A sense of time and place is essential in politics. A caretaker government, as envisaged in the constitution is a non-political entity in as much as it is possible to be non-political for a government that has to rule a country for any length of time. This is a special problem for this government because it is going to be in power for a fairly long time which is fraught with many challenges, not least of which is confronting the nagging question of being in power for more than 90 days and maintaining emergency rule for more than 120 days and then have enough goodwill left to get all the political parties to participate in the elections organised by it.

The main task of this government is to hold a free, fair and impartial election and handover power to the party that will form government. To be able to perform this task, it is an absolute must to maintain peace.

One of its main budgetary challenges under present conditions of price instability and raging stories of corruption by previous governments is to maintain stability and to convey a sense of being evenhanded and fair in dealing with all sections of people. It should ideally be above the usual governmental fixation about maximizing the revenue income and freely distribute the proceeds to favour seekers. More importantly, it must not appear to demolish what concerned sections of people consider to have been earned from previous regimes.

But, unfortunately, the government appears to have done just that. It has imposed duty on computers and related items, mobile sets, savings certificates, industrial raw materials while reducing duty on cars and finished electronic items. All these will appear to be beyond the present government's ambit and anti-people in character which political parties currently under siege will certainly exploit when the time comes.

We hope that the government will be realistic and limit its plan of action considering the time frame up to the elections in 2008, and leave all long-term issues to the next elected government.