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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Pakistan’s emerging storm?

By Farhan Bokhari
October 21, 2020

As Pakistan’s opposition parties join hands to remove the government, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s choice for the future remains far from impressive.

His immediate choice of turning to the so-called ‘Tiger force’ to battle the partly out-of-control inflation in parts of Pakistan is exactly the misstep that will by default strengthen the opposition’s push.

In a year when Pakistan’s economy has been hit hard by the fallout from the Covid-19 epidemic, the full scale of the fallout is still unclear. Going forward into next year, Pakistan’s economy will likely remain in slumber – raising the risk of further unpopularity for the ruling structure.

It is exactly the prospect of further belt tightening for mainstream Pakistan beyond the ongoing downturn that has fuelled the anti-government push by the opposition. The protest for now is led by claims regarding institutional manipulation of the 2018 national elections. Coming two years after the polls which were observed by international groups, the sweeping claim on its own appears to be unconvincing.

But underlying the election related claim lies the more fundamental challenge of giving Pakistan a qualitatively new direction. And that is exactly where Prime Minister Khan has yet to begin delivering results.

Notwithstanding official claims to the contrary, Pakistan’s average household rightly feels crushed under prevailing trends. With the average household budget more than simply over-stretched, the government has given few convincing answers to the multiple challenges that confront average Pakistanis on a daily basis.

The reliance on the ‘Tiger force’ offers a far from satisfactory clue to solving the complicated riddle confronting Pakistan. On the contrary, a full scale revamp of the economy is essential.

At the outset, two competing challenges are obvious. On the one hand, the more than simply dilapidated structure of government has only given an impetus to a deepening crisis of governance. On this front, the vague direction leading the so-called accountability exercise has fuelled a de-facto ‘pen down’ strike by the civil service.

Stakeholders – ranging from key members of the business community to other professionals – stand in unison on a critical point: that the structure of government in today’s Pakistan is refusing to move. The attack led by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) targeting politicians, the business community and elements of the civil service, has been thrown in disrepute.

The main gap in this exercise has been its open-ended nature, effectively producing few conclusive outcomes. This has reinforced the impression of the official anti-graft push being more politically oriented than a genuine attack on corruption.

On the other hand, the second challenge surrounding the future of the economy is driven by Khan’s failure to make his own government more performance oriented. Since his arrival as prime minister in Islamabad, reports in the media more than once have spoken of key members of the cabinet having been given deadlines to show performance or else lose their jobs. To date, there are few examples of accountability for non performance in today’s ruling structure.

Meanwhile, a dismal picture is clearly evident across Punjab, which is ruled by Chief Minister Usman Buzdar. Brought in without any prior experience of major responsibility in public service, Buzdar continues to receive Prime Minister Khan’s unquestioned backing notwithstanding mounting criticism of his performance.

The very public exposure of the controversial recent change of the chief of police of Punjab, the police chief of Lahore and criticism of the handling of a widely publicized case of rape on the motorway, together highlighted a dangerous trend – the gaps surrounding the Buzdar administration’s grip on vital security affairs.

Meanwhile, agriculture which is the backbone of the provincial economy in Punjab and more broadly the national economy suffers from major neglect. A succession of crop failures has badly hit rural incomes across large parts of Pakistan, notably Punjab which is home to at least 60 percent of the country’s population.

Such glaring gaps underline the rapidly crumbling nature of Pakistan’s already weak structure of governance. For Khan, the writing on the wall ought to be clear – his failure to take charge of Pakistan will only widen the opportunity for his political opponents to make inroads in his ruling structure.

The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist who writes on political and economic affairs.

Email: farhanbokhari@gmail.com