 Thank you for joining us. I know it's kind of an odd time right around lunchtime, so we appreciate it. Since it's a small group, feel free to come to the front. The people sitting in the front are always the smartest students. We know that. We will judge you. Thanks, everyone, for coming. I'm Shamilah Choudhury. I'm a senior fellow here at New America. I've been here for several years, also at Johns Hopkins University. It's my pleasure to host this panel today because the topic is so relevant and so interesting, but also because I respect and admire everyone else who's on the stage with me today. They've done tremendous work on Pakistan and both kind of historical and looking towards the future, so we're very fortunate to be having them here today. To my left is Moid Yusuf. He's an associate vice president of the Asia Center at the US Institute of Peace. Uzair Yunus is also here. He's a director at the South Asia practice at Albright Stonebridge Group and Madiha Afzal. She's a non-resident fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. All of them, except for Moid, is on Twitter and myself, and he would enjoy it too much, I think, so that's why he's not on it. But feel free to tweet about this event and put it out there with the New America handle as well. I'm ready to figure out who the smartest one here is. That's right. We were just having a conversation about social media and how it's effective and not effective, and I had to stop it because that could have been a different panel altogether, so maybe next time we'll do that. So I thought that it would be good to have this event because a lot of changes have happened in Pakistan. And there was an election in August that, for some people, was very unexpected, the result. And a lot of people were not surprised and very pleased. There were some controversy over the process of campaigning. At the same time, there was a lot of strong feelings that this was meant to be and that, given the way that the population had interacted with the government for so long, that it was inevitable, that the two-party system would be a thing of the past. And I think that Washington spent a lot of time talking about the election results itself without considering the real impact on Pakistan as a country and on the Pakistani people. So there have been a lot of events on this topic, but I don't think that there's been enough coverage on the issue of the actual policies that the Imran Khan government wants to put into place and what are the opportunities and challenges associated with them. And the reason I picked these three folks is because they have such an in-depth analysis and worldview on these topics that you're not going to get any better than that. And so I just ask you to take that with you when you leave and when you read other articles or news or analyses about Pakistan that you want to look for as much context as possible. So I don't want to spend too much time giving an overview of what has happened because I think we all know what has happened. But today we're going to talk about four main areas. One kind of the big picture is looking at the state of coalition politics in Pakistan and what that means for policy prospects. Again, a topic that really doesn't get a lot of coverage in Washington is the domestic political situation, the relationships between coalition partners, the opposition, and other institutions of government that shape the outcomes of policy. And so I really want to get the panelists take on that topic because that's critical for this government, which has not a very strong coalition, but a coalition nonetheless. And then we want to look at the regional and international partnerships that the Pakistani government is going to kind of reform or advance, the focus on extremism and militancy, which is a huge topic, and then the state of Pakistan's economy and what are the opportunities and kind of things that the government needs to fix ahead. Okay, so in terms of format, we're just gonna, I'm gonna ask each of the panelists to speak for about 10 minutes, both on the issue of coalition politics and then on the specific topic they've been asked. And then we'll open it up for Q and A with the audience, and we should be done around two o'clock, all right? So first I'm gonna go to Moid, and also I really like this because usually you moderate and I talk, so this is also a very, I like this, the power has shifted. Two, reach way. That's right, it was actually always with me, that's true. So talk to us a little bit about coalition politics and what's happening now, and then I want you to get into some detail on the regional and international relationships that Pakistan has right now, and just to make a few points of what's current in the news, there was some news today that Saudi Arabia could be invited to be third partner in CPEC, and Ron Khan wrote a letter to the Indian government saying he'd like to restart peace talks, and we know the US relationship is fractured as well, so there's a lot to touch upon, so please. Thanks, thanks Shimala, and thanks to New America for this opportunity. So I've literally come back yesterday after a month in Pakistan, so my biggest challenge is to keep myself awake. And I'll try that by being a little bit provocative, if I may. You know, every time I, and I go to Pakistan very often on work trips, I come back believing that there's a big disconnect in how we see Pakistan and how Pakistan sees Pakistan, and this time I would say I've never seen the wedge as wide as it is. I think we're in two different worlds. The conversation here continues to be, of course, about Afghanistan, not Pakistan as much. That's sort of the talking point for the past year and a half. In Pakistan, the conversation is almost totally dismissive of the US presence. You know, there's a, I think there's a bit of conversation, been there, done that, doesn't work out, figure something else out. There's that China element to it, but also post-election, pre-but also post-election, there's this discernible euphoria on the street about the quote-unquote change. Even people who are not sort of PTI supporters are essentially saying give them a chance. We've tried other things, why not this? And there I would argue to get to your question of political coalitions. I think this is a new social experiment for Pakistan. It's not organic, it's created to a large extent. And as you see inside out from the Pakistani streets perspective, the argument is we've tried everything else, why not try them and see if something different comes? When you ask what is different here, I think the three things you hear is number one, nobody challenges the new prime ministers personal integrity in terms of financial corruption, in terms of his past, in terms of delivering on philanthropy and this and that. The second thing you hear is commitment is unquestionable. So the sincerity is not being questioned from across the aisle. Now the opposition will argue is not capable, is doing this wrong, is doing that wrong, whatever. But the question of sincerity so far is not under question. And third, the civilians and military seem to be on the same page importantly of the same book, which has not been the case in the past five or at least maybe even 10 years. These are the three things you hear. So why is it a different social experiment? Because people like me have argued for the longest period that Pakistan's problems have become so structural that it's less about an individual and more about the fact that reform has to take place to redo institutions, the social contract with the system and the civil military dynamic. Pakistan essentially is functioning on a social contract that was created in 1970 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at that time. That social contract is simply too expensive to put out. It's basically a welfare social contract for a country that still remains usually dependent on external sources and what you ended up doing is quantity over quality. So education, public education is terrible, public healthcare is terrible, governance is terrible. The system works, you have a dispensary and you have a school and you have, but ultimately the quality is compromised to begin with because the contract is too expensive. The argument now is that, or the popular argument in Pakistan is that if people were not corrupt, if Pakistani resources were not looted by their rulers over the years and if their focus was governance and not amassing personal wealth and stature, you would see delivery. That's the social experiment. Nobody is questioning the current Prime Minister so far on these counts. So what you're gonna test now is whether it is really about corruption and looting and lack of focus on governance and a breakdown of civil military relations that has helped Pakistan back or whether the problems are beyond that and it's truly so structural that unless you can reform the entire system from within, you won't get results. If it is the latter, then I would argue this government is no better place than anybody else. Ultimately Pakistan is cash-strap. There is an economic crisis, short-term, but there is one seriously. And the reform is held back because of the nature of the bureaucracy, because of the lack of revenue generation from within because of taxes and quite frankly, the fact that any civilian government has 35% of the budget to deliver from, right? 65% disappears into debt, defense, and current account. This was a 2006, seven, eight study, so it's dated, but I haven't seen anyone after that, where the per capita expenditure on criminal justice, health, education, et cetera, after taking out everything else, if I'm not wrong, was $3 a month. So if the per capita expenditure for $210 million is $3 per month on everything that matters to society, clearly it's dead on arrival, right? So I think that's the social experiment. Is it really about looting, corruption, and lack of focus on governance, or is it that despite getting this right, this would be very slow change given the obstacles within the system? And I think that's where you are. In terms of the coalition, look, the number one political actor is standing behind this government, and that's a big, big thing, and that's the military, right? There's no question right now for military civil disconnect, because the military is standing behind the civilians. The other interesting part, which is different from before, is that it's not that the military is standing behind them to interfere and tell them what to do. The military is actually very interestingly positioned itself to prop up the government to get better at doing what they're supposed to do. That's also not happened in Pakistan consistently in the past. You've always had this mix of the military installing somebody and then managing the system from behind. It seems to be so far where the civilians are being empowered to deliver with the military, proping them up with their capacity. And in terms of the political opposition, I think the government has a problem, because this is an opposition that's been in politics for 30 years. It knows how to do politics. It's compromised because of its Supreme Court cases, its accountability bureau cases, but at the end of the day, if the government takes too long to situate itself, you will find the opposition pounce and you're already seeing a number of things that they've gotten embarrassed on. So they have a hard task with the opposition, but the key to watch here is how long do the civilians and military get along in the way they get along now? If they do, I think the civilians have a fair shot at delivering if they really can manage that. At least they don't have any excuse. So that's on your domestic side. Very quickly on the foreign policy, one, I think the box, if you will, within which the Pakistan foreign policy operates, remains the same. I don't think you're going to see any innovative foreign policy changes in terms of the approach to the world. I think the military and civilians are going to decide jointly on where this goes, but I think it's going to be tinkering at the edges, not a major reform on that. So far, the noises are all right. India, Afghanistan, even the US and the argument of a reset, I think it's all there. The Saudi trip, quite frankly, is about cash. Pakistan needs money. Pakistan is desperate not to come to the IMF. And the Chinese will give what they do, but Pakistan's trade deficit with China is a billion and three quarters or so every month. So there's not much return there. So that's what that is about. So I would discount the statement about CPAC, et cetera. It's really about finding a way to get cash to deliver on the economy. Overall, I will say this is truly a nationalistic kind of outfit. The Prime Minister is generally nationalistic. He feels that parity and respect in international relations are much more important than interest in dealings. I think you will hear noise much like you hear in Washington, which will be negative. His instinct on the US is negative. He feels that the US has been a destabilizing factor in the region. He said this many times. But at the end of the day, I think that will be more form than spirit. The Prime Minister will not be available to meet everybody who shows up from the US. The Prime Minister will guard himself much more jealously. I think if you have a phone conversation in which one side misstates something, they will take that up. They won't let it go. So I think the US, quite frankly, will have to redo some of its way of operating with Pakistan, which was, quite frankly, easy access, open access, conversations, even if we didn't get what we were looking for. I think what the US is looking for, what Pakistan delivers, or what the US delivers is not going to change. The box is the same. But the approach is going to be, as it said, Pakistan first versus US first. So I see more clashes in form, in communication, in noises, in sort of statements. But at the end of the day, I think Pakistan's foreign policy direction will probably remain static. Static is the wrong word. But it will remain, the direction will not change overwhelmingly. I think it will be tinkering more than anything else. Okay, thank you. Madiha, love your views on the Coalition Politics question, and then also looking at the government's challenges and focus on extremism and militancy and overall kind of the national security policy. I may start a little bit by responding, if I can, or taking up one of Mui's points and then I'll structure it by talking a little bit about extremism and militancy in Pakistan, Iran Khan, and extremism and militancy, and then go to the Coalition Politics. So Mui is right that the military has positioned itself really interestingly, sort of at, with a little bit of a setback, allowing the civilian government to do what it wants on domestic policy, on sort of domestic social policy, thinking about education, health, poverty, all of that on the economy. But in terms of security and foreign policy, the military clearly will maintain the upper hand. And I think that this government will pretty much allow it to maintain the upper hand. And I think that they may not be on the same page. I mean, they may be, maybe it's the same book, but they may not be on the same page on everything. So in terms of US-Pakistan relations, Imran Khan, and I'll talk about this a little bit more, Imran Khan has been very critical of the US war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan's alliance, and in particular the Pakistani military's alliance with the US war on terror in Afghanistan, saying it's not our war, the military should not take American money to attack the Taliban and so on. So there's a disconnect there. It is not coming to the fore at this point because my sense is that the way this relationship is going to work, it's a relationship that is sort of very balanced at this point in time in the sense that civilian government, you take care of the domestic side, we'll take care of everything, foreign everything, everything security and we will maintain this balance. But let me sort of maybe spell these out a little bit more in going through some brief comments on how I think this administration, this new administration of Imran Khan and the PTI will deal with extremism and terrorism, and really the answer there is that they're not going to focus on it much, but we can still talk about what the past tells us about what the future may hold. The economy is the most critical issue for Imran Khan and domestic policy is where he's made the most promises to the Pakistani people. So his political success is going to depend on how he delivers on those domestic promises. So can he reduce poverty? Can he lower corruption? Can he deliver a health insurance scheme that his party piloted in some ways in the Khayber Pakhtunkhwa province? Can he deliver education for all? I mean, there is, while educational access has increased in Pakistan quite a bit, there are still a lot of children out of school. So those are the promises he's made. And he hasn't talked about extremism or terrorism much at all. But it's interesting, a lot of the focus on him in Washington is about the statements he has made in sort of the, when he was sort of during his political rise, right? Especially 2013, 2014. And so even during the campaign and post-election, what we saw here was an assumption that he would sort of continue to be more of the same. It earned him, in Pakistan, and people took it on here, it earned him the monarch or Taliban Khan because people thought he had close ties with the Taliban. So let me talk about what that was based on and how that has been, how he has talked about extremism and militancy since being elected. It's very different. So in sort of his pre-Prime Minister days, right? In 2013, 2014, I actually went back to my book and I've mentioned, somebody brought this up to me that I've mentioned in Iran Khan quite a number of times when I've talked about the problematic narratives of Pakistanis and Pakistani politicians in how they talked about the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan. So he was one of the politicians who was quick to blame conspiracies as being the cause of Taliban attacks. When the Taliban would actually, when the Pakistan Taliban would actually say that it had committed a terrorist attack, let's say, there was one example of a terrorist attack on a church in Peshawar, he would blame conspiracies. He was loath to name the group as having conducted the attack. He was fiercely critical of US drone strikes at that time and that goes with being critical of sort of the US war on terror and Pakistan's alliance with the US military at that time. But he also went further than that. He actually said that drone strikes are the problem. Drone strikes are the cause of militancy in FATA and KPK. So there were some very problematic statements there. One could argue, people considered them naive. You could argue that they were made for political gain. Certainly, they didn't lose him any sort of political capital. But even as late last year, when there was an issue that came up in Pakistan, this is kind of an intricate issue and I won't get into the details of it, but there was an issue about the oath of parliament and a slight change in the oath of parliament that had been made and a right-wing Islamist party basically laid the capital to siege on the issue of this oath. Instead of taking the government side, again, perhaps for political reasons, Imran Khan stoked the issue a little bit. So he stoked, this is the Ahmadi issue, he stoked it a little bit and called for an investigation and called for the government to answer as to why the oath had been changed. All right, so again, this is all pre-July 2018. Since July 2018, to his credit, Imran Khan has been very statesman-like, right? And especially when it comes to the issue of extremism and militancy, he hasn't said anything bad, per se. He has said that the Pakistani government needs to focus on the national action plan that has not been implemented. The national action plan is sort of this plan that the government came up with in early 2015, sort of that the Pakistani state came up with in early 2015 to counter extremism and militancy. And it's a fine plan, but it really misses what the root causes of extremism are in the country. It's a plan that kind of scratches the surface, but even that plan has kind of fallen by the wayside and hasn't really been implemented. So he talked about implementing that. But beyond that, he really has not talked about extremism and militancy much at all. So there are a few reasons for that. One, terrorism is not a critical issue in Pakistan anymore because the number of fatalities and terrorist attacks have gone down drastically since the Pakistani military undertook multiple operations now against the Pakistan Taliban in the tribal areas. But more broadly, and then the second reason is that he's focusing on sort of the domestic side of things and the economy, which is the more critical issue at this point. But if one sort of takes a step back and says, you know, where do we see this going? It's not clear that he, you know, it's not clear that Amran Khan understands the root causes of extremism and terrorism and militancy in Pakistan. And they can return, right? This is not, these things are just kind of simmering under the surface. Sure, there's been action against the Pakistan Taliban, terrorist attacks have gone down, but another group can form an insurgency. And when these issues, if these issues come back, right, and become a bigger problem, where does he stand? It is not clear that he understands what to do, right? So for instance, there is a well-known militant madrasa in Akora Khattak, which is the Darula Loom Haqqania. You know, his government gave 300 million rupees to it in their last budget. His provincial government, the PTI's provincial government in I think the 2016, 2017 budget. You know, when asked why they did so, he said that it would be to actually kind of regulate the madrasa so that they could have some influence on it so that they could straighten things out. I don't think the madrasa has done that. So his understanding of sort of militant madrasas, his understanding of perhaps the problematic aspects of Pakistan's politics, giving into Islamist politicians, the problematic aspects of the public school curricula are limited so far, at least, you know, again, what he's shown. And it'll be interesting to see how, you know, again, if this becomes a bigger problem, which it might in not very many years, how he proceeds, he may learn on the job, you know, and that would be wonderful, obviously. A couple of things, he's done, you know, I would say that nobody doubts his sincerity. I mean, there are people who doubt his sincerity, but you know, I don't sit here and doubt his sincerity and I think many Pakistanis don't doubt his sincerity. And he's tried to do some good in terms of even sort of the extremism sort of issues in Pakistan in recent days in the sense that he appointed an enmity to his Economic Advisory Council. He has tried to say that he is going to give Afghan refugees who were born in Pakistan citizenship, but the moment there is some Islamist backlash, some, even a hint of Islamist backlash, he backtracks. That does not bode well for where he's going to go and the fact of the matter is, the Islamists probably like, I mean, not probably, they do like him already, he has political capital with them, so he can afford to use the political, that political capital a little bit, he can afford to use the military's support of him a little bit and push back on Islamists at this point in time, not given at the moment that he fears some backlash. So again, his inability to push back on Islamists at this early stage after making a couple of good decisions is really worrisome and that is kind of, this is what led Zulfiq Ali Bhutto to many of the problematic decisions he made in the 1970s is giving in to Pakistan's Islamist parties. A little bit on, I know I've gone over my time and I have some more comments, but we can get to that, those in the Q and A, a little bit on, just on coalition, the coalition politics. If I think of Imran Khan's voter base as sort of a coalition that he has kind of amassed, you know, you can think of sort of the, each party has its stalwarts, the PPP has its stalwarts, the PMLN has its stalwarts and then Imran Khan has its stalwart. You know, Imran Khan's party has its stalwarts. But there are those, as Moid pointed out, there are those Pakistanis who may have voted for one of the other parties in the past who just really want change and are sick of the status quo and have put their hope in Imran Khan for this change. How he manages that base and how he manages their expectations will sort of again tell us something about his political success. At this point, you know, he has made a lot of promises. People are constantly pouring over his speeches and, you know, pre-election and post-assuming power and constantly calling him out on things. So, you know, he has to do I think a little bit of a good job or a better job perhaps of managing expectations than he has done at this point and stand firm on some things that he promises so that he doesn't get branded, Mr. U-turn, as you know, as he is getting branded right now. And I think in Pakistan, there's a lot of political noise. There's always a lot of political noise and Imran Khan was part of the political noise from 2013 to 2018 in the sense that he put a lot of pressure on the incumbent government then and now he's facing a lot of political noise. And I think the advantage he has is the military support so he can actually afford to sort of tune out some of that political noise and not act as if he's putting out fires but actually try to implement his agenda sort of single-mindedly. And he may get somewhere. The last thing that I'll quickly say is that so far, I mean, I think he has smart people on his economic team but his own understanding of how to reform Pakistan's economy seems to me to try to fix things on the margins. You know, austerity, you know, even corruption, that's gonna fix things on the margins but what Pakistan's economy really needs is structural change and it is unclear that he understands what kind of structural change it needs but perhaps his economic team, you know, Assad Umar and others understand that a little bit better. Thank you. Well, that's a perfect note to end on. We're gonna go to Uzair who's gonna talk a little bit about the kind of state of the economy and what we can anticipate moving forward and feel free to react to anything that Madiha and Moide have already said. Thank you for this and Madiha's a good segue into the economy but before I sort of jump into that, the one thing I wanna respond to and I think Moide and Madiha both alluded to is that the military has positioned itself in an interesting way to backstop this government and I hope they stand by him because the burden of history is against any prime minister in Pakistan's history. You look at 70 years, the most client of prime ministers even have faced an issue or an inflection point where the military has a fallout with them and things go awry for them. Nawaz Sharif in the late 80s, early 90s was their poster child and look what happened to him. So I think that's an interesting thing to keep an eye on and this is a government that's only been in power for 30 days and frankly is learning how to govern by doing which is a unique experiment in Pakistani history because we have a prime minister that had a worldview, a view of governing Pakistan and solving its inherent structural problems in a way that is at the margin that I agree with Madiha and we'll get to some of that in a minute. The other thing I want to respond to is I think Moid talked about the spending on social welfare like education, health and stuff from 2008 to 2007. Here's an interesting fact that people I think when they discussed the economy in Pakistan forget is that in the last four years Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his haqdars as finance minister literally doubled the tax collection in Pakistan and spent a lot of money on these things. The inherent structural problem in Pakistan is when you look at the mini budget released by this government right now is that you have about 1.1 trillion rupees which is about eight billion or so dollars if I'm getting the exchange rate right in defense spending. This year when you cut the public sector development program by about 300 billion rupees to about 700 or billion that's the allocation we'll see how much they spend probably won't be about more than 500 billion. You cut all of these expenses it's almost like someone saying take your child out of school because you lost your job and cut your household expenses while the head of the household gets to buy expensive new toys. It just does not make any sense. And until and unless the government has an honest conversation with the military on the same page or the same book of the same page that hey if everyone's having to cut their money and have an audit on austerity why not you? Why can't there be an audit of the spending of the defense sector in Pakistan and say what are you spending your money on and why is it that year after year we keep giving you 20, 10, 15% increases in budget? No one in Pakistan can have that conversation. So let's leave it at that. What's the second issue on the table when you talk about being better at governing the country? It's your state-owned enterprises. You look at the budget estimates of the last year from this government and they've been kept the same by the mini budget that was announced on Monday. 1.2 trillion rupees go into about 200 SOEs that make losses year on year. The Pakistan steel mills and the PIA by combination alone if you privatize them and end their losses or at least have the government not backstop them you save about five billion rupees five billion dollars I'm sorry every year. That's a lot of money that's there that's much more than what they just cut from public sector development programs but guess what no one wants to make that tough decision in Pakistan. And in 2013 to 2018 period when Imran Khan was the one pressurizing the government day in day out it was his government that continued to oppose and say we won't let our crown jewels be privatized you can't let go of the Pakistan steel mills or the PIA I don't know what he'll do now but they have to govern now and they have to make a decision whether they go to the IMF or not how is it that you cut those losses and reform the economy because guess what even just solving half of that let's say you privatize the steel mill or stop its losses you have a lot more money in the bank that you can do a lot of good with but that's not at the margin that's at the core and he's faced with an opposition particularly the PPP that will fight tooth and nail to oppose it because there's a lot of patronage involved in those companies and being the fact that the steel mill in particular is located in Karachi the heart of Sin politics and PPP's patronage network that the fact that they will fight is going to be a tough challenge for them and on a challenge at a time when not only have they shown a lack of a spine the fact of the matter is with or without military support this is the weakest prime minister to be elected to power since Jamali who was backstabbed by Musharra regime who had a one seat majority in parliament this one has about four seats so tomorrow the MQM says we're leaving and stepping out of the door this government goes home and so the fact that you have a prime minister that will have the burden of history in terms of falling out with the military with the four seat majority and an opposition frankly when people say that people are sick and tired of everyone of all the old faces in Pakistan I think that's more of a northern Pakistan phenomenon in Punjab and KP you look at Sin the people's party gained its seats in an election year that they actually claim at least that it was rigged against them so whether you take that with a grain of salt or not doesn't matter but the fact of the matter is that in Sindh where everyone in Pakistan says the PPP is corrupt and does not do anything they gain seats so how do you explain that is something that is worth pondering as well coming down into the roots of the state and the structure of the economy right essentially Pakistan is a rent seeking state both internally and externally internally it's ruled by a political elite and a military elite that lives in cordoned off gated communities that gets to keep its privileges no matter what happens to the economy whether you go to the IMF program a 19 time or 20th 20th time or the 40th time I don't think it will matter to them they will continue to enjoy life the way they have and that's at the core of the problem externally their rent seeking state as you see already are hearing Armichi was in China Prime Minister was in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh to talk to the shakes and they'll get some money they'll extract some rents and maybe the IMF will come in and business will be as usual for them and what they've done as part of the rent seeking state is they've relied on a regressive form of taxation to squeeze out that doubling of tax revenue that I just referred to earlier comes from the fact that they squeeze the withholding taxes out of the people so you have things like 40% taxes on your mobile phone cards you have taxes such as transaction taxes on for non filers on the banking system now in a country that's under bank and where the informal sector some claim is as large as the formal sector of the economy to put a tax on the banking system and then say we want to formalize the economy just does not add up but you have to do that short termism because it's a rent seeking economy therefore you extract money wherever you can and they keep doing more of that they've done more of that in the budget as well right now and then the third is that they continue to fail to invest in sustainable sectors so you have a situation in Pakistan where you have the auto manufacturing industry for example that is uncompetitive by any standards even regionally it's uncompetitive you can buy a Toyota Corolla across the border from India for 20% discount why is it that Pakistan continues to protect an uncompetitive sector is because their rents being extracted out of that you go to Pakistan you want to buy a car you have to pay a premium of about 500 to a thousand fifteen hundred dollars depending on the type of car just to get it at that time and the auto manufacturing companies and the dealers have a really good time making money off of that so again extracting rent and the policy time after time on the economic front in particular has been behind the curve so in the 90s when you study and look at Pakistan energy sector and I'll dive into that in a bit you look at the energy sector policy in Pakistan you look back and say okay Pakistan made a mistake by investing in furnace oil power plants okay that made your industry uncompetitive you started losing exports the rest of the world because it was just inefficient to produce electricity from furnace oil oil prices went up in the early 2000 you had a big financial crisis on your hand this time around the development energy policy guess what they invest in imported coal power and imported LNG now you're investing in coal power at a time when record low solar and wind power tariffs are at record lows around the world why not invest in that now you have more reliance on import energy at a time when you brought in about 60 billion let's say about 30 billion of that Chinese investment was in the energy sector instead of going to the Chinese and saying I want more wind power and distributed solar energy you bring in old inefficient coal power plants that will use imported coal and all of a sudden your national security is at risk once again for the next 30 years because these power plants are supposed to last that long and oh guess what those tariffs that you've agreed to are in dollar denominated terms and earning money in rupees so the math just doesn't add up over there on the energy sector side again you have that same problem where the circular debt right now was about 1.1 trillion rupees it was about 400 billion rupees when Nawashreef came to power they printed treasury bills and went ahead through the printing of treasury bills cleared that debt it's at 1.1 trillion about 3x increase in the last five years because just because of the amount of electricity that's now being produced and through that issue was an issue of rationalizing tariffs on the gas and the electricity market there was a big issue that those of us that followed the economy closely were looking at again it was the Imran Khan opposition that continued to oppose it and now that they're in power the first thing they do is increase the gas tariffs and how will they justify that how will they continue to move around on that energy policy remains to be seen but my biggest fear at this point in time is that to make Pakistan's economy grow you have to fix the finances reform the bureaucracy to improve sustainable business growth those call for really tough decisions and backed by the military or not this government in the first 30 days at least has shown a lack of a spine whether it's on the Ahmadiyya issue whether it is on succumbing to the auto manufacturing lobby and removing the ban on non-filers buying cars which was a really good step the last government took or whether it is on just standing up to the military and saying if everyone has to do austerity the prime minister says I'm going to take 55 rupees a kilometer helicopter rides how about you cut your budget by 5% I don't see that happening and so you'll see more of that marginal thinking in the country and maybe five years from now we'll talk about another IMF failure for Pakistan so you all thank you, thank you very much for that there's some really good data in there and we were just chatting that it will be all available online afterwards should you want to refer to it all three of you talked about the civil military dynamic is you can't have a conversation about Pakistan without getting into that no matter how hard you try and it's clear that the military is going to play an influential role in the future of this government in terms of what happens to it how successful it can or cannot be I wonder how much of this flip-flopping in the early days is related to that kind of state of mind in the PTI that they have the military for now but if they cross a certain line they might not and so my question to you all would be same question for all of you because you all said that as long as they get along the government will be fine it's basic if I could put words in your mouth what are those lines that could get crossed what are those issues that could serve as triggers for imbalancing further imbalancing the civil military dynamic and I ask because if you look at the history of the country of when for example coups happened there was definitely political tensions and constitutional crises and politicking that led to them but I think that there was also they also occurred against a stark economic backdrop the country was in some kind of economic crisis and the military felt like it had to come in to save the country or fill in the blank with however you describe it but I'm not suggesting that we're going to end up in another coup but let's talk a little bit about that if in fact we're in a new era how would we start to describe kind of that imbalance and what could lead to tensions so I use the word social experiment and the experiment part is important the answer is I don't think anybody knows I think what you've seen here is not I think the difference between this and the 90s is that this wasn't I want this guy to be my agent it was more about getting rid of somebody else and this happened to be the only other possible outcome I think there's a qualitative difference right now in the civil military domain the civilian government is seen as a partner not as an agent the 90s was different you are my agent you do what I tell you to do right now this doesn't mean it can't change it can definitely change but that's why I'm saying this is a new social experiment and we will see where it ends up the issue about lines and crossing or not crossing anything Madhya or Zair mentioned the idea that you know the government is going to let them do it look I think we need to accept the reality there's no point going around it there is a status quo power institution in Pakistan it's called the military whether it should be or not is we can debate that later no status quo power institution in the world gives up power voluntarily right so as I see it you have two options you have the Nawaz model where you have a Tiff one pushes back against the other one wins one loses right or you have a model in with the status quo power institution keeps certain space for itself whether it's security fund policy whatever it is and then the other side does things that they're good at and you know give and that's the model you're seeing now that's why I keep coming back to the fact it's a social experiment most Pakistanis quite frankly don't care on the street if you talk to Pakistanis and say oh military is overbearing or the civilians are doing certain things they're like I don't care what will deliver governance is what I care about right and that's why I think this is a popular experiment so far the only other thing I'll mention is I think there is a bit of a failure of imagination among us analysts not us but generally because I think we are now reduced to pointing to problems I spent the past year talking to the PTI folks in the government and you know even the opposition and quite frankly I've had a number of conversations where even in my field they've said so what do you think we should do we don't have ideas we know what the problems are we keep pointing to problems and then we also have simplistic solution so again I go back to the point maybe Pakistan is now structurally ungovernable in the short run and you're going to have these tinkering at the edges just to survive and then see where we end up because quite frankly if Imran Khan has to succeed the one thing I will say is I hope he doesn't understand what to do with the economy and just lets his team deliver and I hope he doesn't know what to do with X and Y you don't want a micromanager you actually want somebody who can hire good people to do the job the only thing he has to do is accept that he's going to be a prime minister of U-turns if Imran Khan has to succeed he has to go back on everything he said before the election on on extremism on on foreign policy on privatization or whatever that's perfectly fine he was an opposition guy if he's going to stick to that now he's going to fail so I much rather have him become hypocritical in that but deliver and that's by changing the tune on what he wants to say it's a great question that's a really really interesting response as well just a couple of things so the triggers for changing and the triggers for the civilian government sort of getting in the military's way and upsetting the dynamic are A when the civilian government threatens the military's dominance as Nawaz Sharif did or B challenges the military's the the military's understanding of foreign policy right so or the military is running a foreign policy so changes the status quo with India when the military doesn't want to change you know sort of unilaterally tries to change the status quo with India or changes the status quo with the United States again sort of more unilaterally not in partnership with the military and when the military has used so in in the nineteen nineties it used uh... a floundering economy uh... always to justify its coups but in my view though that was just uh... you know sort of uh... an easy justification to uh... to sort of use but really the uh... the problem that the military thought or the the line that the military thought was being crossed was was elsewhere so i guess that's so that's one important point uh... to mention now i i think we're in a completely different dynamic from the nineteen nineties and the nineteen nineties there were two parties uh... they were both weak they were both working against each other they would lie with the military to topple the other it's a completely different dynamic because here is here's a com a new third party that has now become the dominant uh... the dominant party what imran there are two things that he needs to manage you know i think he needs to manage his politics and then he needs to manage the military and he needs to manage the military in order to stay in power in this term in order to write out these five years he needs if he in in order to get reelected he needs to manage the politics of sort of perhaps you know perhaps coalition politics but but his voter base and and please you know his vote vote base so that those are those are two things and he's you know at this point i think he is focused primarily on his voter base with with regard to the military i i think he has taken a couple of steps so he he's not going to challenge the military's dominance the way navashree did that is for sure they have a they have a pretty cozy relationship and uh... a pretty friendly relationship and that is visible for all to see where he might get in sort of the military's crosshairs is again with sort of this friendly approach to india you know the letter that he wrote uh... to modi uh... on september fourteenth and in general even in his victory speech uh... the kind of approach that he's using to foreign policy actually in my view is a much more sensible approach than he's then he sort of uses more domestically uh... and you know it's a very reasonable balance letter even with the united states you know he talks about a mutually beneficial balance relationship but a relationship different than the one that the military has been running where the military is accepting u.s. aid in order to you know tackle the the the thaliban and obviously there are there are issues with the u.s. thinking the military is not done enough on that he wants to in some in some ways let go of that paradigm of the relationship completely now you can argue that that paradigm of the relationship has failed but it's still splintering or along and when secretary pompel was in pakistan you know he's still talked about pakistan doing more to fight uh... militant groups uh... the u.s. is still cutting off aid hoping that pakistan does more to fight militant groups but in ranhan in some ways is sort of not interested in that paradigm uh... at all uh... of of the relationship actually i would argue that that could lead to uh... a reset a completely refreshed relationship that that may in fact start out uh... on a on a different level uh... but it is not clear what the military thinks of that you know he's he's not going to take on the l.e.t. the last great day but he's not going to take on the khani network you know he's he's not talking about that so he's not getting in the military's crosshairs on that but just on the overall paradigm of the u.s. india and the sorry the u.s. pakistan and the pakistan india relationship he may push buttons he will probably not cross the thin red line but if he does that there will be an interesting conversation to be had it might be that right now he has the room like he has a certain uh... he has a certain wiggle room to do as he pleases uh... from the military's perspective or they may both be on board in this uh... trying to to reset both relationships uh... but but if he tries to do something unilaterally that the military is not on board with that'll be the problem i'll take a more domestic look at that it's not a red line per se but i think they're two near-term risks that his government faces in let's say the next 12 to 18 months and they both have to deal with coalition politics and the promises he's made number one he's made certain promises the bnp mangle group in balochistan on missing persons that is directly in the promises are directly in conflict with the status quo of the military and number two is carachi and it's urban politics and the promises made in carachi and we we see at least on the carachi side him actually already trying to do uh... something good by announcing a fifty billion rupee uh... economic package for the city going to the city after some lawmakers said that they're not happy that he hasn't engaged with them yet and so he recognizes that again with a four-seat majority mqm having i think six or seven seats in parliament mangle having about two or three that he can't afford to lose those two uh... partners in the coalition now the trick will be how does he balance the demands of those two parties in the mqm and the bnp mangle side they're both have issues with missing persons and encounters and and uh... judicial murders of their workers uh... how does he move forward on that and then how does he make sure that the mqm which is since the nineties or since forever at least i've been alive has found a way to be in the governing coalition has found a way to negotiate time after time certain things from the ruling party how does he manage them because at the end of the day if if the demand is that give us more devolution well he can't deliver on that because in this room by the people's party and they're not too keen on that what else can you give them to the federal package after fifty billion rupees if you can't meet the bnp mangle's demand of uh... resolution of the missing persons case in a way that is acceptable to them and the baloch uh... themselves well where does he go next and on the bulls sign uh... below just outside the biggest risk already is out in place that they're struggling to keep the coalition together already in thirty days so i feel that it's not a red line but the those two coalition partners will draw them into a situation where he may have to have a discussion of sorts with the security establishment and how that discussion goes uh... will determine uh... where that relationship uh... and how that relationship okay so we'll open it up for questions from the audience now uh... there will be a mike coming around please introduce yourself in your affiliation okay we've got a question in the back row there please well that's coming could i just say one line before i'm just sort of trying to think in my head about this you know one thing i want to point out just having the advantage of being there i think the civil military model is very different in this case when you talk to pt i the party of the government what you realize is that this is not i mean the conversation about the military backing the pt i uh... in the other parties you can point to people who are the key interlocutors of that party with the military because they have contacts with the military they've done that in the past in pt i's case when you talk to pt i's office bearers ministers government they actually have no clue on how to get to the military i mean this is not a top down party engagement with the military uh... you know the that's why i think it's important to keep in mind the order was i somebody's out who's in was less important at the time right so i don't think you have channels here whereby individuals are dealing with the military and having a conversation on what to do about x or y uh... i think it's more about the fact that the military itself from the ranks wanted the same change that an average pakistani did whether it's right or wrong uh... and then ultimately i haven't picked up in my conversations or experience in the past month uh... any channels where interlocutors are acting between the two sides seems to be more uh... you know the military backing the government the prime minister etc but the people who are making decisions within pt i i didn't pick up that there was you know this node where they were getting uh... messages or relaying messages back so this is a good point do you do you get the sense that there is uh... any interest in developing those channels uh... given that the stakes are pretty high i mean if they're part of the government's survival depends on kind of the military's backing and and should they cross certain thresholds on certain issues see i don't seem to make sense that you have channels of communication like any government again you know at the top there must be channels i i think in some ways nobody knows what comes after this so to me the breaking point is not red line or no i think this government's orientation is too similar to to cross any lines or anything i think the real issue is if this government fails in governing then what happens because the the real emphasis here from everybody is they are going to deliver on governance and that's what matters if they turn out to be as lousy as as the previous ones if if that's the the aura then i think you have a problem because nobody knows where to go after right so i think that's really the thing to watch and so to me was as point about the domestic side is more important i think for you know pakistan the the street doesn't really care at the end of the day what this balance is ultimately they are looking for governance results and that's what they're going to judge the government what i think it's so hard about this conversation particular topic is that when we talk about the military we're talking about an institution which has very specific interest which madhya was was pointing at and i agree with that perspective that if the civilians you know get too far out in front on india for example i think the military makes whatever moves it thinks it needs to make to kind of rain that in i do agree with that but but when we talk about the civilians we're actually talking more about personalities and tactics and less about institutions we're not talking about the foreign office we're not talking about the position of the foreign ministry or defense establishment right uh... or the civilians that work in defense we're actually talking more about people and imran khan himself and i think that's where the challenge that there's another challenge a lot lying in there and i don't know and i don't know that there are any solutions to propose on that but i think that's also something interesting to watch in its new space that we're in because uh... p t i is growing as a political party and they're learning from doing and when we read the news about p t i like can't they can't decide in a cabinet and they can't decide on who should lead this this and that and i think it was there and i were talking about this weeks ago that's actually not a bad thing for a democratic like lowercase d uh... society you actually want that but it has it takes on a negative spin often right so while that's happening then they also have to govern then they also have to deal with this behemoth institution that's going to protect its interest no matter what makes it it almost seems like a catch twenty two situation but i don't think it is i think again moeid is right in that we focus on problems and it's made us very very pessimistic and we have to be open for kind of new templates for how things you know how you deal with old issues essentially okay what can i think and then we know that these guys get a word in this is a quick response you're right that the average pakistani does not care about doesn't doesn't care about foreign policy actually and doesn't care about security policy at this point in time they don't they don't care but the military does care and uh... and and so you know that that's important to remember so so in my view for the military versus vis-a-vis the civilian government there there is going to there is going to be a line because we can we can the military cares about the popularity of the civilian government to a point but you know one could argue that the pmln government was very popular when it did cross a a red line and at that point things started and that red line with the military and things started going downhill for that for that pmln government so that's sort of i guess one thing and then the other thing i just want to throw out there is cpec uh... and the china pakistan relationship and the pti is dealing of the china pakistan relationship the pti has sort of smartly signal that it wants to make some changes to cpec but it's it's having to uh... to basically sort of make a u-turn on that one as well because that is not seen uh... in a in that is not seen positively by by you know pakistan's sort of institutions actually the opposition party it's the pmln and and the military who don't want to reset cpec in any way i wonder whether it's them or the chinese because they're the ones who benefit from this okay please sir journalist with uh... name is nadim yakub i'm a journalist with voice of america but first question is about cpec uh... prime minister and ron khan went to saudi arabia and said there's a strategic partnership and now saudi arabia will become part of the cpec or it will be included in the cpec project how would that fair when it comes to the relationship with the immediate neighbors like iran for example so that's first question second uh... you've talked at length about uh... the civilian and military dynamics uh... what about uh... another important institution in pakistan which is judiciary which has been very active how do you look at that in terms of the next five years the government of him ron khan is there uh... that role of the judiciary uh... you know moving forward let's take one more question if we can and then i'll let these folks respond hi uh... hashim pasha fellow of democracy and governments at georgetown university uh... i wanted to uh... ask uh... madiha to maybe further elaborate on why imran khan uh... isn't pushing back on islamist despite his political capital what might be the reasons for that right so cpec the future of the judiciary and uh... pushback on islamist i'll take a stab at the cpec-saudi conversation i think it's still early to see what those dynamics are what we do know like in terms of uh... the data is that the Nawaz government tried to get the emirates to finance a few billion dollars worth of oil refinery uh... and what and then the emirates backed out of that and as we talked about earlier this is about getting some cash to make sure that the economy stays afloat uh... and maybe reduce the amount if not avoid the imf for the next 12 to 18 months uh... so what those projects look like we don't know but the one on the table uh... as far as i know and i would expect to be on the table with the southeast is about that oil refinery where saudi oil i'm guessing or emirati oil would just come into go out there get refined and then somehow transported into china we we we still need to see what those look like in terms of its impact on the iranian side i don't really see much happening out of that because you have the gcpo and iran sanctions over here coming out of the u.s. so in any case pakistan's economic relationship with iran cannot grow in in the shadow of these sanctions and then we've seen it already with india which is far a far bigger oil trading ally uh... for iran that it has already cut down with oil import so in that situation the iran pakistan gas pipeline or any other sort of economic growth uh... in the relationship just cannot happen so uh... from the saudi perspective the near-term thing will be sign off on a project give two or three four billion dollars to the pakistan is keep the economy afloat and as for what's already today said we support whatever other strategic needs of the Saudis have now what does that mean remain it's a question we need to ask uh... mister jolly but i i as someone who's watched that relationship is going back to the yemen question that was there in twenty fourteen uh... on the judiciary that that's something i wanted to comment on and slip my mind on the economic front it has been in my opinion the biggest obstacle to reforms in pakistan why do i say that you look at the musher of error reform on the steel mill uh... the steel mill was at that time in fairly healthy uh... situation the if they catch all three judiciary block that sale and the steel mill is where it is now uh... the second issue with no one really talks about in pakistan but i think it's very important to keep an eye out on is the reacord mine uh... which is with the tehtian copper company there's about a twelve billion dollar exit case uh... in international arbitration but it's not by all means is going to lose that case and then that will begin along protected process of recovering that twelve billion dollar lost who overturned that again the judiciary so if you look at what is on the economic structural reforms particularly on the state-owned enterprises side and that is linked to the energy sector reform if let's say tomorrow in ron khan says i want to privatize the pia you want to be utern khan let's be utern khan and go ahead with the privatization agenda the judiciary may step in and say you can't really do that once again and you're left in a lot of trouble where international investors will say okay we can't really deal with you once again because the judiciary is interventionist and the biggest obstacle there is like the biggest obstacle the thing to watch out is in january this justice retired but the guy next in line this is uh... asaf saeed kosa he is the man who wrote the godfather line in the verdict so he's more of a bio by looking at his verdict is more of a hard line and the current justice so it creates this really uh... tricky situation for the government at least in my view on the economic front i mean i'll just very quickly on on cpec look i mean i think the saudi arabia in cpec is neither her nor there in fact if the entire world can come into cpec pakistan will benefit so the question is what in return and quite frankly we will never know so that's the i i won't you know read too much into the cpec part that is what it is uh... the judiciary question is very interesting uh... and i think uh... was a spot on i mean that's exactly where it is pakisans had a tragic history since nineteen ninety four when pakistan came up with this uh... independent power producers policy i pp policy uh... the nabashri government that came after that basically next state the pakistan sovereign guarantees were called in blah blah blah since that time pakistan has been fantastic and making sure that every investor that there's to come runs away uh... it was governments before it was lack of continuity of policies it was bad decisions and now it's the judiciary for the past ten years the future of the judiciary now depends on the individual that leads it that's the history that we've seen nobody remembers one individual uh... who happened to be the chief justice of pakistan the sadhu jilani uh... who's before this current uh... chief justice the reason nobody remembers him that he was operating as a judge of the supreme court should so we didn't hear about him we didn't you know nobody knows what he did but he was doing what he was supposed to do any populist chief justice will end up in this problem because populism will drive you to decisions that look good in the short run and you know create problems in the long run we'll see what the next gentleman does and the gentleman after that but you the analysis now has to be really about the guy who leads uh... rather than the you know the makeup of the judiciary because that unfortunately they have so much power to decide where they want to go with it i mean on the judiciary as as as you both have sort of pointed out i think the judiciary stands in the way not only of economic policy in the sense that it's sort of economic policy because it's trying to being an activist judiciary trying to take charge of of economic policy in many ways but it stands in the way of an effectively functioning democracy in pakistan especially a civilian democracy when you're when you're going to take up bits of uh... civilian government is supposed to do when the judiciary is going to take up bits of it then you're effectively uh... limiting what and and and you're constantly criticizing you know what the the fact that the civilian government is not delivering then you're effectively limiting what uh... you know that the civilian government can do so that's sort of the the first point you know there could have been perhaps a bit of pushback that this government could have taken with the current chief justice so i don't remember exactly when the chief justice announced his scheme to collect money for for for dams right his uh... his scheme to collect money for dams and imran han instead of sort of sort of either not paying attention to it or saying hey that's our responsibility not the chief justice's responsibility he signed on he's you know give his support to that uh... to that scheme and now everybody is putting in money in this uh... in this pool to collect money for dams so in some ways you've given uh... you know a little a little bit of power that the that the judiciary desire to it just by doing that but he actually said that it is the responsibility of the government therefore we will make it the cjpm dam fund but it honestly i mean if you're gonna make a dam fund just make it the cjpm dam fund right and he can he could take it over he has the power to at this point take it over but fair enough so so that's that's that on the on the judiciary i agree that the the person uh... the person who's in charge matters but uh... precedence also matters and the fact that the judiciary has taken such an activist stance and has gotten away with it uh... in the past means that somebody in the future can uh... as well so that's that on why around hannah's not pushing back on islamist great question you know i would would love for him to to to answer that you know my sense is uh... one could say you know a he sympathizes with whatever there they want but that's not really the case because he has you know again he has done certain things in his first month in power which show that he is he was trying to push back at least with an initial decision he is fearful of backlash he is fearful of the backlash and he is fearful of what and islamist party out on the street can do and how it can hurt this is my mean this is my reading of it how it can hurt his uh... you know his sort of political stability at this point in time so early in the government so he thinks that the little decisions that he is the decision that he made let's say again the two to a point uh... an economist who happened to be an amity on the economic advisory council that got pushed back he thinks that those decisions may not be big enough to risk political destabilization at this point in time that's my reading of it otherwise you know he he could bring people on board uh... at this point in time this is the point of time for any incumbent in pakistan at which their popularity is highest you know the popularity never goes up it always it always goes down and incumbents always and uh... battered and bruised and so this is the time at which well he has the most political capital to use so the fact that he didn't push back now means that he he doesn't want to lose any did you want to respond did you want to say something moe? you always want to say something give me a response i hope it makes sense uh... i'm debating because this is actually very provocative i'm actually surprised that he made the first decision to to put him on the council quite frankly and i want to be absolutely clear that i was completely disgusted with the idea that he had to pull back and you know i just met like a week ago before that but i think he is right that the islamists have the kind of space clout to do what he is worried about uh... this is not justifying not pushing back but i think i'm making a much more sad and provocative point which is that the level of intolerance in pakistani society is real and almost unchallengeable beyond a point that's just the reality that's not the pakistan i grew up in but that's the pakistan it is for a new government trying to focus on governance you don't want to rock the board that's what you do so my real surprise is not i'm disgusted by his response by the response but my real surprise is that he actually did what he did to begin with i think it was just a miscalculation i don't think you know they thought that they thought this would just go under the radar look i mean nobody is questioning i mean it's not that imran khan doesn't want somebody from that persuasion to be a part of government it's just politics and namaskari did a very small tiny thing actually it wasn't even what it was made out to be in this legislative language and islamabad was under siege uh... so two things to add context here though imran khan went through this in twenty fourteen or fifteen before when he said i would consider it as my finance minister and got back and secondly let's not also surprised that they did it again and let's also not wanted to do that means he wanted to do it you know i think he thought that the benefits of having him on the council were enough to uh... to you know be willing to take some political backlash i mean i'm not reading too much into that much into this who knows right i mean it's in his mind we don't know i think he wanted the guy who he thinks is very good and is very good whether he's x or y it didn't matter till it had a backlash the second thing that's worth putting in context as well as that it was imran khan who campaigned in july and june using on the emity issue and use the fezzabad and said that if the government does not backtrack on the fezzabad protest my workers will join them so at some point i agree that is how you can say that okay by appointing ativ mea he showed his heart is in the right place but if you look at his features in the election campaign kind of like scary too that he used that for his own political yeah but quite frankly if you had fezzabad today navaz would be doing that uh... you know in pakistan that's the problem this sells and that's the issue here but muit to your point i i completely agree that this is the state of pakistan right now then if he is unable to push back at this point in time which is which is nothing new nobody has been able to push back right and where pakistan is is because of decades of civilian and military and military leaders being unable to push back the islamists but it has slid the the the slide has been downward right and so you've ended up with a much more intolerant population then there was at that point in time if there is to be any hope of turning back it is to take a stand at inflection points such as this and the fact that he wasn't able to take a stand even now means that you know it's only gonna slide i'm not just if i am not taking a stand i'm just saying that it is that bad yeah i think part of the problem is that it's become part of a political calculation always has but because it's part of a political calculation that means it's never going to be part of taking a stand because if you take a stand what happens to you you get assassinated for example and we've seen that happen right so uh... and again this is not new every government has had to negotiate with islamists i think it's particularly problematic that in the last election they were so normalized that and given so much more political space than ever before that you know it it does weaken this new government and i think in all of this conversation there's clear like that some of us had expectations that imran khan because of who he was and what he said in the past might be able to negotiate with islamists differently i think that there was some kind of latent expectation of that and i think that is unrealistic completely so okay let's take a few more questions and then we'll have to wrap up so we'll this gentleman right here in the blue shirt and then over there hi uh... i'm sabha and i work with you was there at the albright stonebridge group i had a question on imran khan and i think what he had touched on it personally but until now it seems as if his ambition was all about becoming the prime minister and he would do everything he can and embrace any ideology he can to reach that goal how deep those ambitions run what are his aspirations whether he sees himself as a national reformer or an international statesman or he's happy to just get one more term because often that has decided how much leaders are willing to push back or how much they're willing to do or where often governments lead so that would be interesting to hear from you on thank you black line course from the accountability lab uh... my question two very quick ones if i may first is on civic space uh... whether you think civic space is going to continue to close in pakistan uh... particularly with respect to groups that work on things like human rights and corruption in balochistan uh... and secondly the larger question i suppose is if this cycle is going to continue uh... with the military controlling the civilian government at what point do we do we find a way to extract the military from from governance there are countries around the world that have managed to do that have you looked at other examples and how those might apply so that this cycle doesn't continue in pakistan into your last question i can answer that i have a very different sort of philosophical take on this question i think uh... and this is not only pakistan but just my scholarship on this i think we increasingly have conflated over the years the demand for output versus process uh... the output is governance uh... the process in countries which haven't had a history as jondas as pakistan between sort of the civil military uh... in some ways i found it easier uh... others like turkey actually did you know make the right turn and then things went haywire i personally do not think the pakistani system quite frankly i'm not justifying it again but the pakistani system i don't think sees this as a priority uh... at this point uh... i think the the narrative is good governance and ultimately things will start falling in place now i think that's nice that's not how it happens it's the experience tells us data tells us that's not how it happens but if you want to see the approach right now it is singular it is governance will ultimately start figuring out other things whether it will or not but i don't see any other sort of movement to to rebalance this if you will anytime soon the i want to say something about as aspiration and you know i think it's it's always one's got to be careful at least i don't know about the others i'm not a buddy of him ron khan i don't go into his mind and see who knows what he ultimately the only thing i will tell you is that leaders come in with different aspirations leave with different aspirations at this point i am convinced it's not about another time he's a guy who sees himself as you know his destiny is to work on pakistan change pakistan reform this and that what happens midterm when the election is coming and his people tell him look we're gonna lose will wait and see where i think he will fall is that from everything he's written in his book and his life and what he says i think he's got an altruistic view of reform which actually makes the social contract that i talked about in the seventies more expensive not less expensive his welfare idea is is very good nobody can debate that given the nature of the pakistan economy and the structure of the institutions uh... i think it's impossible for him to achieve that in in any reasonable period of time so then you run up against this problem of sky high expectations and mediocre delivery and that's what you're struggling with now you know i mean in the past you would never have a conversation about fifty five rupee helicopters because five used to fly in in an hour now he's raised the benchmark which is great by the way and he will have to sort of figure out how to balance that right that's i think his real problem is his vision is very altruistic and it depends a lot on optics uh... where optics crisscross with real delivery i think that's going to be his challenge i think uh... so i'll take a stab at that and i agree with you uh... so i think for him leading up to twenty eighteen it was all about wanting to become prime minister because he wanted to be in the position of affecting the change that he thought you know pakistan needed and and that is you know what as he as he himself calls it sort of this islamic welfare state as he talks about it he talks a lot about pakistan's poor and marginalized in terms that are very empathetic and honestly in ways that have not really seen other leaders of pakistan talk about you know the disabled uh... women's health you know issues that that children's health uh... issues that uh... are not necessarily on the national agenda in pakistan so my sense is that he made political calculations and very damaging ones that that may actually have been damaging not just uh... to other political parties but like to to the country in some ways in terms of the rhetoric that was put out there he made political calculations to get to this point now that he's in this point he wants to sort of do away with all of that implement this welfare state whether he can or not uh... and the expectations are sky high that's that's a question but i think he will that's the big question and and you know if he delivers on that he'll win the next term if he doesn't he won't but there is a question of what will he want at the end of this term will he want perhaps in other five years right to to fulfill this destiny of making pakistan and islamic welfare state will he then indulge in damaging politics once again to do that i mean those are the those are the questions but right now it's clear that he has one agenda and that he's going to put his all into into that on the ambition side i think it's the third experiment to going back to mory's term of social experiment the third experiment pakistan has with the great man thesis the first one was jinnah pakistan became successful uh... the second was buto hang failure i would say because he couldn't achieve what he set out to and this is the third experiment so we'll see what happens and i feel that i agree with moe that he feels that he is part of that that is his destiny uh... and he has this the rest of the medina of the state of medina welfare state that looks like scandinavia but also resembles medina somehow uh... that he has his vision fundamentally believes in it i disagree however with moe that the uh... seventy social contract is too expensive i don't think so i think it's it's not too expensive is the nature of that contract is that it's a rent seeking economy now in that rent seeking economy there's plenty of money there's about ten billion dollars going to the military and about one point one trillion dollars going to s o's if you reform that there's plenty of money to go around to invest in education health care and etc so that nature of the investments at the state decides to make or the rented seats to extract for the elite has to change now unless that structure does not change you don't go anywhere that means failure of government yeah but i'm saying i'm not saying it's like you're saying it's expensive to maintain that i'm saying it's expensive because the government won't last i mean the elite capture is so strong and when you break those ties you won't survive to do that expensive not not only in terms of the money you have to spend but the fact that every time you make that calculus you pull back to say i won't survive isn't that the i mean that's also has to do with military supremacy if the military is not pakistan's most supreme institution the money that is being spent on the military goes down and there's actually money to spend on that and so that's the red line there's the i don't think that's true i think the elite capture in the elite capture space the civil and the military are the same for the for the average guy on the street you know it doesn't matter right it's basically rent for the elite and by the way i mean this is not only the government of pakistan and and the generals of pakistan yeah i mean no not only bureaucracy but the business elite and you know even people like me i would count myself as part of that really because i'm also uh... extracting a lot of rent to from from the average pakistan on the change of status quo there's a couple of statistics that you should bear in mind is that this election was about both ways that though versus governance right and the governance part one now you can argue how much rigging pre-poll or during poll rigging play the role but if you look at the surveys header did a really excellent survey on priorities for the average citizen and average voter forty percent said that economy was the biggest issue for them that goes to the fact that you know as moise and madhya alluded to as well that that status quo is not part of the conversation on the civic space i feel that it will continue to squeeze not only because of the lack of tolerance in society radical views and mainstreaming of radical views but also you have troll armies you have armies and armies of facebook and twitter accounts that target anyone that talks anything or critiques anyone that is in power or is is said to lose power because of your critique uh... and then on this in on in the offline world the threat of violence against you and you can see a journalist being killed at active being harassed that i think i'll continue to sadly i'll continue to be squeezed even more i'd like to thank the panelists for educating us and making a smarter on pakistan it's always a lively discussion with these guys please join me in thanking them and thank you for such wonderful questions have a great day