Pakistan offices stay open on Friday for first time

Government offices stayed open on Friday in Pakistan for the first time in 20 years following Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's decision to change the weekly holiday to Sunday in the interests of bankers and businessmen.

Sharif, in his first address to the nation earlier this week, said he has inherited an economic mess and pledged his government would set it right.

A Karachi political watcher said the move to shift the weekly day off from Friday, the Muslim prayer day, was a ''small but very significant change''.

No previous government has dared to offend conservative opinion, but Sharif, who was sworn-in prime minister last week, has the authority of an overwhelming majority in the national assembly. Elections were held on February 3 after the dismissal of the Benazir Bhutto government last November on charges of corruption and economic mismanagement.

When her government was sacked, Pakistan was on the verge of a balance of payments crisis with currency reserves falling to $1 million, enough to pay for just a month's imports.

A caretaker administration, which introduced new austerity measures and spending cuts, was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund which approved its request to extend short-term loans at very high interest rates.

Pakistan's external debt now stands at $30 billion. In his hour-and-a-half long televised address on Monday, Sharif appealed to Pakistanis living here and abroad to donate or put money into special government bank accounts to help pay off the national debt.

Offers are pouring in. Newspapers report that the government has received donations totalling $2 billion from businessmen who were invited to a meeting in Islamabad with Sharif. The biggest donation of $15 million was from Karachi property magnate Abu Bakr Sheikhani.

Economic revival is the self-professed ''main'' goal of the Pakistan Muslim League government. Sharif has the majority to push through even unpopular policies like the decision to change the weekly holiday.

It was former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ex-premier Benazir Bhutto's father, who succumbed to pressure from the religious right in Pakistan and made Friday the weekly holiday.

But even that was not enough to save Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was removed from office in a military coup and then hanged by army chief general Zia-Ul-Haq, who went on to rule Pakistan till his sudden death in an air crash in 1988.

Since then, the issue of reverting back to Sunday as a weekly holiday has come up several times, mostly on the initiative of bankers and businessmen who argued that a Friday holiday made them lose three working days as Saturday and Sunday are weekly holidays in most countries that they had business dealings with.

''The religious parties would be protesting the move,'' Syed Ghazanfar Ali Rizvi, senior vice-president of the conservative Tehrik-E-Jafria, has been quoted saying in The News daily. ''It is ironic that in a country founded in the name of religion, the weekly holiday has been changed from Friday to Sunday. We are moving away from Islam...''

But liberal Pakistanis have a different opinion. Prominent lawyer Asma Jahangir said there was no harm in changing the weekly holiday. ''In fact, people should work seven days a week to pull the nation out of the financial crisis it is in,'' she added.

According to her, ''Not having a holiday on Friday shouldn't stop anyone from offering their afternoon prayers, especially since it's going to be only a half day, not a full working day.''

Pakistan's trade bodies have hailed Sharif's decision. The president of the FPCCI, Senator Ilyas Bilour, in a statement supporting Sharif's moves, declared that the decision to revert to Sunday as a weekly holiday would not in any way affect the sanctity of Friday. ''It is the need of the time,'' he added.

Sharif, who is seeking to project himself as a ''caring prime minister'', also announced that he would personally answer telephone calls from the public for half-an-hour every morning for ten days.

The prime minister said he was soliciting the advice of Pakistanis on what should be the government's priorities and policies. According to Sharif's press adviser, thousands of callers jammed the exchange on Tuesday, those who got through had suggestions on everything, from rights abuses to family planning.

Sharif's openness is refreshing in Pakistan, where politicians have very little credibility as reflected in the low voter turnout in the February 3 elections.

The polls were Pakistan's fourth in nine years as no elected government has been able to complete its five-year term. Power has see-sawed between Sharif and Bhutto, who are arch rivals and do not cloak their mutual dislike.

However, after her humiliating poll performance, a chastened Bhutto said her Pakistan People's Party would maintain political stability. Wishing her successor good luck, she added that she wanted a ''breathing chance'' for parliamentary democracy to work in a country beset by frequent dissolutions of assemblies.

UNI