Daily Times

A fifth grader fielded an
innocent yet very ingenious question to his mother: where would this Pakistan go when a New One would be created here soon? The answer to this core question at his tender age evidently defied explanation as the child’s simple, straightforward mind was quite familiar with the fate of old toys when newer ones were brought in. But unfortunately, not merely children but even most grownups were beguiled by the harangue about the new Pakistan stirred by the ‘Tsunami Thunder’, aka Imran Khan and his media managers and promoters. A make-believe fantasy world steeped in the stereotyped phantoms peddled and practised by General Ziaul Haq and the cognate clergy, was passionately recycled and drummed through populist demagoguery. Nawaz Sharif nestled in almost the same mindset, yet anxious to beat Khan at his antics of a new Pakistan, also spiced up his slogan of a Roshan (bright) Pakistan. No arguments for the evident failure and fallacy of their concoctions are now needed as the taste of their pudding, or rather the fudge to be precise, now is before us. Opposed to the dream of greater national unity there is a stark saga of a more parochial, polarised and regionalised Pakistan. The ‘tsunami’ is tethered a to a part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) centred around Peshawar, ceding the region around Dera Ismail Khan to Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Sharif holds principally central Punjab, conceding the southern Seraiki swath to the independents who, of course, later embraced him to savour the succulent spoils. Sindh is sliced similarly along its urban and rural regions with the MQM maintaining its gridlock in the former while the PPP predominates in the latter. Balochistan, at least politically, has become even more volatile and fragmented. Most nationalist parties repudiated the results as a sham show of the establishment to prop up its horses.

The fault lines evidently indicate a patent preference for ethnic and regional leadership and aspiration for an effective focus on local problems, scuttling the parties capable of captivating the entire nation. The pronouncements by the PTI for primacy and priority of the youth in its new Pakistan have plunged to a weird disillusionment. The standard, symbol and surge of the youth in KP have morphed into its septuagenarian chief minister, while the raga about revolutionary policies has ended in collaboration with the arch-fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami and Sherpao. Pervez Khattak is known for his shifting loyalties, the Jamaat for its servile service to General Ziaul Haq and obsession for the Hasba Act that plagued the province when it ruled it as a component of the MMA, a coalition comprising nine clergy cabals, more realistically called the Mullah-Military Alliance for its creation by and covert cooperation with General Pervez Musharraf and the establishment. Sherpao similarly also ditched the PPP to serve the same dictator. The adumbrations of their new Pakistan thus can be easily surmised as a stupefying replay of Zia, Musharraf and MMA-type obscurantist and militaristic fantasies. The much flaunted efficiency of the coalition can be similarly surmised from the long drawn spat over some senior ministry slots that stalled the formation of the cabinet almost to the inescapable budget date. The budget, despite the deafening diatribe of emergency being imposed in the education, health and energy sectors, has been quite disappointing in real allocations. No innovative tax reforms have emerged, the diatribe about shooting the drones has been receding and the bloodbath by the Taliban despite Khan’s touted advocacy for them has aggravated.

Sharif’s shimmering Pakistan bursting with economic explosions surpassing his feats of conducting nuclear explosions and the country becoming an Asian tiger seems almost equally bleak. Actually before anticipating his economic explosions one must accept his role in the detonation decision because his detractors including Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the bomb, have repeatedly claimed that Sharif had rather opposed these blasts. Some could even contend how he could be trusted with the blasts when he was even kept out of the Kargil conquest. But even if his assertions about the nuclear feat are believed, the bitter ramifications, unfortunately, cannot be ignored. Barely a year after the blasts that were extolled to make us impregnable came the humiliation at Kargil and Sharif had to make an effort to crave Bill Clinton’s intervention to save us from an utter debacle. Still giving him the benefit of having picked up some better sense during his exile, one sincerely hopes that Sharif’s economic explosions would not boomerang the way his bombs and blunders to bilk the bank deposits battered us. Bankers once again seem ruffled by the intended forays into depositors’ details. Sharif himself has been recounting the grim statistics of the circular debt and the dire exigency of billions of dollars needed for the energy sector. His minister for energy has also ruled out any earlier relief from the power outages, reiterating that they would have to be endured for years.

The best bet to avert disaster for the new government despite its tall claims thus would be to ask its Saudi benefactors for some deferred payments or donations on the oil supplies to the moribund power houses and proper steps to reduce power theft and recover the arrears. The stark scenario of a whopping Rs 2.1 trillion deficit haunting a total outlay of about Rs 3.4 billion budget is bound to bury the dreams of any economic independence or emerging as an Asian tiger. The deficit evidently would have to be bridged by begging, borrowing and the blessings of myriad donors. Gone thus would be the claims to break the begging bowl. A five billion dollars loan required mostly for defraying foreign debts, in fact, is already being solicited from the IMF. China is similarly being besieged for some handouts. With the entreaties for assistance being thus floated among the donors, the desire for greater dignity to challenge and defy the world on terrorism would be evidently rendered a far-fetched fantasy. The notions of any wider relief and good governance similarly are eroded by an unusually excessive burden of taxes imposed on the lower income masses while shielding the elite and big business. A lion’s share exceeding 65 percent of the lion’s budget would be devoured by the defence domain and the debts persistently piled by it. The claims of austerity similarly sound superficial as 33 ministerial chambers in Parliament are reported to have been already lavishly renovated. The strategies for peace similarly seem to be pampering the militant extremists while the masses in this new brighter Pakistan are to endure still darker days, dearer fuel and utilities, derelict infrastructure, devastating terrorism and sectarian carnage.

The writer is an academic and freelance columnist.habibpbu@yahoo.com