And now the difficult part

Shaukat Aziz's victory in the election for the new Prime Minister was a foregone conclusion. But the manner in which the drama unfolded in the National Assembly on Friday left a bad taste in the mouth.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, had already ruled that despite his conviction by a lower court in a sedition case, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi was eligible as a candidate for the premier-ship. But on Friday morning, despite the Opposition's request and protest, he refused to order Hashmi's production in the National Assembly to take part in the election, citing Rule 90 that lays down a convicted member cannot be produced in the Assembly.
The incensed Opposition is threatening a vote of no-confidence against the Speaker, although its chances of success must remain open to question, given the arithmetic of the House.
It is for constitutional and legal experts to judge these two rulings of the Speaker on the touchstone of legitimacy and consistency. But their apparent contradictoriness led to a boycott of the election by the Opposition, rendering the exercise of Shaukat Aziz receiving 191 votes from the treasury benches in a house of 342 even more meaningless than originally thought.
The Opposition's boycott continued into Saturday's vote of confidence, further eroding the credibility of these proceedings.
That having been said, it is nevertheless cause for some satisfaction that the transition from Zafarullah Jamali to Chaudhry Shujaat to now Shaukat Aziz passed peacefully, despite criticisms of all this emanating from the presidency. It is hoped that the game of musical chairs for the prime minister's slot will now come to an end and Shaukat Aziz will get down to the business of governance after obtaining the mandatory vote of confidence and forming his cabinet.
The new prime minister faces some daunting problems. His expertise obviously lies in the economic and financial field, but his comparative inexperience in politics will make the job of tackling such problematic issues as Balochistan, inter-provincial harmony, the dismal state of education in the country, public health, corruption, etc, an uphill endeavour.
The hope is that he will learn a lesson from his immediate predecessor, Chaudhry Shujaat's approach to thorny issues and take to the high road of broad consultative democratic conduct to untangle these conundrums.
The real expectation from the new prime minister will be in the realm of the economy. His stewardship of it as finance minister over the past five years has yielded macro-economic stability and a turnaround towards a high growth path. However, the benefits of this sea change have yet to trickle down to the masses, who face an increase in poverty and joblessness.
The creation of new jobs being wholly dependent on investment, the importance of tackling the bad law and order and security situation in the country assumes centre stage.
The thrust of the government's development policies must take on board the consideration of job creation within the constraints of resource scarcity.
As the ADB has warned recently, Shaukat Aziz's very success may pose new challenges. The most crucial of these will be to manage rising inflation in the wake of the economy's growth.
The low inflation of the recent past was tied to low growth. The opposite will likely also hold true. Already, reluctantly, even the State Bank Governor, Ishrat Husain, has had to admit in the light of the CPI rising 9.33 percent July-on-July that inflation has become a problem.
The central bank governor will have to manage interest rates (a possible rise) while keeping an eye on how inflation behaves.
Despite the retirement of expensive foreign debt, the overall indebtedness of the country has not declined. That shows that Shaukat Aziz's claims to move the country away from dependence on the international lending agencies is still a distant hope.
These reservations aside, Shaukat Aziz has shown himself capable of leading a competent team of economic managers to stem the economic rot the country faced in 1999.
It now remains to be seen if he can learn quickly to manage a team of political managers that can provide solace to the poor and weak and resolve some longstanding national problems such as the water and the distribution from the federal divisible pool to and between the provinces under the NFC Award to weld the country into a cohesive federation.