The disclosures about the latest negotiations between IMF and the ministry of finance suggested that, given the steady decline in Pakistan's exchange reserves, Pakistan had sought fresh credit facilities under a new Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) over which IMF had expressed its reservations.
Firstly, while Pakistan has been repaying its instalments on time, it hasn't fulfilled IMF's conditionalities - imposing more indirect taxes (VAT) and increasing the tax net. Secondly, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has been overly helpful in assisting the government in borrowing excessively.
Without implementing comprehensive tax reforms, Pakistan had been repaying the IMF by running down its exchange reserves that depreciated the rupee's exchange rate and consequent (officially denied) increase in inflation, which the IMF predicted would again reach low double-digit figures.
There were rumours that another reservation expressed by the IMF was that it won't be inclined to extend fresh credit until after a new (post-election) government takes over, and that IMF will execute future SBAs with Pakistan President, not its finance minister.
These reservations are neither odd nor surprising given Pakistan's track record of the last five years wherein, on the one hand productivity of almost every sector went down while the government's sole corrective remedy was increasing the prices of every service it provides.
This response assumes that a steadily growing population can survive and be content with progressively lower consumption of even the essentials. How realistic is this assumption can be explained only by the government and its wise ministers, especially the finance minister.
The other failure was holding on to loss-making and over indebted public sector enterprises (PSEs) although, back in 2009, a strategy therefore was presented to the government - the Austerity Plan - proposed by former finance minister Shaukat Tarin.
The policy of not privatising loss-making PSEs doesn't owe itself to difficulties in privatisation; it has more to do with using these outfits to benefit party cronies and saddle the PSEs with thousands of party workers who often don't possess job-specific qualifications and experience.
Then there were scores of well-publicised incidents of resource waste, corruption and embezzlement in state offices and the PSEs. Put together, all actions of the government were focused on serving vested interests setting the worst example of governance of the state.
You may have valid reservations over IMF's conditionalities, especially levying more indirect taxes and not enough pressure for expanding the tax net and recovering more direct taxes, but its reported reservations about lending to the in-power regime is understandable.
That being the case, and given the present level of Pakistan's country risk perception and scant chances of receiving foreign inflows from lenders, investors or donors abroad, IMF's prediction about Pakistan's exchange reserves falling to $7.4bn by June 2013 will crystallize.
In this setting, PPP's insistence that elections can't be held before March 16 (implying thereby that the next regime assumes office around mid-May 2013), strengthens the prospects of continued slide of the rupee and possible default by Pakistan on external debt repayment.
This will make it a daunting task for any regime to prevent an economic collapse, let alone begin the process of clearing the mess it will inherit from the PPP-led coalition. Hopefully, the ambitious in the PML-N and PTI (proposing the 'tsunami' route to reformation) know this.
Some observers think that PPP's stand on elections (ie delaying it till March 16) is its way of discouraging other political parties from aspiring to govern Pakistan. Despite their visibly scant familiarity with trends in macroeconomic indicators, they know where the economy is headed.
In this backdrop, the sudden emergence of Dr Tahirul Qadri, a Canadian, as the fellow most concerned about a delay in elections, though very odd, does make sense; change in government is urgently needed if the current chaos is to be prevented from turning into a total collapse.
While Dr Qadri's ambition about heading the caretaker regime is amazing, Pakistan does need a clean interim regime if, to begin with, focused preparations for holding fair elections are to commence, and then fair balloting is to be assured on the election-day.
Even the most ardent supporters of the 'Pakistani' brand of democracy can't deny that elections were never fair; one of them led to the dismemberment of the country and in the next one the victorious Prime Minister had to accept that rigging took place in 40 constituencies.
About the elections thereafter, facts exposed by the shocking Air Marshal Asghar Khan case are enough to prove that, besides the criminal financing of election campaigns, the balloting process was never as clean as it ought to be for elections to be considered fair.
In spite of these repeatedly pointed out flaws, even now, state-funded advertisements (purportedly about government's successes) are promoting political parties forming the coalition. The media - loudest claimant of social ethics - are displaying these questionable advertisements.
Such state-funded partiality can't be contained or eradicated without a non-partisan and effective care-taker regime. To this extent, one must agree with Dr Qadri, but why has he suddenly taken up this cause, remains a mystery because he no longer has any stakes in Pakistan.
If the powers backing him (who are certainly not the donors that he points to) are as committed to ensuring fair elections and nothing else, his cause (not necessarily him) deserves to be supported because, in essence, it calls for hastening this long-delayed corrective action.
Even if the rumour that Dr Qadri has the backing of the 'establishment' (a euphemism for the Army) is correct, the Army knows too well that it would be wholly unwise for it to govern Pakistan yet again; its sole concern should be to ensure fair elections.
Ensuring that the ECP can comprehensively examine and verify the credentials of each candidate, election campaigns are conducted within ethical limits, polling is free and fair, and vote counting is flawless, could lead assure the election of a more conscientious lot of parliamentarians.
But none of this seems possible, nor can a collapse of the economy be avoided unless elections are held at the earliest and the electoral process is supervised by a non-partisan caretaker regime that also has the requisite expertise to manage the chaotic state of the country's economy.
The sensible course for the 'establishment' would be to ensure that the caretaker regime has the requisite capacities, and is supported by the establishment in achieving the objective spelled out above. That's the route to assuring a better future for Pakistan and the establishment. Believing that in a war-torn Pakistan establishment has no role in state affairs is naive, provided the establishment portrays a sense of national priorities.