There is no denying that the economy is in very bad shape. A telling sign is that, leave alone talking up the rupee, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar felt the need, once again, to say that there was no danger of default. While it is possible that Pakistan will duly make its next major debt servicing payment, due next month, the state of the foreign exchange reserves after that will give a skeletal look. It should not be forgotten that Pakistan imports fuel not just for its movement, but for the electricity it needs to power its factories, lights its homes and run the tubewells that irrigate the fields where it grows its food. It also imports the palm oil used to make vegetable ghee, as well as life-saving drugs. Already, there are signs. The loadshedding introduced recently, as well as the closure of markets and restaurants are rather desperate attempts to save on power generation, and the furnace imports that make them possible. Now that factories are closing down and putting labour out of work, the signs of hard times are not just visible, but painfully obvious.
However, the solution of a technocratic government is not going to work. It has been shot down by both the PDM and the PTI, with reason. Mainly, they don’t work. The technocratic governments of the Zia and Musharraf eras showed that carpetbaggers ran in and grasped positions. Those eras, as well as the PTI era, showed that the experts of Pakistani origin preferred to stay abroad, and Pakistan got those who were on the make here, after failing somehow abroad. If one looks at the ‘Bangladesh model’, when a caretaker government’s tenure was prolonged (from October 2006- December 2008), there is a return to periodic elections.
Therefore, only an elected government can take the country out of its present difficulty. The PDM replaced the PTI because it felt better able to handle the economy. It is perhaps futile to argue whether the PTI was at fault, except to determine whether the PTI now has any solutions. If the present government has any solutions, it must implement them, even if it involves taking hard decisions, even if it involves expending more of its political capital.
