- To distract from the uncomfortable reality
Prime Minister Imran Khan had made several bold promises before coming to power. Among them was to ‘end corruption’ by jailing his political opponents and that is exactly what he did in his first year and a half in office. Unfortunately, that is also the only promise that was kept. The economy is taking one hit after the other, affecting the common man the most as record inflation and unemployment deal blows to the standard of living. The corruption mantra had so far worked relatively well to distract from this reality, but that is no longer the case as most of those jailed are either out on bail or on the road to acquittal, while those still behind bars will get relief as a result of NAB’s wings being clipped. Focus has therefore shifted to selling pipedreams of transforming the country into a welfare state. Speaking at the inauguration of the Azakhel dry port in Nowshera PM Khan made some more bold promises; primarily that the revival of Pakistan Railways would generate jobs, trade, revenue and tourism.
There are obvious problems in achieving this, chief among them Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed, who has proven to be incompetent at running the massive state-owned company, at times seeming uninterested in the job, looking for something easier to do. Then there is the proposal of adding a Peshawar-Jalalabad route to the ML-1 track that will supposedly “end smuggling in the country”. Leaving aside the infrastructural challenge of such a route, Pakistan currently has less than cordial relations with Afghanistan which would first need to be improved through better diplomacy in order to move towards some sort of bilateral trade transportation system.
It is high time the PTI government realise that the populace is growing weary of the party’s shambolic performance that it then attempts to mask by making tall claims in fancy speeches. This strategy has started to fail, exposing an all-talk and no-walk reality. Now that the PM has been made to dial down his personal vendetta against political opponents, he has enough time to reflect and come up with a decisive strategy that includes a better and more original vision than ‘creating a welfare state’. There have to be specific goals, milestones and defined timelines. He must surely be aware that his likely and willing replacements have increased in numbers in the past two weeks.
