Pak system on ventilator

A ventilator basically in literal meanings, is a life support in case of failure of breathing post heart attack or brain related diseases. It is a device that introduces fresh air or expels foul air.

Most recently this artificial breathing machine has become known to everyone. Doctors use it as the last ditched effort to save or revive the human body. Ventilator has become a symbol to indicate the bad situation. Our politics and government too seem to be on ventilator.

There are four basic ingredients to appropriately run our state system, which include economy, foreign policy, national security and democratic system but unfortunately all these vital and core ingredients have lost their effectiveness over the period of time due to bad governance and incompetency of the relevant authorities, causing turmoil and instability in the country. These damaged parts of the system have thus been put to ventilator support and these are in dire need of a proper treatment to be able to breathe the way they are meant to be without any artificial support.

The current status of our economy is on ventilation and is being monitored and treated on day to day basis as the virus of external and internal loans is expanding, growth rate is falling, inflation is on rise and value of rupee is declining. Unfortunately, our economic advisors are unable to halt the situation. Moreover, the effects of putting Pakistan on grey list of FATF would adversely affect Pakistan’s economy and will make it further harder for us to meet rising foreign financing needs, including future borrowings from the International Monetary Fund. It will directly impact our imports, exports and mobility as it is like unannounced international embargo saddening every Pakistani that will further make the economy sick.

Our government needs to enable the economy to be free of ventilation and for that we need a team of competent economists to make the economy healthy without the support of a ventilator. We have been suffering internationally as we ourselves have given this chance to the enemies of Pakistan to make us helpless and isolated on almost every diplomatic front. The ad hoc foreign policy has been forced to be on ventilator for not being looked after by Foreign Ministry, as we had no foreign minister to cope with it. I hope we’ll make it independent of ventilator by making it stronger in a way that we formulate some long-term foreign policies healthier to enabling us to contain further damage by our enemies. It is the need of hour that we take our foreign policies out of the ventilator and allow them to be healthier to face the international challenges especially from the hostile neighbours. The nation wants ventilator free foreign policy and free of incompetence virus.

In the same way, the national security system of our country needs permanent cure and continued updating and care. The National Action Plan was introduced in January 2015 with the view to improve our national security policies in order to impose a crackdown on terrorism and it did take out the national security from ventilator but again the failure of its implementation has brought it back on ventilator as out of our 22 agreed areas, many remained unattended due to indifferent attitude of the government due to its political objectives. We cannot allow our national security issues to remain forsaken and the civilian government must realise that inadequate national security is like a cancer, which eats away the peace from society. Where there is no peace, there is no development and hence we need healthy and independent powerful national security and not ventilator dependent national security.

We firmly believe that democracy is the way forward for the country and now our democracy has also been shifted to ventilator by lota-cracy and horse-trading. The vote has been made a saleable commodity and the elections are contested through huge spending especially with the ill-gotten money. Unfortunately, the post-election era becomes the recovery period of money spent along with the interest.

This situation of horse-trading and lust for power is endangering democracy as the leaders look forward to shift their loyalties not for the cause of country but the artificially created winning impression for a party.

The performance of democracy is decreasing since it has been overtaken by ill-gotten money, blocking the way for middle as well as educated class. Resultantly you see the level of input in the assemblies by many parliamentarians as zero.

Frankly speaking, our politics is going sick day by day in the hands of greed and lust leaving the national interest far behind. We have made our political system ventilator dependent as we engineered and manipulated democracy, which remains on ventilator during the five years of a government trying to recover from the sick and deteriorating out dated system. We as a nation perhaps do not like to believe in rule of law rather believe to make laws to be ruled.

Will the leadership and people wake up to clean our political system? In my personal views, the parliamentary system has crippled us and brought our political democratic system on ventilator. Should we not revert to presidential system to have a top leader like USA directly from the people of Pakistan and not through horse-trading?

There should be a law to eliminate horse trading from political system to make this country a real democracy. It is so heartening to see that our major administrative and political organs are incapacitated and many are on ventilation struggling to survive and some are heading the same fate because of the deteriorating economy. The nation needs fresh air with hope and prosperity and that would be possible only once we are out of ventilator of IMF, World Bank, international donors, borrowing from friends. Just imagine what would we face if they decided to stop this artificial ventilation as, so far, these international donors have deliberately forced us to be on the especially designed ventilator.

We are trying to survive with this present economic ventilator & its dependency is pushing us towards bankruptcy. It is time for us to chalk out a plan to get rid of ventilator dependent economy before it is too late and our rupee slides further.

The international anti-Pak designers are pushing us towards awkward situations, as we should not forget that the West has never liked Pakistan to have emerged as a nuclear state. We must learn lesson from the disintegration of Soviet Union and become more alert of the intentions of the West. Let us make our beloved country foreign debt free-state like Turkey and live like a nation with pride and not as a

nation having begging bowl

in hand.

In the end, I would request you to join me to pray that our nation gets rid of the ventilator dependent economy, foreign policy, national security and political system.

The writer is Chairman of think tank "global eye" & former Interior Minister of Pakistan

@Email: rmalik1212@gmail .com, Twitter @Senrehmanmalik, @GlobalEye_GSA, WhatsApp +923325559393