Future Unknown

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is reported to have said that compromise for your dream but never compromise on your dream.

That sounds good to the ears but has a catch. Compromising for your dream may amount to an outright negation of the dream. Imran Khan came to power with the slogan of an uncompromising crusade against corruption. Yet, for fear of losing the government, he took no action against the lawmakers who were accused of selling their votes at the Senate Chairman’s election. That is compromising, not only for the dream, but also on the dream.

Many reports surface about corruption and bad governance in the provinces ruled by the PTI, including Punjab, which hosts more than half of the total population of Pakistan. Yet, we see no punitive measures, except for frequent changes of staff. Moreover, Imran Khan seems not the least bit perturbed over the act.

Imran Khan probably feels that such acts are covered by the escape clause in his saying which legitimizes ‘making compromises for the dream’. However, people remain unconvinced. Another of his pronouncements reads something like this: ‘U-turns are the hallmark of top leadership’. Of course, course-correction would be the right thing to do if a decision was initially made, based on certain logical and reasonable assumptions and predictions about future events which, due to unforeseeable circumstances, turned otherwise. But reversal of statements like ‘preferring to commit suicide instead of begging for loans’ signifies a lack of common-sense and an inability to comprehend even basic traits of economy in Pakistan, despite abundant evidence all around.

Imran Khan is definitely lucky to have survived so far. If the PML-N and Pakistan Peoples Party remained together, resigned from assemblies, and ‘secured’ help from some disgruntled members within Imran Khan’s coalition, PTI government would be sent packing. However, being unsure of getting even the Sindh government back in case of fresh elections, the Peoples Party did not go along while opposing stances taken by Nawaz Sharif and his daughter on the one hand and Shahbaz Sharif on the other. As a result, the PDM just fizzled out, eliminating a major threat to Imran Khan whose real threats come from himself and his party’s bad performance.

Feeling sufficiently assured after the death of the PDM threat, and encouraged further by PTI’s recent success in AJK, Imran Khan is preparing to grab Sindh. However, lacking the capacity to tackle major internal and external problems, he concentrates on bashing and blaming the opposition for all that is wrong. His other interests are trying to introduce a presidential form of government, and to capture the next general elections through introduction of an electronic voting system with indecent haste and without field trials, testing and consolidation of various stages, spread over years.

The era of trade surpluses caused by a combination of factors like low oil and gas prices, drop in imports plus rising export due to some orders being diverted to Pakistan from Covid-stricken countries, seems to be over. The trade deficit for July 2021 exceeded $ 3 billion, with the trend likely to continue. Moreover, the PTI government has taken more loans in three years than PML-N did in five years, which has raised the debt to GDP ratio to unsustainable levels. Also, due to gas and electricity load-shedding, and steep rise in infections and deaths due to the Delta variant in a carefree population, there is a slow-down in economic activities with little prospects of quick recovery.

However, Imran Khan has already worked out a solution for the trade deficits problem by resolving to increase exports by manufacturing in Pakistan the items that are imported. A strong argument that the Prime Minister offers in support of such a plan is that if we can produce the atom bomb, why can’t we make other products? Theoretically, he is right. However, since our resources are scarce, we have to use them selectively to get optimum results. In case of some specialist items which we require in relatively small quantities, but which would demand exceptionally heavy outlay on plant and machinery and require highly paid staff, we would be better off importing them instead of manufacturing them at exorbitant cost.

Unfortunately, Imran Khan runs his party and government arbitrarily and with arrogance. As such, he has failed to form a team of capable and experienced persons of integrity and has instead surrounded himself mostly with flatterers and yes-men who lack the courage to argue with him, much less make him see sense. This is nothing short of a disaster.

His experiments have failed dismally and there is a definite need for fresh general elections followed by a cobbling up of a government headed by a suitable person.