By: Syed Shahzaib Haider
Last week, the present government completed three and a half years at the Centre. It is facing headwinds on the politico-economic front due to enormous price rises of commodities and below expectation performance. One of the key economic parameters is GDP growth. It is not the most perfect one, as it does not capture specifically the impact on the poor, or on inequality, but higher GDP growth is considered central to economic performance as it enlarges the size of the economic pie. PTI government so far has been facing deterioration only in it. Even if one excludes the year 2020-21 (FY21), due to massive contraction caused by Covid-19, still the average of six years of this government stands low in comparison to the past government. If this continues as business as usual, the dream of an ideal economy of Imran Khan is not likely to be achieved.
The touchy issues such as unbearable price hike unemployment and uncontrollable issues are causing rise in frustration. Over the past three and half years, rhetoric has trumped the government’s performance. The PM has failed to provide a vision or give a sense of direction on key issues. Poverty has increased and so has unemployment. Millions of children are still out of school. In KPK where the PTI has been in power for eight and a half years. On the diplomatic front, the government made a vain attempt to create a parallel leader of the Islamic world.
India’s illegal annexation of Kashmir in August 2019 also happened to occur during the PTI government’s tenure. Having fiercely advocated the cause of Kashmiris for more than 70 years, what did Pakistan accomplish? Rather than conceding to more autonomy for Kashmiris, India even dared snatch the identity of Kashmir altogether. Is it not a policy failure? Is there any chance for Kashmiris to regain their identity as a sovereign nation?
The failure on multiple fronts is a consequence of misplaced priorities and absence of vision in PM himself and in his incompetent ministers. But the failure could mainly be explained by the PM’s single point agenda of spending time and energy on targeting the two former ruling families. No wonder when the emphasis was only on victimizing Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, other politicians as well as bureaucrats and businessmen would steal a sigh of relief. Corruption, therefore, was certain to rise tremendously inflicting more misery on the masses.
We can understand the naivety of the government by looking at the way the TLP matter was dealt, reveals a lack of governance experience, after lengthy negotiations, the government first declared the religious group a terrorist organization, but then took a U-turn and struck a compromise deal, allowing it to operate as a mainstream political party. This total surrender reflects poorly on the government’s strategy.
However, the opposition has not been able to play on what can be called a total failure of the government and launch a serious campaign to force an early election in the country. The main reason of course is that key opposition leaders have been forced on the defensive through court cases against them. This strategy has worked thus far, but the sky-rocketing prices of essential items, expensive utility services, falling employment rates and depleting incomes are unlikely to stop the opposition anymore from hitting the streets in anti-government demonstrations.
Nothing has really gone well for the government. Supremacy of the Constitution and of rule of law has to be acknowledged. The roles of judiciary, military, bureaucracy and political parties should be well defined and rigorously enforced. The nation has already paid heavily for deviating from the universally accepted norms of democracy.
The writer is the Director of the editorial board at the ‘The Dayspring’. He can be reached at [email protected]