A Year of Discontent for Pakistan?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

In her ritualistic Christmas-Day Message to her subjects, in 1997, Queen Elizabeth had described the year that was about to end as “Annus Horribilis.”

The Queen had cogent reasons for being so gloomy and pessimistic. That was, verily, a particularly sorrowful year for the British royalty. There was ample reason for them to mourn the year as they had lost the all-too-popular Princess Diana who, without doubt, was the only royal among the sedate, if not moronic, royal pack that inspired genuine affection and empathy amongst the Britons—and others in the far-flung British Commonwealth.

The year, 2021, now in its twilight zone, could be close to being described as a ‘horrible year’ for the people of Pakistan—if not for its public-insular ruling elite—for a variety of reasons.

The relentless blight of the Pandemic was one major source of disquiet and unrest for the people of Pakistan. Of course, Pakistan isn’t the only country in the world feeling the incisive and brutal effects of the still-raging pestilence. It’s a universal phenomenon, which has had such a devastating impact on some of the most advanced and developed polities of the world. However, Pakistan felt the pinch of the pestilence so much more because it threw a slew of spanners in the IK government’s ambitious economic development plans. Not only just that, but the fallout of a faltering economy exacted a heavy toll off the people of Pakistan.

The economic penury and plight of laymen Pakistanis—and Pakistanis are poor is an appellation that covers a vast majority of its people—reached unprecedented heights of suffering for the common man during the year under review. Figures of inflation and cost of living spiral, quoted by various sources are mostly conflicting. Governments, in trouble and accused of poor performance, are in the habit of padding the figures in their interest. IK government is no exception to this rule. However, those targeting it for its lackluster performance can’t also get rid of an old habit—or weakness—to cook up figures of their own that may not, necessarily, have much to do with the situation on the ground.

But shorn of all sophistry on the subject of IK government’s score-card on economy and economic activity, what all and sundry agree on is that this government—now in power for nearly three-and-a-half years—has little in its ledger to show by way of welfare for the common man. Quite the contrary is the ground reality of its economic performance, or lack of it, as far as uplifting the lot of a vast majority of the common man is concerned.

Poor economic management and performance for the interest of the common man is, without an iota of doubt, the biggest handicap of IK government. It could well be described as its Achilles’ heel. The common man’s first and foremost concern is to put food on the table for his family. But that’s where he’s faced with an uncontrolled—or uncontrollable—spike in the prices of food and other basic necessities of life.

The ever-climbing graph of tariff for gas and electricity, as well as in fuel prices, stared the common man, throughout the year, like an enraged beast determined to devour him. The incoming year doesn’t seem to show light at the end of a very dark tunnel that the common consumer of Pakistan finds himself at this confluence of 2021 with 2022.

Add to this grievous injury the teasing insult of consumers in even the major cities of Pakistan waiting for the miracle of gas lighting up their stoves so they could cook the family meals. Nothing could be more injurious for the image of the ruler and his team in the perception of the common man.

Yet another factor of gloom for the not-so-well-informed minds, of the ordinary people of Pakistan, is their sense that Pakistan is being dictated to, unabashedly, by a lending institution, like the baneful IMF, to tailor its economic policies according to its diktat.

One of the hottest topics of discussion in the after-dinner ‘informed’ discussion in the drawing rooms of the rich and the enlightened—as well as in meeting places of the common men—throughout the year was the IK government’s perplexing pandering to IMF for just 6 billion dollars, or less. Indeed, IK’s unbridled political opponents had a big hand in fueling the fires of discontent among the people that Pakistan was in danger of becoming a helpless slave to whatever IMF wanted it to do. But the ruling elite can’t be absolved of not doing enough to obviate this perception.

As the year inched closer to its curtain-time, the government’s eagerness to shove through the Legislature a new law, that would make the State Bank of Pakistan fully autonomous and free from the government’s control, acted like the proverbial red rag to enrage the people of Pakistan. IK and his team have, so far, been at bay in getting this perception out of the minds of the people that the new law would make the State Bank a vassal of IMF.

Apart from the economic woes of the people, the social fabric of the Pakistani society came under a heavy assault from the extreme right fringe of religious fanaticism.

The Year was an unwitting witness to the rise of TLP (Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan) as a powerful political force masquerading itself into the garb of religion—a common feature of Pakistan’s socio-political milieu. TLP, earlier in the year, had been proscribed as a terrorist organization. However, towards the last quarter of the year, TLP came back at the government and the state of Pakistan with unprecedented vengeance.

But TLP’s vengeful comeback wasn’t as surprising as the abject surrender of IK’s government to this rabble-rousing faction. It was nothing short of being risible that after making tall claims of enforcing the writ of the state ‘at all costs’ IK’s government came a cropper on its boastful claim. It entered into negotiations with the terrorist outfit as an equal, and then, signed on the dotted lines dictated by TLP.

Standing at the crossroads of an eventful year about to take its bow before an incoming new year, Pakistanis don’t have much of what could be called capital of hope to be sanguine about what the coming year may have in store for them. Cassandras, in a quirk of fate, may have more to cast their spell of gloom, if not doom. Pakistan has never been short on challenges staring it in the face on both domestic and external fronts. What’s worse is the jarring reality that because of their plethora of mundane problems—of bread and butter, basically—the people’s trust in the IK government is getting into a red zone. Which, by any definition, not good news for IK and his dream of making a ‘New Pakistan.’

Based on what it earned and lost during 2021, the incoming year should be the break or make year for IK’s government. 2022 will, without doubt or exaggeration, be the year for IK to turn his fortunes around and redeem his sinking popularity and approbation with the people of Pakistan. All eyes of the pundits will be glued on how IK pulls himself out of the rut. He will have none but himself to blame if he fails to cross this hurdle. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)