ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s ruling class, including the establishment, is uninterested in addressing the deep economic crisis that has condemned tens of millions of working people to unprecedented food inflation, unemployment, and general economic hardship, said speakers at a moot organised by a leftist party on Monday.

“Everyone is concerned with taking and keeping power, thereby reinforcing the debt-ridden status quo as well as rapacious grabs of land and other natural resources,” said Asim Sajjad at a public seminar organised by the left-wing Awami Workers Party (AWP) at the National Press Club.

Scores of progressive political workers, intellectuals, students, trade unionists, and residents of the twin cities gathered for the dialogue that called upon progressive forces to come together and build a genuine movement to challenge the status quo.

AWP leader Aasim Sajjad said that the mainstream media continued to focus on sensational tussles within the corridors of power while the everyday miseries of working people have become increasingly unbearable.

Speaker says productive instead of speculative investment required to break free from lenders

“In the meantime, the establishment and real estate tycoons like Malik Riaz continue to grab land with impunity while big traders and industrialists engage in hoarding and other forms of rent-seeking. All of this is explained both by the incompetence of the ruling class within Pakistan and the back-breaking conditionalities imposed by the IMF and bilateral donors who ostensibly keep the economy afloat while also making it a safe haven for unaccountable investors and hell for working people and natural ecosystems,” the leftist leader claimed.

Another leader of AWP Ammar Rashind said that there was no shortcut out of the prevalent mess and only a meaningful long-term strategy to redistribute resources could alleviate the woes faced by the masses. He said there was a need to shift focus from speculative to productive investment to break free from the IMF and other foreign lenders.

According to a statement, Director of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Dr Akbar Zaidi said that while the PTI government exacerbated Pakistan’s economic woes through unprecedented borrowing and amnesties to the rich, the Shehbaz Sharif-led government has adopted similar policies in the name of keeping the foreign exchange rate stable and saving the country from default.

“A genuine break from the status quo and a programme that privileges the welfare of the working masses would levy taxes on real estate and other highly profitable sectors, undertake land reforms, reduce non-productive expenditures including the defence budget, make enduring peace with neighbouring countries and open borders for trade, and initiate employment-generation industrialisation, particularly in rural areas,” he said.

Mariam Mohsin of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) said that Pakistan was fast turning into a banana republic in which the ruling class, as a whole, remained committed to an “unsustainable model of resource extraction and geopolitical rents to serve the interests of external patrons”.

She said free licences were being given to speculative lobbies, contractors and patriarchs at all levels of society to profit from people’s misery and exploit nature without concern for future generations.

“Women and girls, particularly those who work as domestic servants and home-based labourers, are the worst affected by the status quo. Even educated women and girls have fewer prospects for a better life, unemployment rates reaching almost 50pc,” she said.

PPP leader Farhatullah Babar lamented that mainstream parties did not have a meaningful consensus to reduce the economic and political footprint of the military establishment and meet the needs of the working masses.

“In fact, most electables have no vision other than to do the establishment’s bidding and sustain their own local fiefdoms,” he said.

The conference concluded by appealing to all progressive forces to unite to hold accountable the IMF, the military establishment, and the various “economic mafias” that are making the lives of the working masses miserable.

In the absence of a genuine progressive alternative, “palace intrigues will continue to take precedence over real people’s concerns and the situation of working classes, oppressed genders and ethnic peripheries will get worse”. “Ultimately, Pakistan’s already conflict-ridden society, economy and polity will spiral towards complete collapse,” the moot agreed.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2023