Cover Story

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was recently interviewed by a leading news channel. The following are the excerpts taken from the interview.

The symbiotic Pakistan-U.S. defence relationship created a perfect need-based fix – one partner needed war to achieve its ambitions of hegemony while the other was addicted to weapons and petro-dollars.

For Pakistan, the best way forward would be to earnestly understand U.S. goals in the region and determine what role, if any, it can play to support these goals.

Let’s write a new chapter, one that maximizes Pakistan-U.S. relationships and epitomizes a bond that defies conventional boundaries, intertwining both nations and their people across numerous dimensions.

To sustain and strengthen Pakistan-U.S. relations, the two countries will have to find more ways of reducing differences and expanding areas of mutual cooperation.

The era of blank checks is over. So, should it be for our “transactional” relationship with the U.S. which also needs to be rebuilt as a “new deal.”

The words are taken from the speech delivered by Donald Blome, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan.

This article aims to identify one specific, significant aspect of the process that has led to current conditions: the disrespect for time-limits prescribed in the Constitution.

Elections may not bring immediate calm or reduce the people’s anguishes but it will set the country in the right direction.

The miserable 98 per cent of the 245 million population of Pakistan will remain doomed to multiple demons of elite exploitation, feudalism, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism.

When the Constitution is violated and state institutions refuse to hold elections within the given timeframe as per the constitutional provision, the failure of state and its institutions is always on the cards.

We all are well-aware what is happening and how fast Pakistan is getting mired in an inexorable situation. However, the fundamental question is how are we going to come out of it and develop attributes of a normal nation?

As in 1971, the most powerful group, having successfully co-opted self-serving politicians, is adamant that people are not allowed to decide their future. There are differences between then and now, but the primary aim remains the same: people should not elect their representatives freely and fairly.

Disenfranchisement of a political party is synonymous to dispossessing your own people of their constitutional freedom to express their political inclination… and quite literally, orphaning them, the same way that the Bengalis in East Pakistan were orphaned and discarded.

Today Pakistan gives the impression of a rudderless ship hijacked by pirates and about to sink in a swirling vortex of multiple crises.

The Quaid’s Pakistan disappeared with its tragic dismemberment in 1971, and whatever was left is being looted and plundered by its own rulers.

Pakistan’s political and economic crises are not the result of any particular event in the recent past; it is the accumulated result of the actions taken, especially after 2000.

The economic managers seem to be totally ignorant of the mechanics of tax evasion, controlling inflation, POL pricing and legal aberrations involved in it.

The 7th NFC Award and the subsequent 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010 resulted in a significant fiscal and administrative decentralization which left the resulting fiscal federal structure unbalanced and posed macroeconomic and political challenges.

Having been trapped in IMF’s big arms for over 34 years, Pakistan will never be able to break free from the debt trap in the next 50 years too if its leadership does not change its mindset.

General Pervez Musharraf, a man with liberal and progressive views, played his part in making Pakistan a modern Islamic state.

Generals will come and generals will go but Pervez Musharraf will always be remembered for his modesty and his dislike of hypocrisy.