A moment of reckoning

We have a parliamentary democracy, sort of. Of the five assemblies that constitute regular Pakistan, at least three are in place and for the other two — sixty-six per cent of Pakistan — there is an interim set-up authorised under the Constitution but with the sole purpose of conducting elections and returning the government to the mandated representatives. Except that the interim-guys are already having second thoughts, expanding their cabinets, making changes as if they are in it for the long haul, and doing so in total violation of the principle under which the governing structure is authorised. The federal government and those state institutions meant to work together to make the electoral exercise happen all seem in league to extend the interim governments to somehow avoid elections beyond the stipulated time in the constitution. Democracy and Constitution have been put on hold. If the status remains unresolved, the Constitution will turn irrelevant. That has the making of an anarchic, chaotic and a fractious society and state. We are being set-up to fail.

The IMF will probably resume its programme in due course, but will that resolve Pakistan’s economic and financial predicaments? Our debt stock will still be in place. Our inflation will probably touch the fifty per cent mark under IMF prescription. Poverty will multiply and social unrest will ensue. We may not default, and we may still import some, but our factories will shut down and people will lose jobs. We may even restructure the debt with some of our donors, even take a debt holiday if they are generous and don’t ask for our flesh in return, but we will still need dollars to pay back, to import and to keep the economy, state, and the society functioning. These will need to be our own, earned and not borrowed, because no one will lend us more. We must earn dollars. That is the only prescription that will work to return borrowed loans. It is never okay to default because that will stop our fuel imports and food and medicine to live on. And we will go off the global economic grid as soon as we announce a default. IMF is thus a respite, not the solution.

Balochistan and KP were never fully tamed and continue to extract the wages of our incompetence. There are saving graces that hold us in in relatively better stead, none more precious than how our valiant sons lay their lives in defending these territories, but TTP’s reemergence as a factor of concern — after it had been sufficiently neutralised — points to the fact that more needed to be done, but wasn’t. Or what was done was either not right or didn’t pan out as expected. This might push us into another round of operations to put the TTP back in its place. It must be neutralised effectively and fully with whatever it takes. Unfortunately, that isn’t how all political parties look at it. The PTI thinks appealing to TTP’s sense of fraternity and brotherhood can do the trick. Some others think, TTP is an existential danger which must be put out. This points to a division of focus and intent and germinates doubt in the purpose of expending precious effort in fighting what remains an unresolved quantity on the threat matrix. Pakistan knows the TTP well; what it needs is clear enunciation and an undiluted and uncompromised will to eliminate the menace. This will need collective resolve.

Together these make for a perfect storm. The consequences at failing are horrendous. In each case our fallback source is the source of last resort. Financially we have tied hopes to the IMF and our bilateral donors who increasingly now ask for real flesh. In security terms we are vulnerable to how we may be pushed to seek external assistance at a cost. There is never a free lunch. Politically we are just too steeped in parochial and familial restraints to think beyond of the nation, its people or the state. Each wants to get to the mantle of power, if possible, without going through the test of a democratic process. Those who don’t have access to power and authority or have frittered it away in some dreamy-eyed venture seek it back one way or the other. Those who have it don’t want to part with it. With a constitution that looks on helplessly and the usual arbiters keeping off for fear of being tainted it really is a free-for-all. With no one in charge no one is in-charge. Hence, we float along in air, uncontrolled and unmanaged, not knowing which way we might fall. Meanwhile our family silver is in the danger of being bartered or worse, auctioned. We may be a step away still, but to shut out the possibility we shall have to rise above ourselves. It is that moment of reckoning.

Assuming elections are not held in 90 days or thereabouts, or even in the entire year of 2023 on one pretext or the other as is being loudly propounded, we shall, of necessity, be in an era of unconstitutional existence. The current PML-N or PDM set-up would rather give prevalence to resolving the economic and security challenges before politics can revert to its legal or constitutional form. Which most obtrusively means we may escape martial law, but we will surely be under another extra-constitutional guise. The alternate is equally haunting to some. Elections might throw up the same choices which got us in this soup in the first place. Hybrid or not, their political and governing acumen was at its worst display in the last twenty years — I add five years of Musharraf too to appease sensitivities, though his was still a time of relative calm and a functioning economy.

That it was with borrowed money is the bane that successive governments have failed to set right. And no political government has a shelf-life long enough to see profitable returns from a long gestation venture such as restructuring the economy. In essence the economy shall need to conform and cohabit to the relevance of global economic needs to earn us some precious dollars. Currently we are only fighting fire without long term policy adjustment. Cohabiting with the region may be the first step in that quest though it shall need a leadership free of the fear of loss of political capital and popular backlash which holds them back from bolder initiatives — restructuring, reforming and policy revision. A political dysfunction may then be just that moment when certain freedom of action may help get us the country and the economy back on rails with a decision-making apparatus capable of addressing today’s needs. We may just be entering such a period of improvised governance.

(Part II will address how we may get there.)

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2023.

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