All — political parties, military, judiciary — responsible for current mess: Shahid Khaqan

At a session of the Karachi Literature Festival on Saturday evening, journalist Shaheen Salahuddin recalled former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s statement, which she referred to as his prophecy, that there will come a time when no one will be willing to become the prime minister.

Abbasi, who was sitting next to her, said that he was no expert in giving prophecies, but he could see the country’s situation and foresee that things would become so difficult that no one would be able to resolve them.

The session was titled ‘Reforming Pakistan: A New Social Contract’. It was moderated by Shaheen who conversed with Abbasi and former finance minister Miftah Ismail.

Abbasi said the current reality was that no party could form a three-member cabinet. Earlier, he said, there was a space to muddle through and run the country, “but now we have a desperate situation and no capacity to deal with it.”

“A new buzzword is new social contract,” the moderator remarked. She stressed that society had lost its fiber, and the country had been declining in terms of economy.

The former prime minister lamented that the current condition of the country was nothing but a collective failure, and all were responsible for it — political parties, military establishment, judiciary and business leadership.

“If politics is only for power, the country will not move forward,” he said, adding that the country would only move forward if we prioritised its interests.

Commenting on the theme of the session, new social contract, Abbasi remarked that a new social contract implied a new constitution, forming which was a daunting task. He was of the view that rather than bringing in a new constitution, the loopholes in the present constitution needed to be addressed through a consensus. “The relationship between the military, politicians, judiciary and Parliament needs to be redefined,” he asserted.

When the moderator asked Abbasi whether the stakeholders would agree to give up their interests, the former prime minister replied that the space for not doing so had been shrinking. He emphasised that there was a pressing need to prioritise the country’s well-being as the current trajectory was heading towards anarchy.

Ismail echoed Abbasi’s views saying that political parties were unable to understand and address the situation. He said there was no focus on the education and health sectors.

He asked the audience whether they knew who the minister of population welfare was in the last cabinet. “No one knows when was the last effort made for population welfare?” he remarked, adding that the common man had no immediate relation with the federal government as they were more linked with the police and local government, but unfortunately there existed no local government tier in our system.

Speaking on the economic policy, he criticised the courts pointing out that the judiciary often made disparate decisions in similar cases that caused uncertainty in the economic realm.

He also highlighted the persistent issue of terrorism in the country over the past 25 years and lamented that it had resulted in lack of foreign investment.

Despite receiving funds from the United States during the Musharraf era and investments through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure, Ismail said, the country failed to build up its reserves and industrial capacity.

Speaking on the 2024 elections, Abbasi said 10 days had passed since the polling but no one could form a government and the bureaucracy had now started saying that they had rigged the elections.

The same cycle, he said, had occurred in 2018 and even before that. He stressed that the responsibility of this mess lied with the judiciary. Abbasi said that suo motu powers were not meant to humiliate bureaucracy but to address such issues.

Taking the discourse forward, Ismail said history told us that even if a military dictator was welcomed in the past, after a few years he had to leave because the dictator had no moral authority.

“One should never govern without a moral authority,” he stressed. Speaking on the charter of democracy, he said, it had failed.

He added that nowhere in the world, one saw such charters as they already existed in the form of constitution.

Ismail said that had the constitution been followed, there would have been no need of any charter of democracy.

The former finance minister mentioned that the defence budget had been tightened, making it challenging to replace aging equipment. He clarified that the concern was not the defence budget itself but the military’s involvement in politics.

Speaking about the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s performance in the general elections, he stated that the party received the highest votes due to its leadership being prosecuted and facing unprecedented cases in the Islamic history.

He remarked out that while it was now recognised that the elections had been rigged and the PTI had performed better than the results suggested, it was essential to acknowledge that the RTS system was also suspended during the 2018 polls.

Ismail called for the politicians to not repeat their past mistakes.

Regarding the PTI, he remarked that the party was morally righteous but it lacked clarity.

In contrast, he mentioned that the moral righteousness achieved by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after Musharraf’s coup had been lost.