Minus one or none

Does it really matter? We are in the dumps and up is the only way out. Unless we start digging. Anyone, interim or mandated, selected or elected, appointed or anointed, has only one way out — repair and climb out. Not even rebuild. Simply repair to get a foot in and begin that hard climb out of the hole we have dug ourselves in. What makes it herculean is taking the over 240 million who hang on to dear life as they look down the depth fearing what awaits them at the bottom — death and extinction with their dear ones in tow. So, anyone who hopes to ride this tiger better know what he is mounting. The good news: it is doable, has been done before — Greece, Argentina, Ireland — and can be done again. But not on handouts please. But by remedying what is of essence in our national make-up and what will roll life forward which stands ominously stagnated.

Two governments in our recent experience stand out for being listless when in power setting in motion the slide down the dreaded pit. The PPP was just happy to exist claiming it as its singular achievement. It has by extension some imagined and some real political connotations but those patently lie in the past. They did zilch, failing to move the society or the economy forward even as they claimed to be the pioneering democratic government of the twenty-first century. Social safety nets, yes, named after Benazir Bhutto whose tragic murder won them a sympathy vote under unlikeliest political conditions. Those five years were down the drain paving the way for more to follow.

The second was the ‘regime change’ fame PDM government. Why did they accept a gamble certain to lose from inception remains inexplicable. Human frailty may have something to do with it. But this gave cause to sixteen months of idling ineptness, lack of vision and commitment. They weren’t a bone fide government acting the proxy they were. They were also without a clue in a patchwork set-up with either little understanding of country and society’s issues in the new age or entirely disinterested in doing something about it. In the end they dug in the biggest landmine for their parent parties seeking to return to power.

Cynics will also count a plethora of legislation and petty policy measures which shoddily betrayed targeted favour for respective principals but all they earned for it was even greater hate and disillusionment of the masses. Inflation and the massacre of the Rupee around such ineptness is their baying legacy. They are at odds now to weave a more appeasing narrative when they return to the people for another mandate. Sixteen months of PDM government was just such an unmitigated disaster. Whatever may have been their insidious gain in absolving themselves of multiple court cases and graft investigations was put to nought by one stroke of pen of the out-going chief justice.

The in-between two governments of Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan were ones of criminal neglect to what needed to be done either out of naivety or simple dereliction. If Imran Khan tapped the promise of the youth bulge, he was uninitiated in how to meet their expectations. His lieutenants in economy were poorly informed and unprepared for what to expect and do. Nawaz Sharif before him delegated running the government to his cohorts — Ishaq Dar, a relative, was the virtual prime minister without a hint of understanding what constituted the modern electorate or their aspirations. Their recourse was twentieth-century solutions to twenty-first century Pakistan. Sharif himself made over 100 visits abroad constituting more than 400 days of absence while in power. He rarely called his cabinet meeting or attended Assembly sessions. Such disinterest and outsourcing of governance and leadership could only be the shambles we are.

Imran Khan was worse. By his own admission he and his people took two years to train on the job. He, like his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, picked on a populist slogan of accountability — of Nawaz Sharif and Co, and Sharif of all the military chiefs he had selected but could not stand their positional authority and influence. If there had to be an elephant in the room, it had to be only him. This impulse or genetic disposition has always brought him his downfall. Neither succeeded following chimeras that weren’t grounded. Sharif slipped from under Imran Khan as does a fish from hands while Sharif proverbially grabbed at every flying arrow hurting himself in the process. Both got disastrously distracted and failed at their basic function, governance and policy formulation for growth and progress. We stand regressed by three decades in the matrix of global economic relevance and human resource development.

Sharif wants to chart the same course again. This time it is another set of generals that he would like to see hung. This time again, he will return another empty and waste his time is pursuits that will only entangle us more and dismally lower the indices of social and economic growth — these are already negative. Whatever be the reason, Mr future prime minister, this is a useless pursuit and a defeatist agenda. For want of anything constructive and a plan to move us out of the morass we are in as a nation you cannot make us run in the dark after the rear-end red-light of another truck. We refuse to be fooled into another wild-goose chase.

The task is cut out: keep the nation from drowning in a sea of debt; find a solution to the IPP debacle and bring price of energy back to a reasonable fold (all crony and family owned power businesses must be dispensed with to avoid a debilitating conflict of interest; same applies to the 88 sugar mills in the country and the barons who sit in the parliament); trump parochial and electoral considerations for saner economic and fiscal decision to privatise and dispense all loss-making Public Sector Enterprises, pronto; break the nexus of crime and economy through smuggling, hoarding, manipulation of the market, and corruption and compromise in the ranks in the name of easement facilitation or sociopolitical considerations; tighten laws and come hard on money-launderers under any garb — duty draw-backs, tax-breaks, externally parked funds, and the like.

And finally, choose a man for finance with a better sense of the economy who understands and knows economy beyond relief, subsidies, tax-breaks, managed-FBR, consumption based artificial growth which will invariably give outlandish CAD which will need even more debt to pay off. And in all this he misses the kernel of growth and production and exports. The number crunchers we have always had the misfortune to mimic as finance ministers have only been disastrous. If you have it in you and can do all of this and more, welcome home Nawaz Sharif. (Assuming you will successfully surmount the legal battles ahead).

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2023.

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