Daily Times

So after running from pillar to post and claiming that rather than opting for loans he will commit suicide, Imran Khan has finally succumbed to reality. The man believed to be adept at collecting alms has failed this time. Neither did Saudi Arabia lend the handicapped economy of Pakistan a walking stick nor did selling of buffaloes serve as a ventilator. The begging bowl that Khan shattered himself is now being put together with a special concoction prepared by Asad Umar which has Elfy and Burnol as its basic ingredients. The famous couplet of Parveen Shakir augments well with the situation and explains the relationship between IMF and Pakistan better than anything, “Wo kahen bhi gaya lauta tou mairay pass aya; bus yehi baat hay achi mairay harjai ki.”-Wherever he went when he returned, he came to me; this is the only appealing attribute of my insincere lover.

Knocking at IMF’s door always comes with its own repercussions, the stringent conditions will further put the government in a precarious situation of shifting the burden of taxes on the common folk. The irony is that PTI has set the bar so high that now it has become an insurmountable task for the Government to walk the talk. The masses will not letthe promises once made disappear into the oblivion. We have observed that the government is being criticized for the same things on which people remained silent in the past. Thanks to Imran Khan for spreading awareness, the voters are not an ignorant lot anymore and will chastise the government for every wrong move they make.

Whether it is the crashing stock exchange or the value of rupee plunging against the dollar, red flags have been raised almost in every major sector but government is still waiting for the situation to spin further out of control. It seems that the heads running the government do not have adequate experience which is required to carry the business smoothly. It is being said that government should be given some space as things will eventually fall in place once the dust settles, but the issue is that Pakistan is a country and not a laboratory where experiments are carried out and if things did not go as per plan there will be a small puff of smoke and the experiment can be carried out after rectifying the mistakes. We have already witnessed a complete loss of Rs.238bn of stock brokers at PSX, so with due apologies to Prime Minister and his team the nation is not in the condition to face any more jolts like this and the experiments may be avoided at least in such a fragile economic situation.

One of the fundamental reasons for government not performing as per expectations of the people is that most of the energy is being spent on criticizing the previous governments and not on moving forward with their own agenda

Moreover, one of the fundamental reasons for government not performing as per expectations of the people is that most of the energy is being spent on criticizing the previous governments and not on moving forward with their own agenda. The reason that two major political parties were on the verge of being wiped out in the general elections is that they did not live up to the task with which they were entrusted. The incumbent government was well aware of the dilapidated condition in which country was lingering and the uphill task they were to embark upon after winning. Apparently, plans were ready with Asad Umar and others who did not spare any opportunity to tell the previous government about how things should have been done but alas! Those ideas and studies that were applicable when viewed from the lens of opposition are no more practical and will be gathering dust in cabinets of PTI campaign offices without ever making it to the table tops of those who once pitched these plans vociferously on the floor of the parliament and podiums. To much of our amazement those who used to sing the mantra of “say no to loans” in a chorus with Khan are now suddenly more realistic and are telling others that initiatives take time to bear fruit. When they were told the same thing, they dismissed these views as that of an ignorant fool who not aware of current Prime Minister’s super powers.

The people of Pakistan have catapulted a relatively new party into the high offices with a hope and desire for something new that will serve the country, they are tired of the same time tested and failed techniques of handling issues and to make matters worse the streak of gainsaying things is eroding the credibility of the government. Terming the green pastures shown to the masses as merely political statements will raise a fundamental question that what is the difference if old paths leading to failures are still being trodden, what is the purpose of causing this upheaval when kith and kin of stalwarts are still being conferred with important positions in government. Are we moving forward into the past?

It seems politics in global south is nothing more than a competition of telling lies, the better you are at doing so the more successful you may become and the parties which lose should rest in opposition for a complete term until the goldfish memory of masses makes them forget everything negative they did. However, there is always a way out and we can also come out of this vicious cycle of jumping from the frying pan into fire by striving to work and make sure that education takes its roots in the society. Meanwhile the nation should hope that the truck carrying Murad Saeed’s “200 arab dallar” which were supposed to come to Pakistan on second day of Imran Khans oath reaches as soon as possible and with that capital the government may start on its project named “Naya Pakistan”

The writer is a freelance columnist

Published in Daily Times, October 18^th 2018.