Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar might think that the protests against the electricity bills were blown out of proportion, but they were quite serious. True. a revolution was not sparked off, but that was not because there was any lack of desperate anger among people.
Lack of leadership did pose a problem. The protests could be contained because of this lack of leadership, and it also meant that there was no impetus to the protests to continue so as to bring about a change. At the moment, it seems, no one is offering the kind of solution that would justify getting support. Only the Jamaat Islami, among the traditional political forces, is trying to put itself at the head of the movement, but its relative lack of success reflects how it does not have a solution that seems viable, and the low level of public trust in the party.
The ECP might be aware that the path it is following suits a political convenience. That might explain why it is getting tangled with the law and constitution while trying to use them to justify its deviation from them
The caretaker governments had their moment, and Kakar may well have lost it for them. His statement, which confirmed that made by the caretaker Finance Minister, was that the government would be giving no subsidies. In short, the IMF’s conditions were going to be fulfilled. That included a hike in petrol prices, caused by the recovery of oil prices on the international market. This increase is going to be made worse by the decline of the rupee. This means that the price of furnace oil in rupee terms is going to go up. That means the fuel adjustment surcharge is going to go up. It means that power bills are going to go up further.
Normally, a caretaker government would not really have to deal with such a crisis. In office for three months, a caretaker government would do its best to kick the can down the road, and leave the crisis to come crashing down on the head of the newly elected government, which would have to handle it as soon as it came into office.
It might seem unfair to any new government, particularly one which might depend on support from smaller parties (as has been the case with all governments in the past, except for the rare occasions where one party achieved an absolute majority on its own). However, no one has come into politics because it is easy. At the same time, while all of the parties are willing to accept the task, none has shown any sign that it has any solution.
It should not be forgotten that this was one of the planks of Imran’s campaign: he too burned power bills during his 2013 dharna, and blamed government corruption for the high bills. The corruption argument seems to have collapsed, but non one else has a new narrative.
At this point, all parties have got a track record, and none have shown the ability to escape the IMF. Its SBA expires in March next, and will probably be followed by an ESAF. There is a broad consensus that recourse to the IMF is a necessary evil, and its conditions must be obeyed. It is almost as if the next election will determine which party will have the privilege of selling IMF conditionalities to the electorate.
However, the caretakers are also performing that task at present. The problematic thing about that is that this task is open-ended. It is not as if the caretakers are handling the task better than any government that might be elected. The caretakers may be hapless, but they are hardly worse than any other government that might be elected. However, while there is some chance that an elected government might find a way out of the mess, there is the virtual certainty that the caretakers do not have a solution. The big difference is that elected governments have some hope of re-election, and govern accordingly; caretakers face no elections, thus are held accountable by much murkier organisations than the electorate.
It does not seem that the ‘hybrid experiment in the good old days when Imran Khan and the PTI were on the same page has had that much effect. That should have taught the lesson that there should be no further interference in politics, but that interference seems to be continuing. Apart from the ouster of Imran Khan, and the withdrawal of those assets which had been given to the PTI for the 1998 elections, in the shape of highly publicized press conferences and the formation of the Istehkam Pakistan Party, there has also been a combination of a hounding of the PTI after May 9, and of the putting off of elections.
That putting off by the Election Commission of Pakistan has been to allow it to carry out delimitations in accordance with the census earlier this year. The only reason the ECP is able to carry out the delimitations is that the census does not require a constitutional amendment. The provincial allocation of seats is laid down in the Constitution, and after various censuses, has been adjusted to reflect the new demographic reality. That adjustment is made by a constitutional amendment, which only Parliament can carry out.
Probably because this year’s census was carried out earlier than needed, there was no change in provincial allocations. If there had been, would it have meant that elections were never to be conducted, or would the ECP have put off the delimitations until after the election?
That the delimitations have to be conducted is a clear constitutional requirement, but there is no time limit given in the Constitution, as there is for holding elections.The ECP has also brought forward the date for the elections about two weeks, by changing the date for completing delimitations from December 15 to November 30. After delimitations, the ECP will need about 45 days for holding elections, because that period is provided in the Election Law. The 90-day limit expires on November 9. The ECP would have to complete delimitations by September 25 to meet the constitutional deadline. That might well lead to rushed delimitations, and loud squawks of protest from intending legislators. That could be avoided by carrying out the delimitation procedure after the elections.
That might lead to the objection that the members sit according to old delimitations, while new ones have come into existence, but so long as by-elections are conducted according to old delimitations, there would be no problem.
The problem is not so much the timeline as the ECP’s willingness to fall in with others’ plans. Unless those others learn to accept the verdict of the people, and that it may be different from what they want, it will not be possible to have a genuinely democratic system.
It should be remembered that the desire to put off elections is essentially not just political but partisan, because it benefits one party or another. It does not really affect candidates (except those who might need time to live down a personal scandal), because though they hate elections, their personal support is if not timeless, at least multigenerational. However, the party vote, which often provides the victory margin, fluctuates with time.
The ECP might be aware that the path it is following suits a political convenience. That might explain why it is getting tangled with the law and constitution while trying to use them to justify its deviation from them.
