Our many delusions
LOOKING back, it was perhaps inevitable that 2022 would see all hell break loose. It appears that humanity’s pent-up appetite for politics and protest had grown immense after the long and languid era of Covid-19 lockdowns.
It bears pointing out that political upheaval was, throughout the year, a dominant theme in news headlines from all corners of the world.
In Pakistan, there had been discontent early in the year as inflation heated up, and it became clearer that the PTI was struggling to deliver. The party was clearly ill equipped to handle the growing needs and demands of a nation eager for a return to normalcy from the Covid crisis. It was in this context that the PDM started its political manoeuvring to oust Imran Khan.
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, humbling the PTI in its moment of weakness. However, global economic circumstances turned the April vote of no-confidence into a case study in political miscalculation.
The chaos unleashed by the fall of the PTI government not only upturned the political order, but it threw everything else into disequilibrium as well. In the process, the country lost its moorings and was swept away into uncharted waters. The unprecedented upheaval proved a force so relentless that even the strongest pillars of the state struggled to hold their ground against its onslaught.
That long year is now behind us. What hope does 2023 bring? Can we expect a return to ‘normalcy’ in the months to come? Will the febrility in our political climate ever give way to healing and reconciliation? The events of the past year leave little room for optimism.
The political environment has progressively turned so acrid that one set of politicians has been invoking 1971 and threatening a national schism if kept out of power for too long.
The other is making it clear that it has no intention of returning any power to the public, even though it seems all out of ideas for what to do with the government. Neither side believes it has any reason to yield an inch. After being ousted ahead of its time, the PTI feels it has licence to keep hounding the PDM government whenever an opportunity presents itself.
On the other hand, after being dogged by questionable accountability cases for much of PTI’s tenure, the PDM leadership sees no reason to let Imran Khan and his party enjoy a cakewalk back to power. Given these circumstances, undemocratic forces are itching to find a way back in, and a proposal for an extended ‘interim’ government comprising technocrats has been floated to give the politicians a way out.
As has been stated earlier in these pages, this is no solution to the inability of political rivals to just sit together and talk. There have been attempts recently to cut Mr Khan’s holier-than-thou persona down to size with reminders that he isn’t too different from the people he despises and teaches his followers to hate. He fails to get the message, thanks to an infuriatingly single-minded approach to life and politics.
On the other hand, the PDM’s old guard seems to be suffering from severe delusions of adequacy that have put their parties out of touch with Pakistan’s young populace and its evolving hopes and aspirations. While they believe they display strength and power by imposing their will on the country’s affairs, a large cross section of the public sees it differently.
On top of their individual failings, both sides fail to see each other as representatives of people who think themselves to be as Pakistani as their ideological rivals. With invective dripping from the top, several venomous slurs have crept into everyday usage and are used to denigrate people and their political views. All of this needs to stop.
The nation needs healing. It needs leaders who can bring people together rather than drive them apart. The current crop cannot remain drunk on power and refuse to see any future that does not align with their individual interests.
With another general election scheduled for later this year, there needs to be a long rethink of how politics has been conducted in recent history. Our politicians have, in the past, sat together and agreed to work through their problems. They must do so again. Politics cannot be a zero-sum game, especially when the fate of 230 million souls is involved.
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023
Rethinking the economy
THE year 2022 is now firmly behind us — if only our economic troubles were too. The crises that gripped the country last year seem set to continue giving the country’s administrators a headache well into 2023. Despite the urgency with which course correction is needed, the decision-makers in Islamabad remain clueless about where or even when to begin their ‘bold’ and ‘difficult’ measures. Even the timid austerity measures announced in the last week of 2022 to cut down on consumption — which included the early closure of markets, among other things — remained unimplemented as we entered the new year. It just goes to show how deep the administrative paralysis goes.
“We’re hurting the country over petty politics … we are our own worst enemy,” incumbent Finance Minister Ishaq Dar complained recently, as the curtain fell on his largely unremarkable and quite possibly catastrophic first quarter as finance chief. He failed to acknowledge how his own ‘petty politics’ against Miftah Ismail had added considerable chaos to the system when the country had desperately needed continuity. But we digress. Mr Dar was commenting more generally about the blind zeal with which our political parties keep trying to take each other down. It is, indeed, true that the fate of the economy lies in our politicians’ hands, and none of them seems to have any serious understanding of how to handle this immense responsibility prudently. Be it Imran Khan slashing fuel prices in the midst of a commodity price supercycle or Mr Dar himself attempting to control exchange and interest rates in defiance of all logic — politicians across the divide have been more than willing to risk long-term economic stability if it means short-term political gains.
The worst manifestation of this type of politics is in the cynical protest movements we continue to see every time a government tries to make difficult but unavoidable decisions. Last year started with the PDM complaining about runaway inflation and announcing protest marches to pressurise the PTI government as the latter attempted to revive the IMF programme. The year ended with the roles reversed. The year 2023 lies ahead. Can we break the cycle and move on? With the politicians out of answers, the country will continue paying the cost of their follies. However, even now, a top-down realignment of Pakistan’s economic priorities can make the difficult path ahead more tolerable. For that, our politicians will first need to engage with the public through simplified but informed discourse on our economic choices. The cynicism with which economic policy is treated in media and political circles will need to be countered with reason and logic. Rather than vacuous party representatives, capable economists should be asked to handle the political debate. The concept of ‘relief’ must also change from meaning ‘handouts from the government’ to meaning ‘manageable benefits for those who deserve them most’. The old approach of throwing borrowed money at problems cannot work. Few are willing to subsidise our consumption with their dollars. Time to tighten the belt and fight our way back out of this hole.
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023