Our centre of gravity

There will be a time when things get better. Now is not that time.

1. Prime Minister Imran Khan has gone ahead and formed the Commission of Inquiry meant to investigate how Pakistan piled up so much debt in the last ten years. The Terms of References (ToR) of the commission leave no doubt of the mess that we are about to witness. Point (a) reads: “Determination of significance of major infrastructure or public sector development works conducted from years 2008 to 2018 and commensurate them with the increase in public debt…” Now think for a moment: the commission, which comprises an entire spectrum of government officials, will sit on judgement whether a project should have been initiated or not. Seriously? How does a panel of bureaucrats decide the merits of a subjective political decision? One can perhaps understand if someone wants to enquire if the laid-down process was followed or not, but how does one justify the logic-challenged decision to let officials judge a political choice if it did not entail any legal violation?

2. The cat jumps out of the commission bag right in this very first ToR. Here then is what the commission is likely to achieve: (a) in concrete terms, nothing; (b) in political terms, a lot of muckraking on opponents; (c) in perception terms, an attempt at distraction; (d) in governance terms, mayhem within the bureaucracy that was involved in the projects under investigation; (e) in media terms, a new circus comes to town.

3. The Opposition calls this commission a new JIT. That’s not too far off the mark. JITs have their utility — and even a pressing need — when a specific issue needs to be investigated. But when the matter is as vague and varied as this one, the JIT can hardly be expected to produce conclusions that unravel the deep mysteries of debt accumulation. The JIT can however make juicy headlines. Juicy headlines have their own utility.

4. The formation of the commission also reinforces the perception that the government’s key priority is going after its enemies. This is a priority because: (a) PTI believes its core voter wants to see its opponents hounded, prosecuted and jailed; (b) PTI leadership has fattened itself on the rhetoric of accountability and wants more and more of this nutrition; (c) it comes easy to the leadership of the party when not much else does (what does the party show for its ten months of government when virtually every aspects are dismal? Accountability, of course); (d) the commission feeds into the PTI narrative that the harshness of the budget and of the economic situation in general is a direct result of the debts incurred by the PML-N and PPP governments.

5. And of course the commission is selective in terms of its eventual outcome. The Prime Minister has formed it on the premise that the previous two governments have done much wrong. That’s the starting point. Is there any suspense left about the end point? Also there’s the small matter about the Peshawar Metro. The more things change…

6. But there is a deeper issue here and it pertains to how belligerence as policy is deliberately being made to overshadow all other aspects of governance. Whether it is the Treasury benches disrupting the proceedings of its own Budget in the parliament, or it is cabinet ministers speaking more on the Opposition than on the work of their ministries, or it is the Prime Minister threatening opponents in a national address, the PTI obsession with its political enemies is now an official substitute for its mandate to run Pakistan.

7. If further proof was needed, the lukewarm response to the PTI government’s amnesty scheme provides just that. Hastily stitched together after swallowing its pride and earlier pronouncements against such schemes, the PTI naively believed emotional appeal from the Great Leader would make even hardened tax-evaders, asset-accumulators and black money-holders bring in their billions to be whitened and laundered through the official system. So far, as an excellent report in this newspaper by Shahbaz Rana shows, the billions expected have somehow not washed ashore. Another scheme built on a foundation of exaggerated self-worth is in the process of coming undone.

8. If only the Opposition had the clarity of vision to exploit the fumbling of this bumbling government. But alas! PML-N continues to fight its own contradictions — the battle of the narratives has reignited after Maryam Nawaz’s Saturday presser — while the PPP outlook is torn between the bombast of Bilawal Bhutto and the appeasement that his father is sporting since his detention. Fiery speeches in the parliament and Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s All Parties Conference (APC) are all fine, but where do these lead to? In simpler words, does the Opposition have an end objective worked out?

9. Meanwhile the world is refusing to stop spinning. FATF has given us till October to show progress failing which extremely unpleasant scenarios lie in wait. America and Iran are on knife’s edge and any violence could create major destabilisation in Pakistan. The Afghan situation gets more challenging by the day while Modi on the eastern front is sulking menacingly. Looking at the debates in the parliament, you would think all these external crises were happening somewhere in the Arctic.

10. In such circumstances, the Establishment has become the obvious centre of gravity of the system. It is in fact holding things together while the government struggles to find its feet and direction and the opposition struggles with its internal contradictions and external relevance. Someone has to run the country when those with the mandate can’t.

There will be a time when things get better. Now is not that time.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 23^rd, 2019.

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