs 2 million in blue chip stocks and almost half of it has been washed away,” said an agitated investor in the mob.
But of greater concern to the small investor was the early clamp of ‘lower locks,’ which blocked investor exit. ‘Upper and lower locks’ are the market mechanism which allows a maximum of five per cent gain or loss in the value of a stock during a single day. The long lingering phenomenon of ‘lower locks’ just at the commencement of the trading in the morning precluded any attempt by an investor to seek an exit from the market, even after taking the loss. A stock broker who asked not to be named said that the SECP had sliced the daily decline from 5 to 1 per cent for 15 days from June 28 to July 15, but that offered little solace to the small investors, many of whom were found on Thursday accusing the regulator of colluding with big brokers in the change of ‘overnight rules’.
Violence never has any logic. But this violence is beyond just illogical. One can understand the arguments about the “lower locks” and from one’s own experience one can sympathize with the helplessness of seeing your hard-earned savings evaporate. But how will breaking a window, burning a tire, ransacking a building going to solve anything?
The culture of angst, anger and violence that we have lamented often and repeatedly is at work again. Whether it is a fanatic killing a woman Minister just because he thinks women have no place in politics, or blackening someone’s face because you do not agree with their point of view, or community members burning a robber alive, or a mob attacking a WAPDA office because of load-shedding, or even the billigerent tone of some of our own commentators (it is never enough to say “I don’t agree with you”, some people have to throw in inflamatory rhetoric and personal attacks, as if just to add spice!), the tendency to self-ignite in violence is always near the surface and ever-ready to break through.
Why? For whose benefit? And what does it say about us as a people and as a society?
Reference: https://coincierge.de/news-spy/
A Few Points for Reflection – Seeking Answers:
1) Did any one ever see the likes of those in the pictures, distributing Sweets on the streets to people when they were raking-in money?
2) How many people in Pakistan indulge in Stock market, let alone even know what is it about or its existence?
3) How could a handful of individuals with selfish motives, cause so much of disruption, damage and loss and get away with it? They are visible in pictures. So have they been arrested, prosecuted and punished for their crimes?? Have the Stock Exchanges instituted case against them?
(That may be the follow-up story for the Media and ATP)
4) If these were serious protestors with a revolutionary cause to generate popular support, as some comments have alluded to, why did they disperse soon after the arrival of law-enforcers – Police and Rangers?
5) Will they ever realise they have chopped the very hand that fed them and, by damaging the name of their institutions they have irreparably dented its goodwill and thereby their own future?
6) Finally, let us NOT call these stock-market traders as Investors. In fact investors have long disappeared from the scene in Pakistan.
How many IPO’s – Initial Public Offerings have come up in Pakistan, say in the last 10 years? It is the IPO’s that attract Investments by generating new funds, business ideas and translate these into growth.
Those who “play” the stock market in Pakistan are mere speculators looking to make a “fast Buck.” Investors they definitely aren’t.
if nothing else u know…a person that is even slightly aware of the stock exchange system in my mind has to be precieved as a somewhat intelligent person. looking at this picture and seeing “intelligent” people doing this is a disgrace for pakistan. because if a group of educated people is burning tires over something that essentially cannot be fixed through violent protests (then again what can…and yet its a habitual way of solving problems for pakistanis) then there is no difference left between ignorance and intellect.
we also tend to blame the govt for EVERYTHING… EVERYTHING… sure the government is not strong… and really is to blame for the many flaws in the system. but the government is not supposed to cradle you to sleep every night … therefore the citizens have a duty to stand up to the name of the country…
this is really barberic…. and only opens doors for people to insult pakistan… the stock market is drowing… we are losing money… common sense if u try to break down the building ur gonna lose more money… the stock market is not gonna go up. its our duty as citizens to HELP OUR govt stay on track… to up OUR stock market… to be an emblematic public to what will, if we let it, become a great government..
jk: your’s is what’s charitably referred to as a “nuanced view”. It’s actually a fig-leaf for societal failure. You can blame the rapacious robber-barons – but you’ll (as the common person) end up suffering the consequences. So while that view is a gentle balm for self-righteous common person, it’s severely counter-productive. Long story short – the common person is fairly responsible for the current state of affairs – this is, like it or not, a reflection of Pakistanis.
I hope people here in USA do understand your point.
If we only learn to listen others view point and not impose ours, we as the society will survive, otherwise I have no hope.
Well said jk. French protests have historically been a similar specter. Seattle anti-globalization protest (1999) that wrecked a WTO meeting wasn’t all singing and dancing either. Organized peaceful protests like the recent Long March are exceptions and not the rule. Things do turn ugly even in organized protests. Seemingly spontaneous protests generally tend to turn ugly anywhere in the world. While the violent protests are still not right or the most pristine form of protests, but at least they are taken a notice of.
“Why are people expected to behave like whipped servants all the time? A society with a lack of a proper and fair system falls into anarchy. This is true for any society. Do you think that if a European government is failing and not keeping their end of the bargain (by being fair and transparent) then there would be peace and calm? No. There would be even more massive protests. As there should be.
This is not a reflection of Pakistanis or Muslims. This is the aftermath of a failing system that has forgotten about its citizens. The same citizens that it has vowed to protect and serve. The same citizens who CREATED the system in the first place. This is anarchy. When the world forgets about you, this is the way people respond. Instead of judging them from a high pedestal, they must be understood. “