Daily Times

Voila! Two years of pain and hardship have passed. Otherwise, a period long enough for a regime to prove its mettle and deliver what promised. I struggled hard to recollect and find a single achievement by Khan’s government. Alas, I’m afraid to say that all I could recollect was broken promises, shattered dreams, unfulfilled commitments, continued backtracks and the gaping disparity between the haves and the have-nots. All of this coupled with intensely brash witch-hunt and hateful approach towards opponents. This makes me wonder if this is a true face of democracy by any stretch of the imagination. The irony is if you can’t handle the situation, you can at least accept the mistakes done, come out of denial and course correct…..but hell no, the PTI stalwart(s) have egos bigger than Halloween pumpkins.

Be it the unwarranted rebranding of BISP to Ehaas or doomed Digitising Pakistan initiative, the inglorious fiasco around much-hyped Tsunami tree or the damned Prime Minister Dam Fund. This list is long and never-ending. How can I forget the mother of all failures, the forgotten BRT Peshawar project that finally saw the day of light? This project has already taken seven years but it is still incomplete with the cost of the project quadrupling over years; still being flagged as a success. One wonders where did the PTI leadership get the audacity and courage to defend such an inefficient project? Low and behold, while the nation is trying to recover from Corona crisis, as per recent ADB report, “Around 3.7 million Pakistani youth are likely to be unemployed in the next three to six months.”

Our PM believes that construction business is the key to bring the grappling economy back on tracks

Our PM believes that construction business is the key to bring the grappling economy back on tracks as if all miseries would be solved and employment will increase if Pakistan starts focusing on construction. Will commoners, jobless graduates, lawyers, doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs benefit from this or will it be a few handpicked elite foreigners, the likes of Aneel Mussarat! I will leave it up to you to guess the right answer on who will be the true beneficiary of Ravi City and Bundal Island!

Another unfulfilled promise on tax reforms, for which Shabbar Zaidi was brought in as a revenue wizard to revamp FBR, couldn’t succeed rather than taking a flight back, licking his wounds. Regardless of the much hue and cry on tax collection, the government failed to generate the revenue estimated by its finance team and much-hyped poster boy of PTI, aka Asad Umar.

This experiment turned out to be a disaster in finance. The genius outsourced finance team of Imran has further pulled down the GDP to negative digits inviting inflation to the already struggling economy of Pakistan. The not so “ease of doing business” atmosphere created by Khan has demoralised the investors and business community with the uncertain political situation, hefty tax loads and decrease in buying power of end-users. All the major industries have been the victim of his policies, from textile to automobile to small cottage industries, all of them have tasted the sour dose of tabdeeli. Imran claimed to have a team of 200 people but landed up with all selected incompetent advisors and ministers mostly his friends or chamchas.

Let’s talk about the health sector, to the best of my recall not a single health institute or a large scale medical facility has been initiated in the past two years, keep in mind that its first years of tenure when the government initiates its manifesto while rest of the period is invested in executing and sustaining the programs. All this while, the energy and resource that should’ve been apportioned for upgrading the health system in Pakistan was wasted fancying and spying on Asif Zardari’s wellness and Nawaz Sharif’s health that too once he left for the United Kingdom. All this makes me believe that the PTI leaders though good at accusing and misleading the nations are pretty bad at the job of politics.

There is never enough on domestic political achievements or the lack of it, lets for a moment reflect on the other side of the sphere, International and Diplomatic achievements of PTI so far. Sharing a hot border with India, ruled by a nationalist right-wing leader named Modi, the Pulwama attack though staged and mocked by India made the relation go sour. An Unfair annexation of Kashmir by revoking article 370 by Modi gave Imran a brilliant chance to show his teeth to the enemy at the border, rather this opportunity to intensify Kashmir freedom movement even harder was boiled down to one-minute silence on one pleasant afternoon. So the one who preached the bravery of Tipu Sultan turned down the option of giving India a befitting response. This move barely jolted the neighbouring enemies and did not give our Kashmiri brothers and sisters a tinge of assurance that the PTI regime is backing them.

Sadly, this will go down in history as an opportunity lost and above all how Mr Niazi of our times betrayed a nation longing for support.

Besides settling the score with India, an important event of Kuala Lampur Summit, hosted by once Khan sb’s role model, Mahathir Mohammad, which could’ve provided diplomatic pressure to arm-twist India, was also turned down at the eleventh hour, another last-minute embarrassing knee-jerk decision. Recent diplomatic failure with one of our strongest sponsor and ally in the Arab region is also casting a shadow on the leadership gap that IK and his team have.

Bad decision-making or poor judgement?

Whatever it may be, Mr Khan should learn a thing or two from the history that such slippages, diplomatic fallouts and letting down nation have cost many premieres their job in the past!

The writer is a freelancer