Daily Times

Extending the point about the labour unions a bit further, Chavez hired 100,000 untrained supporters into Venezuela’s biggest petroleum company – Petróleos de Venezuela or PDVSA – after he fired 18,000 company workers because of continuing strikes. It is said that afterwards, budget from the company was diverted towards his political base and cronies. In Pakistan – former governments of the PPP and PML(N) are accused of doing almost the same with national institutions such as the PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills. So much so, that it has been a slow, steady and arduous task to remove the aura of cronyism from these once centres of excellence!

The 2002 coup confirmed to Chavez that authoritarian support was needed to cling to power and enact whatever reforms needed. For this, he banked on the support from extremist elements called ‘the collectivos’. As they gained power, they also started to challenge police for control. And in some extreme circumstances expelled the police from select areas within Caracas itself! For Pakistan – years of confusion in Karachi had rendered virtual ‘no go’ areas with the MQM controlling vast swathes of the territory. Once upon a time, even local police couldn’t enter these areas! Additionally, PML(N) routinely seeks support from far-right organisations within the heartland of Punjab.

Venezuela’s saga of problems and personalism didn’t end with the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013. Nicolás Maduro, Chavez’s protégé, took power with the slimmest of victory margins – 1.6%! With a crumbling economy and low oil prices, he sold patronage to garner support and stay in power. For Pakistan – patronage has always been the oil that greases the wheels of government and bureaucracy. All Pakistani political parties without fail use this to get into office and stay there!

As Venezuela’s situation worsened, the Maduro regime detained journalists, shut down websites, arrested politicians and took away powers of the National Assembly. In Pakistan – a similar story has been unfolding for a number of years. NAB was setup by General Pervez Musharraf for across the board accountability but has been used by successive administrations to hound the opposition into submission to such devastating impact that parliament itself becomes toothless! This is notwithstanding that ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’! Media outlets such as GEO and ARY routinely face the ire of PEMRA. Senior and serious journalists are regularly missing, and under pressure, the supreme court of Pakistan has had to take up the quest of recovering them!

Venezuela ended up importing everything without diversifying the economy – right until oil prices dropped in 2014, leaving the country in severe debt and leading it to the edge of complete collapse it stands on today!

In the present, Venezuela’s ruling framework is a hybrid of democratic and authoritarian components. This has come about because of years of erosion of the political system and the trust that it should have transferred into the population it was supposed to look after! This cocktail is a highly unstable and flammable mix! There are no specific internal rules, ad-hocism is the name of the game and rival factions contest aggressively for power. In the same way, Pakistan’s history is chequered with examples of civil and military rule. This is reflected in democracy (political parties generally) and authoritarianism (establishment and some political personalities) making up the numbers for the whole of Pakistan’s independence! Today, and even within PTI’s nascent government, opposing power centres compete fiercely for control; i.e. Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Jahangir Tareen. It seems that this still is ‘old wine in a new bottle’!

Currently, and because of only enjoying the financial boom and not preparing for the fiscal bust, income disparity is astronomical in Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela! His loyalists don’t feel the pinch but the person in the street does. This is exactly the same in Pakistan. There are two types of Pakistans! One for the rich, affluent and well connected. And one for the poor, downtrodden and isolated. The financial disparity is such that the former group makes up approximately 10% of the population while the latter group, almost 90%!

Even with all the sorry tale deliberated at length, Maduro has still kept his tenuous hold on power! This is because of one reason alone; the all-powerful Venezuelan army is still on his side even after Juan Guaidó – the self-proclaimed interim president – implored it to switch sides in the best interest of the people of Venezuela. In Pakistan, the powerful establishment supports the current PTI government but is said to be watching closely. The more things change, the more they remain the same!

This is where eerie similarity between Venezuela and Pakistan ends. There are two fateful actions that Venezuela took where Pakistan hasn’t followed suit – yet! One, unable to pay for subsidies, manifesto promises, welfare programmes and burgeoning public sector, Maduro printed more money and then printed some more! This led to sustained hyperinflation, communal unrest, street violence, growth of black markets and collapse of the social fabric of Venezuela! Two, the oil glut of the early years meant nationalisation of a majority of Venezuelan companies. This resulted in parallel and poor-performing bureaucracies which were never reformed. Hence, Venezuela ended up importing everything without diversifying the economy – right until oil prices dropped in 2014, leaving the country in severe debt and leading it to the edge of complete collapse it stands on today!

There is no doubt Pakistan is going through challenging times and that there are a lot of similarities it shares with Venezuela’s past. But it also has the opportunity to look ahead with a young, energetic and seemingly good-intentioned team at the helm. At the same time, the powers to be should learn from the past so that these mistakes are not repeated in the future because – as George Santayana says – “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”!

The writer is Director Programmes for an international ICT organization based in the UK and writes on corporate strategy, socio-economic and geopolitical issues