PTI’s poor show in three years

The incumbent government, led by PM Imran Khan, is faced with a potentially explosive issue — of unbearable price hike. Such is the anger and frustration among the teeming millions that if the opposition were not in disarray, a sustained campaign would have culminated in a change of government, through an in-house change or an early election.

Over the past three and half years, rhetoric has trumped the government performance. The PM has failed to provide a vision or give a sense of direction on key issues. Poverty has increased and so has unemployment. Millions of children are still out of school. In KPK where the PTI has been in power for eight and a half years, 39% children of 5 to 10 years are not enrolled in school. Healthcare system is in a shambles as flawed policies have forced hundreds of senior doctors to leave government hospitals. So diplomatically naïve is the government that it made a vain attempt to create a parallel leader of the Islamic world in place of Saudi Arabia — Pakistan’s long-term ally and benefactor.

India’s illegal annexation of Kashmir in August 2019 also happened to occur during the PTI government’s tenure. Having fiercely advocated the cause of Kashmiris for more than 70 years, what did Pakistan accomplish? Rather than conceding to more autonomy for Kashmiris, India even dared snatch the identity of Kashmir altogether. Is it not a policy failure? Is there any chance for Kashmiris regaining their identity as a sovereign nation? Well, not by an active resistance alone. India’s fears that if Kashmir is granted the right to secede, other provinces could follow in the same path. And the result would be Indian Union’s disintegration. That is a harrowing prospect Delhi would do everything to prevent. More autonomy within the Indian Union would be a more pragmatic path to peace and reconciliation in the short term from Delhi’s perspective.

The failure on multiple fronts is a consequence of misplaced priorities and absence of vision — compounded by ministers wanting in competence and governance experience. But the failure could mainly be explained by the PM’s single point agenda of spending time and energy on targeting the two former ruling families. No wonder when the emphasis was only on victimising Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, other politicians — as well as bureaucrats and businessmen — would steal a sigh of relief. Corruption, therefore, was bound to rise tremendously inflicting more misery on the masses.

The row over the appointment of a new ISI chief was the outcome of the delusion of civilian supremacy. Such supremacy works only when those at the helm have no one but the people to thank for their support in bringing them to power. But if power is attributable to other factors then compromises follow all the way.

The government blew hot and cold in dealing with the TLP in what manifests a lack of governance experience, incompetence, and absence of vision. After lengthy negotiations, the government first declared the religious group a terrorist organisation, but then took a U-turn and struck a compromise deal, allowing it to operate as a mainstream political party. This total surrender reflects poorly on the government’s strategy of dealing with violent agitations.

However, the opposition has not been able to play on what can be called a total failure of the government and launch a serious campaign to force an early election in the country. The main reason of course is that key opposition leaders have been forced on the defensive through court cases against them. This strategy has worked thus far, but the sky-rocketing prices of essential items, expensive utility services, falling employment rates and depleting incomes are unlikely to stop the opposition anymore from hitting the streets in anti-government demonstrations.

Nothing has really gone well for the government. There is a compelling need for a dispassionate reappraisal of policies, options and goals. Supremacy of the Constitution and of rule of law has to be acknowledged. The roles of judiciary, military, bureaucracy and political parties should be well defined and rigorously enforced. The nation has already paid heavily for deviating from the universally accepted norms of democracy, pluralism and institutionalised accountability.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2021.

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