EDITORIAL: It’s not yet been announced when the IMF’s executive board will meet to discuss the fate of the staff-level agreement (SLA), but most stakeholders and onlookers, including premier ratings agencies, seem to agree that now it is only a formality.

Indeed, first Moody’s expressed confidence that Pakistan would clinch another EFF (Extended Fund Facility) soon and now Fitch also expects the coalition government to “remain in power over the coming 18 months and… succeed in pushing through with IMF-mandated fiscal reforms”.

But that’s as far as the good news goes. A comprehensive report by Business Monitor International (BMI), an arm of Fitch credit ratings agency, has issued a comprehensive 10-year risk assessment for Pakistan. It expects PTI leader Imran Khan to “remain imprisoned for the foreseeable future” despite a string of legal successes in April and June.

Interestingly, the report delves deep into Pakistan’s establishment-dictated power structure and notes that its analysts were “surprised with judges – who were expected to side with the government – quashed two of the legal cases against Khan”.

Going forward, while it expects the government to “remain in power over the coming 18 months”, but then it starts to get hazy. Because, just like Moody’s, it also warns that the government is “likely to collapse in the event of a sharp increase in violence or a painful economic crisis prompting a widespread crisis movement”.

However, it does not see a follow-up election because it “would raise the prospect that Khan’s allies would gain a parliamentary majority”.

The latest impasse follows a July 12, 13-judge full bench apex court declaration that PTI was eligible to receive reserved seats for women and non-Muslims in the national and provincial assemblies.

PML-N has challenged the decision alright, as was expected, but the three-judge committee constituted under the SC Practice and Procedure Act 2023 has suggested fixing the review petition after (a period of two months), the court’s summer vacations.

But what good would that do for the petitioner, since the business of the house would have advanced by then and the reserved seats would have been awarded.

That explains Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s ominous warning about an impending “constitutional meltdown” in the country.

It’s clear that the SC ruling rattled the ruling party and, just as the defence minister seemed to confirm, it reacted very badly and announced banning PTI without even consulting its own coalition partners, opening another hostile front within the fragile government coalition in addition to all the hostilities with a re-energised PTI.

It’s clear that the confrontation that has been building since before the election is now getting uglier. There seems no relief for Imran Khan, at least as far as his incarceration is concerned, because the government has decided to keep some PTI leaders in jail regardless of what the courts have to say about the cases piled on them.

The working formula is simple – slap more cases on them as soon as they are freed of previous ones.

But there’s only so long this cycle can go on. Khawaja Asif ruled out an outright military takeover, leaving viewers to decipher for themselves what the “constitutional meltdown” that he warned about might really mean.

Most people are interpreting it as the present administration winding up to make way for a technocratic setup; one which would not have to worry about niceties like votes and people’s opinions and could go about doing its work.

The problem is that the constitution has no provision for such options; which means that the more the government tries to pull itself out of the mess, the deeper it is sucked into a dilemma of its own making.

All this has very grave implications for the country, of course. It’s not just the economy that is imploding, but also the country’s politics.

Perhaps the only other time Pakistanis were so bitterly divided politically was just before the short sightedness and ego mania of its leaders cost us half the country.

And now, even as ordinary people are turned into sacrificial lambs and burdened with historic inflation, unemployment and tax burdens, it’s the leadership that seems bent upon keeping the country from moving forward.

Warnings from top ratings agencies are as serious as they come. If we don’t get our act together very quickly, it will not be surprising to see the Fund get too frustrated to engage with us any further as well.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024