The iron gets
hotter
Rashed Rahman
As these lines
are being written, the Islamabad High Court has rejected Asif Zardari and
Faryal Talpur’s plea for extension of bail in the fake accounts case.
Theoretically, this clears the way for their arrest by the National
Accountability Bureau (NAB). Since the brother and sister left the court even
before the bail rejection was announced, it remains to be seen whether NAB will
follow the prescribed course of informing the National Assembly (NA) Speaker
before carrying out the arrests, unlike in the case of Ali Wazir and Mohsin
Dawar of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) who were incarcerated in the wake
of the clash with the military at a check post in North Waziristan and have yet
to be produced in the NA despite Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP’s) Chairman
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s protest and demand on the floor of the house.
The PPP
leadership, including Asif Zardari and Bilawal, have been making threatening
noises for weeks now that Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s)
government’s ‘time is up’ and it will go when a mass protest movement is
launched after the upcoming All Parties Conference (APC) to be convened by
Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam’s (JUI’s) Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Even on the eve of the
bail cancellation, the PPP threatened a ‘forceful agitation’ if Asif Zardari
was arrested. Asif Zardari himself continues to emphasise the need for the
opposition to unite against the government. This in spite of elements within
the PPP who are wary of being used to bring grist to the Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz’s (PML-N’s) mill that could fulfil Shahbaz Sharif’s desire to get
some concession from the establishment on the basis of ‘live and let live’.
It is no secret
that Shahbaz Sharif advises caution in opposing the will of the establishment.
Nawaz Sharif on the other hand, bound in jail, is pushing his daughter Maryam
Nawaz to attend the APC and lead the PML-N into agitation mode. Whatever the
hangups both major opposition parties have about each other stemming from the
past, their own targeting through NAB and the possibility of a fresh lawyers
agitation on the issue of the reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa of the
Supreme Court appears to be impelling a conglomeration of forces to come out on
the streets against the incumbents.
The lawyers’
community seems united on the mala fide intent behind the reference against
Justice Isa for his bold and independent judgements. The exception is a group
of Punjab lawyers who have rejected the call of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC)
and other bar councils throughout the country for a strike on June 14, 2019,
the day the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) is scheduled to hear the reference. Chief
Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa could not escape questions about the
reference even at a conference in Cambridge, UK. He circumspectly advised the
public to have faith in the judges and that they would decide the reference
justly.
While the
lawyers and two main opposition parties mull an agitation, the Awami National
Party has taken the lead by kicking off a protest movement throughout Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa against the crippling inflation that has made people’s lives
miserable since the PTI came to office. This is the fourth possible mass base
for the agitation – the people – fed up of the PTI’s ‘gift’ of a backbreaking
price hike, lay offs, no jobs, and more of the same threatened by the impending
austerity budget ushering in more taxes.
Shahbaz Sharif’s
return from an extended stay in London for medical check ups (he is a cancer
survivor) has punched a big hole in the repeated claim by government ministers
that he had run away. Now that he has returned, the king of foul-mouthed
repartee, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid is still harping on the old tune that
he will run away again. As far as we know, Shahbaz Sharif is due to preside
over the PML-N leadership meeting today (June 11, 2019) and his party’s
Economic Advisory Council’s post-budget meeting. Reports speak of Shahbaz
Sharif’s preference for taking the government to task for its sins of omission
and commission, particularly in the economic sphere, inside parliament, whereas
his brother Nawaz thinks the time has come for a street agitation in
combination with the PPP, rest of the opposition parties, the lawyers and, if
possible, the masses groaning under the inept economic management of the PTI
government.
With the annual Economic Survey about to be released, media
reports say the government has missed every one of its own modest targets. Of
course this is hotly contested by the spokespersons of the government. The matter
will only be finally settled when the Economic
Survey is in our hands and the opportunity to study it has been utilised. But
economic reporting over almost a year since the PTI came to power has been
presenting just such a dire picture of the economy. The government found itself
caught in a cleft stick of raising revenues through draconian measures that
caused falling business confidence to plummet even further. Five export
industries are about to have their zero-rating and other concessions reversed in
this year’s budget. That may well prove their dire prediction of a consequent
loss of $ three billion exports correct. The point is that when you have a
concessionary regime to boost exports, at the best of times it is advisable to
withdraw such incentives gradually, having put the industries on notice and
allowed a window of opportunity to become efficient and competitive. In times
like what we are going through now, it is doubly advisable to make haste slowly
so as to balance the contrary goals of withdrawal of concessions while
hopefully not adversely affecting exports, let alone increasing them.
Pakistan’s
unfortunate lot has revolved around ‘experiments’ at the behest of the
establishment that have, without exception, eventually proved a failure and brought
in bigger problems in their wake. The current exercise to paint the two main
opposition parties corrupt while turning a blind eye to corruption that is
endemic in the system from top to bottom, will eventually be exposed for the
red herring and misplaced concreteness it embodies. The looming ignominious
failure of the Imran Khan experiment seems destined to soon join the long
lineup of such failures in our history. The nagging questions that remain are:
what will the establishment do if this prognosis proves correct, and, when will
it learn the ineluctable lesson of history that it cannot do the country any
good by such machinations and has to allow the political process to play itself
out without this kind of manipulation if Pakistan is to escape the clutches of
its present predicament/s.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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