Up to a whopping 24.5 percent in December, inflation gallops away, but it is the luckier part of the masses that have to deal with just rising prices. Because, in a large part of the country, a hapless citizenry is dealing with that other horseman of the apocalypse, terrorism. The specter of terror looms large over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; the unfortunate three-cities model of the Pakistani news media unfortunately only covers incidents of terror when they spread to either the aforementioned three cities. Or if the incidents yield a particularly large body count and have crossed yet another level of brutality.
The problem is that dealing with both these issues hinges on some sort of national consensus to the same. On the economic front, there are several initially unpalatable decisions to be made. The ruling PDM won’t take them, and the erstwhile ruling PTI hadn’t either. No sympathies for either on this front, but things are what they are, and the PDM are the incumbents, so they are the ones that should be blamed more. The PTI is certainly refusing to play ball, but they are a political party and they have to milk political capital out of the situation. Even the pound of flesh that they demand in exchange of sitting at the table to discuss the issue – fresh elections – isn’t all too unreasonable a demand, in principle.
On the terror front, the PTI-run Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the most affected province, especially now that the seven Fata agencies have been merged into it. Law and order is a provincial issue and they cannot just sit this one out, especially given the scandalously lax behaviour towards the TTP that the party had been showing in the past. A former CM had even offered the banned outfit an office in the provincial capital.
However, they do have some talking points in their defence, valid ones. Chiefly: the whole counter-terror ecosystem is managed by the military, and therefore the federal government is the one that has to step up to the plate and the provincial governments will follow in tow.
These seem like petty squabbles to the people affected by these problems. The need of the hour is a consensus on these issues and all sides of the political divide have to budge from their entrenched positions.
