Business Recorder Column July 26, 2022

Gasping for breath

 

Rashed Rahman

 

It proved difficult to put pen to paper today as the whole country waited with bated breath for the Supreme Court (SC) to pronounce on the petition challenging Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker Dost Muhammad Mazari’s ruling rejecting 10 Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) MPAs’ votes in the run-off election for Chief Minister on July 22, 2022. On Saturday, July 23, the SC bench of three members headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial held the requests of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and top lawyers’ bodies for a full court to hear the case and issues surrounding it in abeyance. On Monday, July 25, the SC bench first postponed a decision on the formation of a full court bench till 5:30 pm, but after the hearing resumed at that time, decided the parties before the court should be heard on the matter first and the issue of formation of a full court bench be decided later. Last reports said the PML-N counsel argued that his case included the reasoning behind the demand for a full court hearing, but if the bench was not inclined to hear this, he would refrain. The court seemed to appreciate this attitude and approach. What may transpire next and how the hearing goes cannot at this point be predicted or commented upon.

What can, however, be dilated upon is a recap of how we got here, what are the implications of the extreme polarisation between the two sides of the political divide, and where the political and economic crisis may be headed.

Imran Khan’s removal as Prime Minister (PM) in April 2022 through a no-confidence motion marked the start of the present round of political turmoil and instability, which further roiled a struggling economy bequeathed by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government’s mishandling of the economy. During the no-confidence drama, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) betrayed their partisanship towards Imran Khan by the former refusing to preside over the session and the latter dismissing the no-confidence motion on the basis of a trumped up foreign conspiracy. This conspiracy theory has fortunately been finally shot down by the superior judiciary.

Since his fall, Imran Khan has gone on the warpath against his political foes (now in office) and (off and on) the establishment. Ironically, the way things have developed since in terms of the daily barbs hurled at each other by the PML-N-led ruling coalition and the PTI, one is left scratching one’s head about the emerging trend of both sides ‘wooing’ the establishment, yet not hesitating to criticise it if things go against their will. While the establishment has been maintaining an enigmatic silence, reports have now surfaced of a ‘soft intervention’ to persuade the warring politicians to sit down calmly and find a political solution that helps bolster the teetering economy.

If we cast a glance back at our history, it seems the more time passes and things change in Pakistan, the more they remain the same. From Independence till at least the General Ziaul Haq era (1977-88), the military, bureaucracy, and the ruling elite comprised largely of capitalists and large landowners held the country in thrall to an authoritarian dispensation. But this period also saw firm and principled resistance to this oppressive legerdemain. However, from 1988 to date, while the military did overthrow a civilian democratically elected government (Nawaz Sharif’s) in 1999, it did not declare martial law, unlike past military regimes. It had no need to, as subsequent events that transpired proved. First and foremost, most liberal and some progressive elements bought into the ‘liberal’ image projected by military coup-maker General Pervez Musharraf and jumped like lemmings off a cliff into his lap. Next the SC not only resurrected the so-called doctrine of necessity to justify the coup, it anointed the military dictator with the power to amend the Constitution, without even being asked to do so! The ‘lemmings’ first mentioned eventually came to rue their shortsighted, unprincipled support to General Musharraf, but by then it was too late. The superior judiciary (under CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry) eventually fell out with the military dictator and was ‘dismissed’. Then the right and left combined to turf out Musharraf through the Lawyers’ Movement. The coup de grace to the Musharraf dictatorship however, was the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, for which the self-exiled (with the help of his mother institution) and now reportedly seriously ill former dictator has still to be brought to justice (not to mention the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, which impelled part of the otherwise traditionally quiescent Bugti tribe to revolt).

I quote these historical facts to point to what we have become: a society of power worshippers and collaborators, with principled, ethical people with integrity being reduced to a threatened species. The current tussle between the factions of the ruling elite appears to make even the prospects of our deeply flawed parliamentary democracy darker and graver. The rumoured split in the establishment in support of one or the other side of the political divide threatens its traditional iron discipline, with even graver implications for the country’s future.

While all the shenanigans of the two sides of the political divide play out daily before our eyes, the people seem to have no say as to their fate or future, nor their troubled present. More than ever, what is needed is a mobilisation of the masses to wrest from this wretched order a new social contract in favour of the people, if not a completely new order in confirmation of the people’s rights.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column July 19, 2022

An unexpected victory

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) has pulled an unexpected rabbit out of its hat by trouncing the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the by-elections to 20 seats in the latter’s stronghold of Punjab. The by-elections had been necessitated by the defection of PTI’s 20 MPAs, who voted for Hamza Shahbaz Sharif as Chief Minister (CM) of the province. The final electoral tally was PTI 15, PML-N four, and an independent one. This gives the PTI a simple majority in the Punjab Assembly, allowing it to elect Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, Speaker of the Punjab Assembly and from the PTI’s ally Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), as the CM in a run-off vote on July 22, 2022, as ordered by the Supreme Court.

In retrospect, the reasons for the surprise defeat seem clear, although the implications for the future of the federal coalition government headed by the PML-N’s Prime Minister (PM) Shahbaz Sharif seem forbidding. Looking at the results, the PTI won in all three areas of Punjab – northern, central and southern – evenly distributed at five seats each, implying an irresistible tilt of the voters towards the PTI.

Two critical factors suggest why the PML-N came a cropper and PTI upended all expectations in these by-elections. One, the candidates fielded by the PML-N were all former PTI MPAs who had defected to vote for Hamza Shahbaz as CM. The only exception was one seat in Lahore, where a PML-N candidate won. This outcome implies the voters did not appreciate the PTI defectors standing on PML-N tickets. Within the PML-N at constituency level, there was both resentment and apathy at the tickets being handed out to PTI defectors en masse, with hardly a nod at loyal PML-N workers and leaders at local constituency level. Despite Maryam Nawaz’s campaigning, the PML-N narrative failed to inspire or match Imran Khan’s aggressive, conspiracy theory-laden bluster. There may also be some element of our traditional tilt towards the perceived underdog in any political/electoral contest.

Never one to give up an advantage, Imran Khan persists in his rampage against ‘rigging’ through the state machinery and a ‘totally biased’ Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), all of which he claims the PTI overcame through the efforts of its workers and voters. Throughout the election campaign, Imran Khan had deployed the double-edged sword of alleged rigging and claims of victory, a gambit that covered all contingencies but which now appears silly after the PTI’s sweep. If the ECP was ‘biased’, how did the largely peaceful, fair and free elections, local brawls and controversies notwithstanding, take place? How did an opposition PTI win? Now Imran Khan, fresh from his triumph, is demanding fair and free general elections under a ‘credible’ ECP!

The second critical factor in the PML-N’s defeat is the political cost it was forced to pay by taking hard economic decisions on the IMF’s urging to avoid default and meltdown. Inflation inherited from the PTI’s bad governance was exacerbated by the PML-N’s being forced to raise petrol and energy prices in response to trends in the international market. The reduction in petrol and diesel prices the other day, made affordable by a drop in international prices, proved too little, too late.

Maryam Nawaz and other PML-N leaders have accepted defeat gracefully, although disappointment is writ large on their faces. Both PTI and the PML-N-led coalition are meeting to chalk out their strategy from here on. With three provinces out of its grasp and Sindh under Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) rule, PM Shahbaz Sharif’s federal coalition government is threatened by inability to run the affairs of the federation because of the absence of consensus and the possibility that if three provincial Assemblies are dissolved, a general election looms closer than before. And despite agreement with the IMF, the external aid situation may become more fraught, adding to the weakness of the federal government.

In their deliberations on the situation that has now emerged, the PML-N will no doubt, at the insistence of Nawaz Sharif, reflect with hindsight on the wisdom of removing Imran Khan and his government through a no-confidence motion, thereby inheriting the economic mess the PTI left behind. Nawaz Sharif had argued for letting Imran Khan remain in office till his tenure expired in 2023, pointing out that his incompetence and blundering (including the falling out with his ‘selectors’) would weaken and destroy his credibility, i.e. letting him sink under the weight of his own floundering. This by-election has strengthened that argument to the status virtually of unassailable.

It was PPP co-Chairperson Asif Ali Zardari’s Machiavellian approach to politics that prevailed with Shahbaz Sharif, no doubt leavened by the temptation of prime ministership for himself and the chief ministership of Punjab for his son Hamza. Shahbaz Sharif was also considered more amenable to playing ball with the military establishment. Now events have proved Nawaz Sharif’s political instincts correct. The only party that has suffered in this debacle is the PML-N. The PPP had no major stakes in Punjab, since its presence there is a pale reflection today of its once mighty dominance in the largest (by population) and most powerful province in the country. In passing, let us not forget that it was PML-N that eventually replaced the PPP in Punjab. Whether the by-election loss implies the PML-N has itself been replaced by the PTI in Punjab may be too early to say. The decisions by all sides of the political divide on future strategy will be the best indicator of the direction things may move in the days ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The July 2022 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

 The July 2022 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Rashed Rahman: The prospects for revolution today.

2. Prof Neelam Hussain: Book Review of Fawzia Afzal-Khan's Siren Songs: Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

Business Recorder Column June 28, 2022

New pink wave in Latin America

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Gustav Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, was elected the first left-wing President in Colombia’s history on June 19, 2022 in a run-off that gave him 50.5 percent of the votes as against his right-wing rival Rodolfo Hernandez’s 47.2 percent. Long before another, better known guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016, M-19 gave up armed struggle in 1990 and became a political party that helped rewrite the country’s Constitution. Eventually, Gustav Petro became a forceful opposition leader known for denouncing human rights abuses and corruption. He rose to become the capital Bogota’s mayor and is currently a Senator.

Petro’s victory has evoked a wave of joy and celebration amongst fellow Latin American Leftist leaders. The continent is currently in the midst of a second swing to the Left, dubbed a ‘second pink wave’. The ‘pink’ in that description refers to a left-wing trend that has some significant Latin American countries in its fold. Even though these left-wing governments are seen as more populist than ideological, social democratic rather than militantly revolutionary, they represent the second pink wave in the continent’s modern history. The countries that have moved to the left in their last elections are Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Bolivia and Honduras. Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Peru’s Pedro Castillo, Bolivia’s Luis Arce have all felicitated Gustav Petro on his victory. Mexico’s President Manuel Lopez Obrador has expressed the hope that Petro’s victory will help heal the wounds in a country where political assassinations have been rife. A 10-year Colombian civil war followed the 1948 assassination of Leftist presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, which proved to be a precursor of the six-decade armed conflict between the state and the leftist guerrillas of FARC and M-19. But Colombia was not alone in suffering these wounds.

During the Cold War, the US supported and facilitated ‘Operation Condor’ to subdue left-wing rebellions by guerrilla groups almost throughout Latin America. This operation, carried out by US-trained and -supplied Latin American armies in a continent swamped by military coups during the 1950s to the 1970s (with Washington’s blessing) yielded some 60,000 deaths due to assassinations carried out by the military and security services, 30,000 of these in Argentina alone. According to the Archives of Terror, 50,000 were killed, 30,000 disappeared, 400,000 were imprisoned. Cross-border operations (according to a 2002 source) resulted in 402 killed. Those in exile for fear of their lives were kidnapped, tortured and killed in US-allied countries or transferred to their home countries to be executed. Hundreds or thousands (the figures are difficult to pin down) were abducted, tortured and murdered. They included dissidents, leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests, nuns, students, teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerrillas. Their targets included guerrilla movements such as MIR, the Montoneros (ERP), Tupamaros, etc. But the bloody drive was expanded wholesale against all political opponents, their families and others by these military juntas. A short list of Leftist governments elected in Latin America and overthrown by US-sponsored or -supported military coups includes Guatemala 1954, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973 and Argentina 1976.

The pattern is clear. The poverty, deprivation and misery of the people of Latin America found expression in left-wing movements coming to power through the ballot box and being overthrown by military coups backed by Washington in the modern-day version of the Monroe Doctrine. This pattern had exceptions in the shape of left-wing guerrilla movements that challenged the military dictatorships during the 1960s and 1970s. Most were inspired by the Cuban revolution of 1959, but displayed a wide variety of strategies, including peasant-based guerrilla struggles and urban guerrilla struggles. Operation Condor was aimed at ensuring Washington’s imperialist hegemony in Latin America.

In the aftermath of the defeat of most if not all these guerrilla movements by the 1980s, the first pink tide emerged at the start of the 21^stcentury. Countries that elected left-of-centre, left-leaning, radical social-democratic governments were dubbed ‘pink tide’ nations and the trend as ‘post-neoliberalism’ or ‘socialism of the 21^stcentury’. The leftist governments of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela were characterised as ‘anti-American’ (i.e. the US), ‘populist’ for their rejection of the neoliberal Washington Consensus, and ‘authoritarian’ (particularly Nicaragua and Venezuela).

This first pink tide was followed by a conservative, right-wing wave in the early 2010s as a direct reaction to the pink tide. Some have argued that this first pink tide was in fact two tides, the first from the late 1990s to the early 2000s and the second from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. This latter trend of the resurgence of a pink wave included Mexico 2018, Argentina 2019, Bolivia 2020, Chile, Honduras and Peru 2021, and now Colombia 2022.

Given the history of US hegemony over Latin America, the current pink tide has its task cut out for it, precisely because its attempts to wield its hold on power in favour of the poor, dispossessed and indigenous peoples will inevitably trigger US conspiracies to defeat and overthrow these left-wing governments. The only problem today however is that military coups are no longer in ‘fashion’. The abortive campaign to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela through parliament and via the ballot box failed, whereas the electoral defeat of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua was transformed into electoral victory at the next election.

The US also has lost its ability to build a successful reactionary coalition of its Latin American allies to isolate and bring down left-wing governments. Washington’s recent Summit of the Americas was boycotted by some Latin American countries such as Mexico because the US had not invited Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. Without overstating the case, it is to be hoped that Latin America has put the brutal past stoked by the US behind it and the Left has developed sufficient depth of support to be able successfully to ward off any attempts at regime change through foul means at the behest of the northern hegemon.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Column June 14, 2022

An unsustainable development model

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Far be it from me to add to the reams of newsprint and hours of air time devoted to the federal budget 2022-23 presented by Finance Minister Miftah Ismail in the National Assembly on Saturday, June 11, 2022. In any case, this traditional outpouring of analysis and comment is led by many much more competent than me in this field. However, it behoves me to touch on at least the most pertinent and important points of the budget in order to buttress my argument that Pakistan has incrementally over time arrived at an unsustainable model of economic development.

First, the facts. In their integrity statement to parliament required under the Public Finance Act as part of the federal budget, Miftah Ismail and his Secretary Finance Hamed Yaqoob Sheikh conceded that their mismanagement of contracts in their previous tenure was (is?) a major source of the current energy sector challenges. Further, the statement identifies domestic political uncertainty, the Ukraine war, higher provincial deficits and significant (continuing) losses and debt of state-owned enterprises as key risks to the budget and the medium term economic outlook.

The statement goes on to argue that subsidies, debt servicing and lower revenue collection because of import and demand contraction pose substantial risks to economic growth and the credibility of the budget’s fiscal and monetary projections. The power sector’s woes are highlighted as the high cost of generation, attributable to costlier (out of date?) technology and poorly designed contracts that result in exorbitant profits for private investors and front-loading of debt repayments during the first 10 years of plant operation, above average transmission and distribution losses and below average recovery of electricity bills. As a result of all these factors, the power sector is the largest recipient of subsidies currently.

Oil, gas and coal imports constitute a large portion of our import bill. Their global prices affect the price of various goods and services. The current volatility in the prices of these fuels is a major factor in burgeoning inflation, with its fallout on interest and exchange rates. Rising global prices of fuel and a falling rupee could produce lower GDP and revenue growth, feed into a higher current account and fiscal deficit, and increase public debt. The statement admits we do not have in place any fiscal buffers or a risk management framework for dealing with adverse shocks in the price of imported fuels.

While it is a given that the PML-N-led coalition government’s hands were tied to a considerable extent by the legacy of the Imran Khan government’s mismanagement, the critical question is whether the budget finds favour with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), without whose imprimatur we cannot hope to receive financial aid from other multilateral lenders nor our bilateral friends and allies. Already, the IMF has indicated the total unacceptability of the government's proposed relief in Personal Income Tax (PIT) of Rs 47 billion. The government will have no option but to change this proposal if it hopes to see desperately needed money rolling in.

Despite the budget’s claims of taxing the rich and giving relief to the poor, the people by and large are not impressed because their day to day lives and experience confront prices beyond the reach of the average household, with little or no hope of improvement in the foreseeable future. This federal budget has been dubbed a survivor’s budget. ‘Survival’ underlines the allocation of 57 percent of the budget’s outlay of Rs 9.5 trillion for debt interest payments (Rs 4.0 trillion) and defence (Rs 1.5 trillion). Since the remaining 47 percent is not enough, Rs 740 billion additional taxes have been imposed, of which the fuel levy alone will fetch Rs 300 billion (this levy having been raised from Rs 30 per litre to Rs 50). The banks and real estate, arguably two flourishing sectors in the present economic scenario, will be subjected to higher taxation. Meanwhile the inflation target of 11.5 percent seems unrealistic and not credible, judging by present  trends.

The shape of the real economy is at the heart of this seemingly endless economic crisis. Agriculture has suffered neglect and mismanagement over many years, resulting in, amongst other problems, inadequate water and fertilizer for food crops (particularly wheat, so much water having been diverted wastefully to sugarcane, driven by vested interest). The famed ‘bread basket’ of the entire Subcontinent in the past is today forced to contemplate import of even this essential staple food crop, wheat. Surviving industry in almost a half century of deindustrialisation in Pakistan remains uncompetitive internationally and therefore addicted to rent-seeking from the state in the form of various concessions (the textile industry first and foremost).

Pakistan has now solidly arrived in what is known as a debt trap: borrowing in order to repay past loans. In the absence of a turnaround in the real economy, Pakistan will continue to flounder, dependent wholly on the goodwill of the international lenders and those friends and allies still willing to bail us out (again and again). How long is this economic path (calling it a ‘model’ may be misplaced) sustainable and at what cost?

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The June 2022 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

The June 2022 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Gemini: The elephant in the room.

2. Tricontinental Institute for Social Research: Go to Yanan: Culture and National Liberation.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

Business Recorder Column June 7, 2022

Grand dialogue: non-starter

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Prime Minister (PM) Shahbaz Sharif wants a ‘grand dialogue’ among all stakeholders to somehow keep sectors such as education, health and industries ‘above petty politics’. In fact, the PM, like many other well meaning commentators in Pakistan, want the economy as a whole to be taken out of the sphere of politics, implying that there is some irrefutable wisdom about how to go about development without allowing politics (meaning critical thought) to intrude. Such ideas have found traction since the decline of the Left worldwide and the wholesale embrace of a capitalist economy, disguised in such rubrics as a ‘Charter of Economy’. The fact is, however, that peeling politics away from economics is impossible.

In a class society attended by ethnic and sub-national deprivation of rights, exploitation by the federal state of smaller federating units and repression, asking for the economy to be ‘sanitised’ from politics is asking for the moon. Economics as a science has long ago deviated from its origins as ‘political economy’, since the pioneers being intellectually honest, could not deny that political considerations and interests dictated the form of the economy and how its benefits are distributed.

In any case, given the state of political polarisation in our country since the (perfectly legitimate) ouster of the Imran Khan government, any call for a grand dialogue that rises above partisan considerations in the interests of the country (whatever one’s reservations on the logic of the idea) predictably made shipwreck on the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s) outright rejection of the idea. The PTI went further in saying the only dialogue it wished to hold with the government was on fresh elections. In fact the entire thrust of Imran Khan and the PTI’s campaign since their government’s departure has been to put pressure on the government, establishment and judiciary to bring Imran Khan back into power. Unfortunately, Imran Khan’s increasing desperation, especially after the failed long march on Islamabad, has produced some outlandish statements from him. One such was the interview in which he, Cassandra-like, predicted an economic meltdown (without of course mentioning his contribution to an economy in free fall) that would not only cripple the armed forces and roll back our nuclear deterrent, but lead to the splintering of the country into three pieces (unless of course he was reinstalled in power). One cannot help but be intrigued how Imran Khan arrived at this ‘three pieces’ scenario, given that he did not enlighten us what shape or form such a division would take or why.

Not unnaturally, such a ‘doomsday’ prediction evoked universal condemnation, with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the lead. The former has mounted a campaign of protest rallies on the issue. Even this kind of exaggerated alarmist prognosis is unlikely (even more so) to improve Imran Khan’s increasingly thin chances of re-entering the corridors of power, particularly since neither the government (which intends to stay in office until August 2023), nor the establishment or judiciary seem to be amenable to his pleas. The Supreme Court (SC), to whom Imran Khan appealed for safety from the government’s resolve not to let him repeat his long march, has asked for a detailed report on the previous march, Imran Khan’s actions and instructions to his followers on May 25, 2022. If the facts come out, the appeal to the SC may turn out to be a self-inflicted judicial noose around Imran Khan’s neck.

That neck is in trouble already from Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah’s ‘reminder’ that the security provided to Imran Khan would ultimately be the weapon used for his arrest once his pre-emptive bail against arrest by the Peshawar High Court is vacated.

The mere mention of the possibility of Imran Khan’s arrest so incensed his PTI followers that a torrent of statements emanated from the party’s leadership warning of the reaction to any such action. One emotional PTI supporter from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) went so far as to threaten he would conduct a suicide bombing in the event his leader was arrested. Imran Khan having returned to Bani Gala from his ‘safe haven’ in KP, the PTI reiterated they had instituted their own security for their increasingly embattled leader. This portends a possible clash between the forces of law and order of the state and the PTI’s private security for Imran Khan.

Imran Khan’s anti-corruption mantra is also not doing so well these days. Scandals are emerging regarding the alleged triumvirate of Imran Khan, his wife, and her friend Farah Khan. The government seems bent on following up this line of inquiry as well as seeking other evidence to let the air out of the morally indignant anti-corruption mantra of the PTI.

Ironically, having ‘resigned’ from the National Assembly (NA) before the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan, the PTI now intends to contest the Punjab Assembly seats of their 25 dissidents unseated by the Election Commission of Pakistan for voting against the party whip. Obviously provincial politics and the numbers game in the Punjab Assembly are the considerations on this score. But it stands in sharp contrast with the PTI ‘quitting’ the NA and arguably denying itself a feasible platform from which to pursue its campaign.

Imran Khan and the PTI increasingly seem to be reduced to ranting ineffectually, while the government is struggling to manage the economic crisis. Fifty days is too short a period to deliver final judgement on the PML-N-led coalition government’s economic performance given the mess the PTI left behind, but this government’s credibility and legitimacy will rise or fall in the weeks and months ahead on its handling of inflation and the energy crisis (particularly load shedding).

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com