THIS is not the turnaround we were expecting. The government has announced it will abandon its search for a “strategic investor” to take minority stake and management control of PIA in response to a strike by the company’s unions.

This represents a rapid reversal of its commitment given to the IMF back in August.

Not many people actually believed that the government would be able to deliver on its commitment, especially when it said it would get the job done by December 2015.

Also read: PIA privatisation postponed for six months

But neither did anyone expect it to cave in so fast, after only a few days into a strike that didn’t disrupt flight schedules, only reservations.

Adding to the surprise was the fact that just a day earlier, one minister had given a tough public statement that the government might exercise the option of declaring flight operations an “essential service”, making it illegal for the strike to continue. Then suddenly, the government announced an abandonment of its plans to invite a strategic investor.

This is ad hocism at its best. Did the government really go into the whole search for a strategic investor without knowing that the workers’ unions would react to the strike?

Did they really have no game plan to deal with the eventuality? It seems so, and sadly enough, the real reasons why the more important structural reforms in areas such as public-enterprise restructuring remain stuck in limbo three years after the general elections have become clear.

One can endlessly debate the best reform path forward for PIA. But there can be no two opinions on the rapid volte-face, a turnaround of an entirely different kind, that the government has just pulled off.

This is no way to advance reforms or even put up an appearance of tackling the underlying structural problems that plague the economy. The signal that is sent out by this decision is that the government is too weak, too fearful and far too short-sighted to undertake the difficult task of putting the economy on a sustainable footing.

Published in Dawn, February 1st, 2016