Now that everybody has had the time to digest the shock of Punjab’s crucial by-elections, it is time to think about the way forward. PTI’s narrative stands vindicated but nobody should forget that the country was only on the brink of collapse before these polls were announced, and was brought that much closer to it because of all the toxicity unleashed in the campaigning for them. And what some political parties might see as clarity on the horizon is being taken as utter uncertainty and confusion by financial markets. That is why the equity market as well as the local currency plunged after the news, not knowing what the new setup is going to do and how it is going to affect traders and investors. Buoyed by its win, PTI naturally wants to go all the way and will not rest till a general election is announced. PML-N might not want such a thing right now, considering how its reputation has just taken a battering in what is considered to be its own backyard. Yet it’s an excuse – if it is just an excuse – that the economy should find its feet before the election, more specifically that the loans that the country desperately needs should be secured first, more or less echoes widespread market sentiment as well. A snap general election, and all the toxicity and mud-slinging that is bound to come with it, will just cause more uncertainty for the markets and force investors and donors, even our dear friends, to stay away from us till the dust settles. And the economy might not have the depth to meet another crisis that isolates Pakistan. The question that everybody needs to answer is whether it would be worth it to have an exercise in representative government, but one which comes at the cost of unprecedented financial suffering for the people and a possible default for the sovereign. True, provincial governments are well within their rights to dissolve assemblies to pressure the centre into folding as well, but since the government of the people, for the people, and so on must also place the interests of the people before everything else, perhaps it’s time, now that the by-elections are over, for all principal parties to put their personal agendas aside, work together, and find the solution best suited for the people. Then we can have the general election as well. *