After a full one month in office, the ruling alliance is still clueless about how to cope with some of the most urgent issues faced by the country.
The biggest challenge that the incumbent government faces is to put an ailing economy back on track. The prices of food items continue to increase, causing unrest among a vast section of the population. The PM was apprised of the pinch felt by the common man due to the increase in the flour price in KP during his address in Shangla. His response was somewhat dramatic but highly ineffective. The economy is in bad shape as indicated by a yawning trade gap, an increasing current account deficit, a declining rupee, soaring inflation, and galloping debt. The government swiftly needs to borrow several billion dollars for debt repayment. So far it has got no solid promise from any quarter partly because of the uncertainty created by PTI chief Imran Khan’s agitation and partly because of the IMF deal being still in limbo. Meanwhile the populist measure of keeping the prices of petroleum products unchanged has given the national kitty a Rs 40 billion hit in just a fortnight. What is more, measures of the sort are unsustainable. One had expected the government to take bold and realistic steps along with targeted relief for the deserving millions.
While there is a lot of buzz about fresh elections, there is no move by the government yet to formulate electoral reforms to make the process transparent and make elections genuinely representative. The reforms should also bring down election expenses to remove the stigma of the Parliament having become a billionaires’ club.
One expects the government to devise an effective policy to cope with extremism and evolve out-of-the-box measures to put an end to terrorism, including through talks.
The government leaders are currently giving full time to exposing the PTI leadership. So far they have little to show other than the Toshakhana acquisitions and Farah Gogi’s alleged wealth beyond means. It’s time the issue is handed over to the agencies so that the government leaders can focus on the national economy, measures to improve the livelihood of the common people, putting the genie of extremism back into the bottle and political handling of the issue of terrorism.
