Common reform pledges can be how Pakistan secures political stability

Finally, some badly needed good news for Pakistan! A long, torturous negotiation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is complete and a $7 billion lifeline economic bailout is stitched up and its first tranche has landed up in the state coffers, improving the forex reserves position. The inflation rate is down to a single digit for the first time in three years – from a crippling historic high of 44 percent. The stock market has nearly doubled in size and value –declared the world’s best performing bourse in 2024.

Another key donor, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), predicts growing economic stability with a projected growth rate of nearly 3 percent in the new fiscal year on the back of record agricultural yields and an exchange rate for the rupee that has generally remained steady for a year now. Tax revenue collected and number of taxpayers in the just-concluded financial year are the highest in the country’s history. Energy prices are scaling down for the first time in over a year.

But can Pakistan match this long-awaited onset of macroeconomic stability with the critically important political stability that needs to underpin it? That is the billion-dollar question. Even the IMF and ADB qualify their appraisal of improving indicators with this. The short answer is that there is no certainty, which itself is one of the key risks that threatens to drag back the country to the rim of the abyss that threatened to swallow it only a year ago. 

Pull-quote: Can Pakistan match this long-awaited onset of macroeconomic stability with the critically important political stability that needs to underpin it? 

- Adnan Rehmat

A missed opportunity to stabilize the country politically came in February 2024 when Pakistan went to the polls to elect a new parliament and government nearly two years after the country plunged into a polycrisis encompassing economic, political and constitutional meltdowns. Election results failed the purpose of resetting the political landscape into a new start and a greater sense of control. 

In typical Pakistan fashion, even a new government – now in its ninth month in power – has failed to patch up the political downward spiral and has struggled to assert its legitimacy. Aided by the scorched-earth politics of the opposition led by former prime minister Imran Khan from jail, the political parties, provinces, parliament, judiciary and executive, including parts of the security establishment, remain just as acutely polarized as they were before the election. The bruising political confrontation is so intense, that it is as if the elections never happened and the popular mandate for a political resolution was never given. 

If the political polarization is not reversed in the next few months, it threatens to unravel the critical macroeconomic gains that have come at the cost of deep social suffering by tens of millions who in recent years have cut back on their food, health and education budgets to settle crippling electricity and petrol bills. This has generated a widespread and oppressive sense of drift and powerlessness that has, even by Pakistani standards, not been experienced in living memory by most.

So, how to resolve the perennial conundrum of an irresistible force (opposition obduracy) running into an immovable object (inflexible government)? The opposition insists on fresh elections as the panacea even though there are no guarantees the next results will not be just as controversial. The government considers amendments to the constitution as the best way to legally cut down the clout of the political opposition even though to make such an amendment it does not have numbers in parliament and will need to buy off the backing of some backbenchers from the opposition ranks.

The only way out is for Pakistan’s political foes to grow up to the demands of a new age where shouting down and shutting up opponents – both politically and procedurally – is not a strategy or a dividend. It is time to stop fighting each other and fight together against the system that facilitates the degradation and erosion of public mandates for negotiated coexistence and collaborative solutions.

Specific solutions to resolving political differences and disputes are already available in writing in the manifestos of political parties launched before the 2024 elections. The parliament should take the lead and form an inclusive special body with equal representation from the treasury and opposition benches from the National Assembly and Senate with a one-point agenda. This should be to pool together the common pledges for political, legal, social and economic reforms from the manifestos of parties represented in parliament.

This pooling of similar pledges will constitute a ‘national common ground reform agenda’ that should then be approved by the parliament and recommended for resourcing to the federal cabinet for implementation. This will incentivize political resolution, expand the ownership of political agenda, result in political stability and contribute majorly to economic stability for the long term. 

- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1