AS the PML-N-led coalition government completes five weeks in office, there are few hints of the shape its policy responses will take to tackle the dire state of the economy, worsened by rising global energy prices, runaway inflation and an alarming trade deficit.

In fact, there are contradictory signals coming about the Rs2.5 billion a day fuel subsidy, given in February this year by the PTI government in a desperate last-ditch attempt to hold on to power when it sensed the incoming challenge.

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has stressed how much the subsidy is costing and the hole it is creating in the national coffers but, at the same time, he says Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has shot down any increase in fuel prices because of its inflationary effect on the poor.

Of course, this is just one aspect of a multidimensional crisis but the financial-economic managers of the new government will be assessed on the basis of how they deal with the fuel subsidy so that their IMF programme commitments, as well as public support, stay intact.

The government seems to be wasting its time on non-issues.

The IMF has been clear the subsidy has to go and what’s been spent on it since February has to be recouped. But the IMF does not have to go back to the public for a fresh mandate in 19 months. Only the government can calibrate the blowback from, and the true cost of, more pain inflicted on the poor.

When the coalition came together, many of its leaders including PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said one of its top priorities would be electoral reform as there was a crying need to put in place a system that would ensure free, fair and transparent elections.

One needn’t remind the government that it does not have the luxury of a full five-year term and that next week it would complete one-tenth of its 16-month (64-week) tenure in office. So far, there has been no sign to suggest that a raft of electoral reforms is ready, or at least being readied.

On the contrary, the government, or some sections of it, seems to be wasting time on non-issues such as FIRs against political rivals who seemingly issued inflammatory statements and instigated the Madina outrage. Nasty as those incidents were, they happened on Saudi soil and were best dealt with by the Saudis.

Equally, the government decision to announce a commission of inquiry into former prime minister Imran Khan’s allegation that a US-led regime change conspiracy ousted him from office would be a pointless exercise, given the polarisation in the country.

Those who believe the PTI leadership’s every theory and explanation for its debacle are unlikely to change their mind, despite Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb’s belief that the commission head will be an individual beyond reproach and “not a single finger will be raised” at them.

Those not in the PTI camp already have enough facts at their disposal to know that the regime change ‘conspiracy’ is no more than another red herring from the deposed governing party’s rich reservoir as it believes in capturing the narrative, even if it means being economical with the truth.

Editorial: The logic of the ‘conspiracy theory’ gets fuzzier the more Imran Khan speaks on the topic

Imran Khan has addressed large public meetings and told charged-up followers to get ready for a march on Islamabad before the end of the month in the scorching heat to force the government and, more importantly the establishment, towards fresh elections.

This stance is raising many a brow because it comes just eight weeks after he squandered the chance to advise the dissolution of the assembly before the no-confidence move in March and force early elections as would have been his constitutional right. Now he is out of office.

With an economy in meltdown and the government of the day having to bear the fallout, wouldn’t you have cooled your heels for just over a year and licked your chops at the prospect of storming back to power in the 2023 elections? I would have answered with a resounding yes.

However, Mr Khan’s hand is being forced by exactly the same reason why the opposition could not wait and reap a rich harvest, instead raising a poison chalice to its lips: to block one security establishment appointment that Imran Khan would have made approaching November this year.

And the latter’s motivation is exactly the opposite: retaining or returning to office to do just that. The opposition may not have spelt out its rationale for the timing of its move but the former prime minister has been unambiguous.

Imran Khan has gone public in saying the conspiracy to remove him from power began in July last year (and not after he ostensibly defied the US to visit Moscow on the day Russian troops coincidentally invaded Ukraine, like he first claimed).

He said that is why he wanted to retain Lt Gen Faiz Hameed as DG ISI so the latter could help him thwart the move. Earlier, he cited the Afghan crisis as the reason he wanted the ISI chief to continue because the latter had experience of dealing with Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Equating the rise with, or retention of, political power to one security establishment figure may seem foolhardy to you but when competence is not your forte every crutch is welcome. By the same token, those who may have what it takes to deliver can’t be effective with a belligerent and hostile security establishment.

So they seek a neutral, or the currently favoured adjective ‘apolitical’, establishment. It is a great pity and a sad reflection on the realities of our system that politicians don’t rely entirely on the multitudes who vote for them.

The government may be taking its time to unfurl its policies, but PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s return to the popular support base to seek revalidation is a welcome move, one that could keep anyone’s ambition to shed neutrality in its place.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2022