Pakistan sinking deeper into the mire

Vivek Katju

Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

THE contrast between India and Pakistan this week cannot be starker. India will be hosting a summit of the G20, the world’s premier multilateral organisation, and the eyes of the international community will be on New Delhi. On the other hand, Pakistan will remain in the shadows as it continues to deal with deep economic trouble, political doldrums, social distress and the demons of terrorism which it nurtured primarily to undermine India’s stability and progress but which are now biting it.

The caretaker government is facing popular anger over rising energy and electricity prices.

Yet, it is unlikely that Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership will draw any lesson from where India stands today and its own very difficult situation. In mature countries, such contrasting situations would have led to serious introspection. But it will not be so in Pakistan. That would require an examination of its strategies to handle India, if not of its foundational ideology. Both issues are beyond a rational discussion among Pakistan’s military and civilian elites.

Instead, the Pakistani leadership, which is actually in the hands of army chief Gen Asim Munir at present, will continue with its unremitting hostility towards India and look for succour from its traditional donors, who are showing a growing fatigue with throwing money down a bottomless pit. Meanwhile, the elites will seek to focus national attention on the possible success of its cricket team. Were that to happen, it would mask a thousand failures and, at least for a brief period, lift the present national mood, darkened by all-round uncertainties.

The National Assembly and the provincial assemblies of Sindh and Balochistan were dissolved in August. Those of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa were dissolved in January. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan had hoped that elections to these bodies would be held in April and would enable him to showcase his great popularity, especially in Punjab. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Imran’s favour, Gen Munir and the then government led by Shehbaz Sharif stymied these attempts. Instead, they embroiled Imran in a web of cases. Effectively, from May onwards, he has been in prison. Gen Munir is determined to undermine Imran and his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). From behind the scenes, he is ensuring that Imran and his principal supporters are politically neutralised.

As constitutionally required, caretaker governments are in place. The Central government is led by Anwaarul Haq Kakar, a little-known politician from Balochistan with Pashtun ethnicity. The Kakar government’s task is to manage the day-to-day running of the country. It is not empowered to take any long-term policy decisions. However, the National Assembly, prior to its dissolution, passed a legislation that permits Kakar to take steps to ensure that the economic plan agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continues to be implemented. This plan is to prevent a default, not to take the economy on an upward trajectory.

The Shehbaz Sharif government agreed to a digitally conducted census. Along with that, a delimitation exercise is essential. That would result in delayed elections to the National Assembly, even as the constitutional requirement mandates holding them by mid-November. Pakistan’s Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja has indicated that elections would be conducted in mid-February. That well may be his intention, but unless Gen Munir is certain that the possibility of the PTI returning to power is ruled out, he simply cannot afford to have elections; hence, they may be delayed.

For him, the fly in the ointment may be the next Chief Justice, Qazi Faez Isa, who is scheduled to succeed Umar Ata Bandial next week. Bandial is widely believed to be sympathetic to Imran, but Isa is certainly not so. However, Isa may prove to be a stickler for constitutional propriety and may therefore play an interventionist role with regard to the national election schedule. Thus, while he may not give Imran the relief that the ‘Kaptaan’ would need to get out of the legal web and contest the election, Isa may press for early elections, thereby upsetting Gen Munir’s calculations. This is so especially because the Sharif brothers are showing no great urgency to prepare for the elections and a mood of despondency is setting in among the PML(N) ranks amid Nawaz Sharif’s continued presence in London. The question is whether he is waiting for a signal that Isa will show him some latitude regarding the cases he is facing, so that he can safely return to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the caretaker government is facing popular anger over rising energy and electricity prices. As the Shehbaz Sharif-led Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government needed to ensure that the IMF continued with the bailout programme, it had to take unpopular decisions. While the economic and financial mess was created by the army-Imran hybrid government, and at a deeper level by an irresponsible Pakistani business-political-military elite, popular anger would be directed towards the PDM government. The other constituents of the PDM are attempting to shift the blame on the PML(N) and the coalition is now broken. Gen Munir is aware of this political and economic reality.

He is trying to handle this by meeting the business community to reassure it of Pakistan’s vast resources, which will attract investments from countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He is seeking to focus its attention on the Special Investment Facilitation Council, which is a civil-military body tasked with attracting foreign investments. These will remain pies in the sky unless a modicum of stability returns to Pakistan. For the time being, the people are grappling with a faltering economy. One of its aspects is the dwindling value of the Pakistani rupee as compared to the US dollar. Two years ago, the dollar was worth 168 Pakistani rupees. Today, it is worth PKR 308. Gen Munir wants to end speculation, but that is beyond any army’s control, even a powerful one like that of Pakistan.

In the coming months, India will have to closely monitor developments, especially to ascertain if (and how) Gen Munir will seek to reinforce the narrative of an ‘enemy’ India under the present dispensation, and if that will lead him to undertake irrational actions.

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