Happy New Year, Hunh!

Politics is stalemated; the economy is stymied; the nation is stalled; and uncertainty abounds! That’s 2024’s first week for you.

Talat Hussain

Year 2024, like 2023 or 2022, has begun with promise and hope. But less than a week into the new calendar, a deeply problematic political landscape has piled up more dismay.

From the circus in Peshawar to incidents of terrorism targeting also politicians to the missing persons to Baloch protests to cat and mouse with the PTI and the party’s rising follies to the ping pong on the upcoming polls, the year doesn’t look set for the dreamy-eyed romantic.

Stupendous stupidity flattens sanity every passing day.

The only defined part of this melodramatic melting pot is the Establishment’s clarity that Imran and the 9^th May criminals have no role in the future political dispensation to govern the country — be that elected or selected or invented. The PTI’s remains will contest the Establishment’s immovable determination, protest against it, raise social media hue and cry, and run campaigns through a Zartaj Gul here and an odd judge there, but in the larger scheme of things they will not have any impactful role in directing Pakistan.

The working assumption in the Establishment’s inner circles is that the PTI’s reaction can be contained and while there would be howling, the bite of the party is already neutralized. Their popularity does not pose a clear and present street danger and thus can be dealt with in the fullness of time. Only time will tell how correct this assumption is but for now, this is the framework that the Establishment is using to address the aftermath of its predecessors’ failed Imran Project.

This framework leaves out a few key questions though. What to do with the PTI’s vote bank? Also, if and when (ok, 8^th February) elections take place and the party is reduced to a non-entity, the ousted voter would not let the system settle.

Anger can well up. Anger can spill around.

Moreover, this year Imran and Bushra’s fate would be decided and so would be that of the other top leaders’. We are not looking at light sentences. Long and permanent political ruination is what is on the cards for them. As Imran faces annihilation, he would use all his tools to hit back. From well-coordinated Goldsmithian global propaganda to local disruption, he, his backers, and bankrollers will use every trick in the bag to ward off his impending doom. That could form a new wave of instability.

However, the assumption in the Establishment circles is that this would not amount to much of a challenge. In their assessment, Imran is a spent agitational force. His nuisance value is primarily based on social media antics (that explains the Army chief’s low view of social media content in a recent statement). Propaganda campaigns don’t override serious strategic considerations that the Army brings to the table in engagement with world capitals. Establishment matters. Permanently. Imran does not. Not even temporarily. Read the room.

The third assumption is even more important. It is that while the process of elections might have been marred and beset with scandal and controversy, and while the intention to keep Imran and the PTI out of the fray may have become too obvious to plausibly deny, the post-poll outcome could set a new tone in Pakistan. And what is that outcome?

A stable government (coalitions can also be stable if they are glued together by the Establishment’s helping hand), a quick inflow of investments, a comprehensive counter-terrorism operation, improved governance, public-funding based projects generating jobs and a big “Make Pakistan Great Again” narrative. This should slowly detox the system. That in turn should turn off the national anger’s taps that leak in times of economic depression and a general sense of drift.

The problem is that nothing in the last six years (Imran plus PDM plus the current caretaker government) shows that these fairy tales become reality. The present setup in essence is a government of technocrats directed by the Establishment on all strategic and peripheral issues. It is nothing to write home about. Its most memorable moments include Caretaker PM Kakar’s inane media engagements and, well, nothing else!

So, who will wrap up the ongoing circus?

How will the country live up to the promise that we all tell our children it still has even after three generations of mismanagement? We don’t know.

I fear that even the Establishment does not know even though it says otherwise. My other fear is that seeing some of its assumptions collapse around its ears, the Establishment might resort to its standard default options that in the past have proven to be the cause of the present mess.

So politics is stalemated; the economy is stymied; the nation is stalled; and uncertainty abounds! That’s 2024’s first week for you.

Start deleting Happy New Year messages from your inbox!