None of the top politicians and political parties making promises about free houses and hundreds of electricity units for the poor — all made and never honoured before — will be able to deliver on them even if they really wanted to; that is, if this weren’t just that time of the electoral cycle when they are forced to trade the usual pack of lies for people’s votes.

And then they wonder why, as one editorial in a leading daily noted, the “energy, enthusiasm and richness one usually associates with elections with Pakistan remained missing” this time.

Then they go on to ask if this is because of the “prevailing impression that this was not a fair fight”, as if the fight was fair when all the “energy, enthusiasm and richness” was not missing. Why doesn’t any, preferably all, of them admit that there isn’t a thing they can do for the common man? And whichever party wins by whatever margin, or even in the more likely outcome of a hung parliament, the first thing the new setup will do is agree to all the harsh “upfront conditions” the IMF demands for the next bailout programme.

Why don’t election rallies and manifestos even so much as touch upon the fact that the country is on the brink of sovereign default? It must pay back something between $75-90 billion to creditors over the next three fiscal years. And being on an active IMF programme is the only thing that keeps those repayments rolling over. And also – the most anti-people part of it – the Fund demands strict compliance with “structural reforms” that mandate raising taxes and cutting subsidies.

Hence the bad press for governments over the last few years. The last people-friendly measure from the top was in April 2022, when then PM Imran Khan reversed a petrol price hike – even though that was more about the no-confidence motion against his government than the people — and the IMF immediately suspended the EFF (Extended Fund Facility).

So why subject myself to the pain of election rallies and hollow manifestos and then the torture of casting my “precious vote” and pretend to be part of the Foreign Office’s politically correct nonsense about “fostering inclusive government” when it doesn’t matter at all who wins and celebrates or who loses and disputes the result, as always? Just a glance at some of the headlines of the day before the election will tell you why.

Ogra allows second gas price hike of the year; dire challenges will give little room to new government; PTI, PPP, PML-N lack strategies for democratic, economic, security challenges, etc. This just days after another petrol price hike which came on the heels of yet another electricity tariff hike; all to keep IMF’s money coming and the threat of default at a safe distance.

But the most important is S&P hints at upgrading Pakistan’s credit rating, which says that the rating agency will consider upgrading Pakistan to ‘B’, from the current ‘CCC+’ “if the new government will move towards securing the next IMF programme after the ongoing one”.

The improved rating will mean that “the nation has the capacity to repay the foreign debt on time but still faces a degree of uncertainty that could lead to missing the repayment obligation later on”.

So, no roti, kapra, free bijli or makaan for ordinary Pakistanis whose votes can make the difference between victory and defeat for the elite that lords over them. And definitely no difference in my kitchen bill whether more people put their thumb marks on the lion, arrow or what was the bat on this fateful day; or if there is a low or high “voter turnout”.

And to make matters worse they’ll even shut down the internet so Pakistanis can exercise their right to vote and foster representative government in the Islamic Republic, leaving people like me wondering how they will send their day’s work to the boss.

I might still have bothered to vote for a party that promised to finally bring the big fish – tax-evading feudal lords, real state mifias and influential trader power groups – into the tax net. But since “electables” for all parties come from exactly these categories, it’s no surprise that no such thing is on any of their manifestos, and it’s very clear that all incremental taxes that’ll keep IMF lending flowing will be extracted from people just like me.

So, no thank you, I’m not voting.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024