Gathering storm
Rashed Rahman
The political landscape is evolving in a direction that
spells trouble for the incumbent government and its alleged establishment
patrons. The PPP held a People’s Lawyers Forum (PLF) convention in Islamabad on
October 21, 2018, over which former president and PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali
Zardari presided. After the convention, during a press conference, Zardari
lambasted the PTI government as ‘incompetent’, predicted its inability to
complete its five year tenure, and called upon the opposition political parties
to unite against the incumbents. (No one, it seems, thought of asking him what
would follow if the government fell, i.e. did its ‘patrons’ have a Plan B up
their sleeve?)
In answer to the question that lies at the heart of the
inability of the powerful opposition to unite against the PTI government so
far, Zardari vented his well-known anger at Nawaz Sharif over the cases the
PML-N had instituted against him. Dilating on Nawaz Sharif’s current spate of
troubles, he said Sharif was getting what he deserved. However, despite this,
he said, the possibility of a meeting with Nawaz Sharif could not be ruled out.
But he fended off a question whether the PPP would become part of any move to
dislodge the government by saying that will be decided when the time comes.
Dilating on the PTI government’s ‘incompetence’,
particularly where the economy is concerned, Zardari defended the track record
of the 2008-13 PPP government by arguing that they had inherited similar problems
to the PTI government from the Musharraf regime, which by then had exhausted
its international goodwill and inwards flow of aid. Despite that, he argued,
the PPP government had not burdened the poor and framed futuristic policies
(including CPEC), which the PML-N subsequent government nullified.
Calling Imran Khan the ‘prime minister-select’ (a sobriquet
the PPP, including its chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, seem to have latched
onto), Zardari said he did not attach any expectations to him since he
obviously could not run the government or even his own party. Zardari pointed
to the anomaly that Imran Khan’s illegal Banigala residence was being regularised
while the common people’s houses were being demolished. He went on to deny that
he had benefitted from Musharraf’s NRO, saying Nawaz Sharif and the MQM may
have but he himself was acquitted by the courts in all the cases against him.
In any case he dismissed Imran Khan’s talk of an NRO as a political stunt.
Another awkward question persuaded Zardari to trash National
Accountability Bureau (NAB) head Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal by saying although
he was part of his appointment, people with small minds find it difficult to
digest even a little power accorded to them and go haywire. He contrasted this
behaviour with his transfer of all powers to parliament when he was president.
The PLF convention adopted a series of resolutions, chief
amongst which were calling for the right to appeal against verdicts of the
Supreme Court in suo motu cases, change in the process of judges’ appointments,
and condemnation of NAB for targetting the opposition. They also vowed to
defend provincial autonomy granted under the 18th Amendment and
expressed grave concern at the interminable delays in the justice system. They
reiterated the demand for the setting up of a constitutional court, presumably
to relieve the existing superior judiciary of this burden to allow them to whittle
away the mountain of pending cases. PLF critiqued the PTI government brought to
power through a dubious electoral process as an ‘economic disaster’. PLF
pressed the government to eschew its aggressive confrontational style with its
political rivals and called upon it to turn towards a consultative (therefore inclusive)
process with all stakeholders. This may appear to be wishing for the moon since
the PTI’s political style has yet to transcend its ‘container-type’ hype. Last
but not least, the PLF reiterated to the Chief Justice of Pakistan its long-standing
demand for an early hearing and redressal of the injustice inflicted in the
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case.
What the PPP is saying holds a lot of water. In fact,
despite its relative marginalisation on the national political scene and being
confined to Sindh alone since 2013, in the current cut and thrust of parliamentary
politics, the PPP comes across as the only reassuringly mature, calm and
rational party in contrast with the foaming at the mouth of the PTI and the
retaliatory vitriol of the PML-N. The speeches by PML-N chief Shahbaz Sharif (produced
by an order of the Speaker), the PPP’s Syed Khursheed Shah and Information
Minister Fawad Chaudhry in the National Assembly the other day were a study in
contrasts, with Shah outshining the other two by a mile and a half.
The PPP may be the calmest, the PTI the most abusive, the
PML-N vitriolic, but what does all this palaver boil down to? Essentially the
people (especially the poor) are silent spectators to this right-right (or at
best -centre) struggle between the main political players, with the people’s
only ‘benefit’ the storm of inflation that has hit them since the PTI
government took office. The government’s raising of energy prices (with more to
come) has taken its toll of the pockets of the poor and common citizens. With
its dithering and virtually daily flip-flops, the PTI government cannot escape
responsibility for this storm, particularly since the uncertainty surrounding
going to the IMF or being able to secure assistance from friendly countries and
avoid the stranglehold of the IMF caused the stock market and the rupee to
crash. Every item of daily use, with food at its core, has gone up in the first
two months of this government, with arguably more pain to follow. The mood on
the street therefore (and in the by-polls) seems to be turning against the PTI,
and its assurances that all will be well a few months down the road have few
takers.
The question has been asked why Pakistan cannot free itself
of IMF programmes (the current one reportedly is the 23rd since
1958). While traditional economists point to the inherent need of a developing
economy for imports of plant, machinery and raw materials for the industrialisation
effort as indispensable, so far Pakistan’s economy has failed despite this to
have adequate export surpluses that could eventually surpass our unavoidable
level of imports. The eternal unfulfilled hope that this model of development
would eventually lead us on the path trodden by South Korea, the Asian Tigers,
etc, may be rooted in our failure to sustain the industrialisation drive and
move it up a notch from traditional manufacturing to today’s high-tech products
that have transformed the world economy.
But even if by some miracle Pakistan were able to overcome
its hobbled economic state a la the developing world’s success stories, would
this resolve (for us as much as the rest of the developing world) the profound
and so far unanswered questions related to the structure of the 21st
century global economy, Pakistan’s place in it and inability to overcome the extraction-of-surplus
structures that have it and most of the contemporary world in their grip, to
the benefit of the leading western powers led by the US?
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment