THE PML-N is once again locked into a battle with itself. Party president and Leader of the Opposition Shehbaz Sharif’s gesture of inviting the PPP and ANP to a dinner has triggered derision not from the PTI government but from senior PML-N leaders themselves. First former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi fired a salvo at the PPP saying the doors of the PDM were shut for the party unless it replied to the show cause notice, and then Maryam Nawaz later in the day endorsed Mr Abbasi’s statement and took a tough line against the PPP. The result of this intra-party controversy was the rise of renewed speculation that all is not well inside the PML-N and it is falling victim to its own internal contradictions.
This comes at a time when Shehbaz Sharif has turbo-charged his politics and appears to be gradually shifting the PML-N into a more accommodating position. He is representing a body of opinion within the party that wants the policy to be more inclusive towards the opposition and more flexible towards the establishment. The PPP has said repeatedly that it is interested in bringing about an in-house change in Punjab led by the PML-N, and party leader Qamar Zaman Kaira repeated this on Tuesday saying that had the PML-N cooperated, the change in Punjab would have already happened. However, so far there is no clarity about what the PML-N wants in Punjab. In fact, there is little clarity about what the PML-N wants generally, so ambiguous is its strategic outlook.
Mr Sharif’s whirlwind contacts with opposition leaders and his high-profile politics in the last few weeks had suggested that perhaps Nawaz Sharif had decided to give the Shehbaz brand of politics another chance. This was premised on the calculation that in order to get a level playing field in the next elections, the party needed some accommodation with the establishment. While there was no official indication that the PML-N leadership was interested in gradually transforming its approach, Shehbaz Sharif’s proactive politics and the relative silence of Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz suggested that a shift was underway. This appears to have either not been the case, or the party has once again started to cut the branch it is sitting on.
The PML-N’s duality is sowing the seeds of confusion within its rank and file. It is also undercutting its political efficacy at a time when the party should be thinking and planning clearly for the next elections. The PTI is a natural beneficiary. It would be more than happy at this internal bickering inside the PML-N knowing that such wrangling within the House of Sharif provides it enough space to focus on its governance issues. With the PDM dysfunctional and the PML-N hacking away at its own limbs, the opposition appears to be the least of the government’s problems.
Women’s inclunsio
THE success of the Ehsaas Savings Wallets pilot initiative for 7m of the poorest women registered as Kafaalat beneficiaries under the Ehsaas programme, and its future expansion, should go a long way in increasing the access of financially excluded and disadvantaged women to formal financial services. Women, particularly the ones from the marginalised segments of society, form the bulk of the financially and digitally excluded population in the country, and no effort — social or economic — to empower this segment of the disadvantaged populace can bear fruit without closing the widening gender gap in the use of a range of savings, insurance, credit, payment and other financial services.
According to data, only a fifth of the country’s adult population is linked up with formal financial services in spite of the early adoption of policies supporting the microfinance sector and branchless banking as well as a national financial inclusion strategy launched by the central bank in 2015. Although the ‘enabling environmenpoints from 5pc to 7pc in these years, showing that men are nearly five times more likely to have an account as compared to women. Studies indicate that the gender gap in financial services’ accessibility exists across all demographics — poverty, education, geography, age and marital status. Even wealthy, urban and educated women have reported registering bank accounts less frequently than poor, rural men. Supportive government policies and initiatives like Ehsaas Savings Wallets are rightly considered critical for women’s financial inclusion. But, at the same time, we also need to break down the cultural barriers hampering women’s access to financial services. It is difficult, if not impossible, to pull families out of poverty without encouraging the financial inclusion of women.
Geneva meeting
THE recent meeting in Geneva between the Pakistani and American national security advisers should give bilateral relations a boost, considering that it is the first face-to-face contact between high officials from both states since Joe Biden entered the White House. There has been a perception that ties are less than cordial between Pakistan and the new US administration as there has been no formal contact between Prime Minister Imran Khan and Mr Biden, while this country was not initially invited by Washington to a climate summit in which other regional states were participating. The foreign minister has been in touch with the US secretary of state, but hopefully the meeting between Moeed Yusuf and Jake Sullivan in Switzerland should help take relations forward. Along with improving bilateral relations, India, Afghanistan and economic cooperation were discussed in Geneva.
Clearly, the US-Pakistan relationship is a difficult one, marked by mistrust on both sides. America’s main concern at this juncture is to use Pakistan’s influence with the Afghan Taliban to ensure an orderly withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Pakistan, on the other hand, wants to be accorded the same standing as India where the American regional approach is concerned. The fact is that the Biden administration must apply a fresh approach to Pakistan to bring down the mutual mistrust. For the past over four decades, the bilateral relationship has been shaped by Afghanistan, and before that America’s Cold War exigencies. What is needed now is for the US to delink Pakistan from Afghanistan and deal with this country on its own merits. By all means Pakistan can and should help stabilise Afghanistan to all extent possible, but this country should not be used as a geostrategic tool to be abandoned when the mission is accomplished, as was done after the Soviet defeat in the Afghan ‘jihad’. Pakistan, on the other hand, is in a difficult position as it tries to balance its ties with China and Russia on one end, and the US on the other. Islamabad’s strategic, economic and political ties with Beijing are deep, while relations with Moscow are also improving. Moreover, relations with Washington are also a key pillar of Pakistani foreign policy, and cannot be taken for granted. Thus the challenge before Pakistan’s foreign policy establishment is to cultivate relations with these important capitals equally, and not be pressured by other countries in its choice of friends and allies.
