 you're watching another episode of Islamabad today for Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Pamela Rakhobatan. Today's topic is what's next for Pakistan. Pakistan is going through an economic crunch. There's a lot of political instability. And whether or not elections would take place is a huge question mark. And to answer these questions, we have with us veteran journalist Amir Wadi, and he's going to shed light on all the different controls which are defining Pakistan's landscape at this point in time, and what can actually be expected as we move forward in 2023 and beyond. Mr. Amir Wadi, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thank you, Hamza. All right. So, Amir, let's start off with, you know, the basic question. What's next for Pakistan? Now, you do have rising sovereign debt, you do have an economic crisis, you do have a lot of political instability, and there are no signs of election. I think the situation is slightly nervous. I say slightly because definitely we have an interim government in place. They have a plan, and there is an election commission, which is definitely trying to tell us that they are working. We have a judiciary, which is, you know, also trying to tell the people that they are doing their work. But as you mentioned in your intro, the issue is not politics, the issue is economy. And on that, Pakistan has, you know, consistently failed over the years. And Pakistan has not only failed to create a viable economy where most of its younger people are gainfully employed. We are now a youth bulge, which is, I think, one of the most unmasked youth bulges in the world, which do not have a job. And that is why we are seeing new trends that anybody who can leave Pakistan is ready to leave Pakistan, and many of them are leaving Pakistan. So, you know, what next for Pakistan is? Pakistan, sadly, is following a cyclical model of governance, where every few years we see that the politicians who have been handpicked by Pakistan's very powerful establishment, and then give a chance to run a country which they do not have any experience of running. And that's why we have seen that despite political parties who claim that they are political parties, are no more than a political cult of few families. And that is why we have seen, you know, a gradual decline in each and every facet of Pakistani governance and society, whether it's education, whether it's health, whether it's governance, whether it's human rights, or any other thing. So that's why people like me are concerned that when, you know, the interim government is trying to tell us that they will actually hold elections when they are, you know, basically told by the election commission that the election commission is ready, we are seeing a couple of pitches there as well. But I think Pakistan will, you know, just jump over them, whether they are happened, they happen in the next three months or four months or five months, they will happen. And political parties which have, you know, recently worked as a coalition government, although we know that that coalition was not a coalition of the willing, you know, they know that they had been thrown a political challenge in the form of Imran Khan and his political party. But since that challenge has been effectively taken care of, I say again, effectively taken care of because I believe that they have been taken care of. And if Imran Khan and his political party have to fight back, it will be an uphill task. So I think in five months, six months time, whenever Pakistan holds an election, these coalition parties, the coalition government, you know, basically consisting of all major political parties will have a task at their hand to re-rail Pakistan, where Pakistan can create an economy. Pakistan can start its projects, which they said would bring a lot of prosperity, whether it's a lot of prosperity or any prosperity with working with the Chinese and, you know, finding some peace in the region. Okay, so when you talk about the controversy in the presidency, I mean, one latest development that actually did take place and it's made global headlines. For example, the president, President Daraf Ali, he came that, you know, his staff basically put him in the dock by not agreeing to actually send those bills that he apparently did not sign back to the parliament. And then you had another situation where the staff has written the letter back to the president by claiming that, you know, find his allegations are wrong. So you also have a lot of controversy with regard to acts such as the Army Act, as well as the, you know, the OSA as well. So there's a lot of chaos in the presidency of work. And it's very understandable. The reason is that President Ali must be feeling very lonely in that presence. He belonged to Imran Khan's political party and most of the time it was alleged that he was behaving more like a party person rather than a president. And, you know, he did not show himself or at least behave. This is alleged widely in the country that he has not behaved like a president of a federation. So when now, technically because he was retiring on 9th of September, he may prolong a little bit because there's no parliament at the moment. So next president cannot be elected. So these kind of lectures which he is, you know, sending back and forth show the confusion in the presidency that letter or the bills he had to sign, there is a process and that is why the law ministry and his president's own office were saying that, listen, when we received these bills from the parliament, we duly, you know, within a day, within 24 hours, they were presented to the president to sign and the president basically sat on them. Now if the president, you know, sat on them for days and then did not sign and asked the staff to send them back, he was not, you know, constitutionally required to do that. He was constitutionally required to either sign and if he has some problem with any of the bills, he should have written his objections for the parliament to reconsider those bills. And if neither of the two processes were, you know, taken care of, then those bills would automatically become law. Now when the president is saying, you know, my concern is not what the president is going with the president's office. My concern is that Pakistan has come to a pass, Hamza, where the president and his office is putting these letters, which technically in a government are closed documents are being, you know, posted on X on social media. And within minutes, you know, there is a national and maybe Pakistanis were sitting outside Pakistan, you know, start taking potshots how this, you know, country is being run. Now, technically, we know that, you know, when we saw the international trend when President Trump started running the State Department and the, you know, basically the different departments of the American government through Twitter, you know, middle of the night, he would basically tweet and all the American administration will start running Elder Skelter to see and respond to the president's tweets because he was taking care of the foreign policy and the defense policy and any other policy, you know, with governance as well, taking potshots, you know, with the against the Democrats etc. Pakistanis and we saw the same trend. Yeah, we saw the same trend in England, in Europe, in India and Pakistan. Now, this thing tells you that people who are sitting in the highest offices in this country are behaving like, you know, rugby schoolboys and trying to, you know, and when you actually ask them as a what have you done it or we wanted to take the people of Pakistan in confidence, excuse me, you know, not all of Pakistan is on Twitter, now X, sorry. And not everybody reads English, you know, and more than that, not everybody even educated one do not understand how the legal documents are drafted and drafted. So and as far as you know, taking people of Pakistan into confidence, they have voted you in and you will have a chance after five years, once you complete your term, you go back to people and send them whether they still have any confidence in you or not, if they have, they will retain you, otherwise they will change you. You know, this is the kind of stupidity which Pakistan is displaying at all levels. So let's talk about economic stupidity and, you know, when we talk about economic stupidity, I was just watching footage the other day where electricity bills were being burnt in Karachi and there was a lot of protest with regard to how, you know, K electric officials were just going door to door to try and make sure that, you know, they could collect electricity bills and there's a lot of public unrest. Even though that this unrest is not nation-wide, there's this sentiment that this government is basically strangulating the common man. So what is your view is the way out as far as, you know, Pakistan's economic quiet might is concerned, because obviously this basically relates to political stability and whether or not governments could actually, you know, seek second or third terms of power, it really depends on whether the public would vote for them or not. In the 35 years since I, you know, joined media in Pakistan, I've heard from the civilian governments and the military governments, you know, same mantra, because when military governments in place, they used to bring, you know, people, Pakistanis who have served in different American banks or international banks for 30 years outside Pakistan, they did not have any connection with Pakistan or Pakistan's economy or Pakistan's governance and they were brought in and basically posted here. Now, I've heard from them one single sentence that only 1% of Pakistanis pay tax. Now, this is a joke. If a state does not have the ability to take the taxes, you cannot, you know, beg for taxes from the people who can pay taxes. And this is the situation still now. Recently, the outgoing finance minister, Isaac Dar, has used the same thing that, you know, people do not pay taxes and we are requesting them to pay taxes and all those people and we will find this way or that way and, you know, invoke different government bodies to know about their foreign tours and their bank accounts and the cars they have and houses and where they send their kids to school. Now, this, you know, thing is better said than done. What Pakistan has been doing is Pakistan is, you know, basically squeezing all those people who can pay taxes through their salaries. So, the only salary class pay taxes and secondly, most of the taxes are gathered through indirect means. So, for example, you know, the way you mentioned, raising the prices of all the utility utilities, you know, whether it's electricity or gas or petrol or water. And if not, you know, all the FMCGs, you actually buy a bread from, you know, the bazaar, you actually have to pay extra money. Now, I have paid, for example, I have paid that extra, whether it's 20% GST or 70% GST or 25% GST, you know, I have done my part. Whether the government is able to extract that tax from, you know, the seller or the market guy is the state's ability. And state, for example, I have seen and I have discussed it with the ministers and the secretaries of the government of Pakistan, the state does not have the ability now, the system has been corrupted to the core, where, you know, people in the shops and big shops and big malls will tell us that we will rather pay it to the inspector of the government rather than the taxes. You know, they are not being educated enough to say that, listen, if you basically have, you know, a perfectly qualified accountant or a lawyer, a tax lawyer, you might not be able to, you might not be actually asked to pay that much, thus we do think that we will be paid. They do not know, they think that, you know, they will be paid on the total amount of their savings. Because I know, every year you are going to pay on your incoming and outgoing and then, you know, there's a mathematics involved in that. And then you will pay the taxes. The state does not have the ability Hamza. And if the state does not have the ability, and then on the other hand, there is not an economy which is working now. You know, Pakistan has seen that it's economic sectors and Pakistan does not sadly have too many, you know, economic good stories to tell, but in the 90s when the textile sector was working, you know, pretty okay. And Pakistan was producing, you know, needed governments for the biggest brands in the world, whether it was Ralf or Readers or Polo or whatever. And now all those businesses have gone out of this country. Now, Pakistani businessmen, I know many examples where they have moved their businesses outside Pakistan. That means the factory workers will lose the job. You know, the rich man will not actually lose his business. He will have his clients in America or in Europe or anywhere, you know, where he has his clients. But the thing is, he will move his factory to Bangladesh or Egypt or Jordan, or in certain cases, in Southern America. I have, you know, examples where Pakistanis have moved their money as far as, you know, Southern America. That means he will send only three or four managers there, and they will actually have to employ the local people, you know. So that means Pakistanis have lost jobs. In the last 30 years, Pakistan's textile sector has gone down. Pakistan does not have any sector but to export rice and maybe few other things. There was a hope that this new technologies, you know, Pakistan will start earning not as India is earning, but maybe, you know, even 5% of what India is earning. But again, because there is no policy and the biggest, I think, challenge for Pakistan is to remove its bureaucratic, you know, shenanigans from the business, you know, and the commerce ministries and put people in who know how to run a business. A bureaucrat, you know, who has been jumping from one department to the other department and behaving like a glorified clerk cannot run these ministries. He does not understand these ministries. He basically is charging money as far as, you know, in other words, bribes to, you know, let whatever business is left. So I think that is a very dire situation. And again, the biggest thing was back in 2017, there was a hope when, you know, CPAC, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, you was being targeted in Islamabad, and I know, and you would have definitely seen it yourself, that there were a seminar every single day in Islamabad hotels and think tanks about CPAC as you know, the CPAC would be the game changer. And I spoke at one of the functions where Pakistan's, you know, think tanks were discussing it. And I said, Listen, I have heard this word so many times game changer. What is the game? You know, and the game was not in our hand. CPAC was not a project to prosper Pakistan. It was a Chinese project. But Pakistan would have benefited from it. But the thing is, we know how in the last government, and during the last government of Imran Khan, him and some of his, you know, close people who are working with him, I don't know what to mention names here. They choked that thing. They choked it. It basically came to grinding halt. And now it's very, in a very minor way, it has started rolling again. And that's why in Islamabad, you will see again here about CPAC and China's involvement. The thing is, Pakistan need to create a balance between Washington and Beijing, and maybe a new powers, you know, angle, but we have seen him when Pakistan started importing oil from Russia. Pakistan has been, you know, running from one powerful center to another, asking or begging for a job or a task. You know, Pakistan in the country of 240 million is not being run as an independent state, which is at peace with itself and is at peace with its region, and with fair people who know their job are allowed to do their jobs. Let's come to the controversy between the president and the election commissioner of Pakistan, Sikandar Sothan Raja and President Saira Falvi. There was this conversation that did take place yesterday, where they were just trading barbs over the fact that who is to decide when the election would actually take place. Now, the ECP commissioner basically said that the election would take place based upon the ECP's own directive, because of the fact that the latest election act was actually amended, and the president claimed that no, it has to be, you know, it has to take place in 90 days. So when you see elections happening, you see it happening in February or March or maybe earlier, because there's so much uncertainty with regard to this painful democratic transition, which would ultimately usher in some degree of political stability, if not at all. Now, on that very tricky question, I have, you know, two theories. One theory is what is being doubted, where it was being, you know, told to the people, and then my conspiracy theory. First thing first, I think the president, whatever he's trying to do is, I think he's trying to tell his party, the PTI, and, you know, this government, which is the caretaker government, that he means business. And if he is not listened to, then he will create, you know, whatever trouble he can create. But thing is, let's, let's suppose that the election commissioner of Pakistan has taken a very, you know, straightforward position that, listen, after the recent, you know, legislation through the parliament, president has lost his, you know, power to push, you know, his idea that how Pakistan will and when Pakistan will actually have an election, he does not have the power to push the election commission to give a take. And ECP says that, you know, we are the final arbiter here, and we will do it when we will do it. And then they have thrown this spanner in the works that listen, because after the digital, you know, counting of the numbers of people who will be, you know, and the last before, between 2018 and now, 23, almost, you know, 20 million people, new people have been added to Pakistan's population, that that means a lot of people will be over 18, and they will be coming to the election booths for the first time in their life, they will use their right. So the election commission, I think will can work, you know, within the next three to four months on that, because this whole thing which has been, you know, being told to the people through television and through social media that maybe this new limitation, you know, the delimitation of constituencies and as if it's a huge work, I don't think that because, you know, there is no parliament, you need a two thirds, but the majority of the Constitution change the numbers of constituencies in the country, you cannot do that. You know, so that means the number of constituencies will not change, maybe certain tweaking on the basis of population, certain constituencies will be, you know, recrafted or rearranged. But the number of seats will not change. So as an election commission can do this thing in next, you know, three months if, you know, they want to do it. The thing is, the outgoing government, some of the ministers of the outgoing government and some of people who know what is actually happening on this front, when they sit in television programs and discuss that, you know, this thing might take, you know, a few months, that means if election does not actually happen in November, they might actually happen in February. And some people say that no, if Supreme Court actually wants, they can come in. I said even Supreme Court cannot basically push the process of election. They cannot pass an order. But in the financing of things, election commission will actually have to deliver it and they would deliver it and they will find, you know, legal ways and means to do it. Now the conspiracy theory, you remember that Pakistan was finally given this 3.2 billion by the IMF. You know, they tied this thing to Pakistan in three tranches and they said that one billion would be given to the outgoing government, which is gone. One billion would be given to this government, which is caretaker and taken. One billion would be given to the government, which will basically be in power, in seat after the election. So technically, if IMF sees and the international, you know, donor agencies, whether they are all Britain would, you know, institutions, if they think that Pakistan is not listening to and Pakistan is not delivering on the promise of elections and if there is not a government in time, in place, they might, you know, say that, okay, fine, this money is here for you already, you know, agreed upon, but they will be just going to give it to when there is a new election. And the way we are seeing in the last few weeks, they deplete the Pakistani rupee against the dollar and against the international currencies. I think the people who are in power and we know who is in power, they will see that if Pakistan is financially going into a pit, they might find ways and means to go for an earlier election, maybe in December, maybe, you know, towards the end of January. Now, that is my theory at the moment, because the economy will be, you know, will be the big question whether Pakistan will actually have an election on time or not. All right, so let's talk about the future of Pakistan, the electoral landscape, with, without, without fund and the PPI. Obviously, many of the workers were incarcerated. Many of them have been allegedly tortured as well. And you do see this concerted attempt to try and break the party from the powers that be, as you rightly mentioned. So in that, in that regard, do you see any future for the PPI and the upcoming electoral landscape? Because obviously, there, Karashtali Zafar just recently mentioned that, you know, they do need a level playing field in order for the elections to be committed smoothly. How do you see the future of the PPI and the future of Imran Khan? I think we will have to go, you know, a few years into Pakistan's recent past to understand what, you know, PPI is, what PPI was and how it became, what it became. Now, in 2018, we know that PPI was not winning the election. We know that Imran Khan, you know, at least I can say that I know certain, you know, facts and certain, you know, inside information, which we cannot discuss here, which why because the people will deny it. But thing is, had meetings over the last eight, nine years and we saw how certain people who have a powerful positions in Pakistan's different, you know, southern districts or maybe in other areas who were hand delivered to Imran Khan, you know, otherwise Imran Khan, the way his personality is, the way he was running his political party, you have to see how he was, you know, growing politically from 1997 onwards till 19 2008 and then 2013. Until 2013 or 2011, Imran Khan was nobody in Pakistani politics, but a very popular, you know, public figure. And we know for that, why he was a cricketer and then hospital and then university and his philanthropic work, you know, I was raising money for him in Pakistan and outside as well. But thing is, when it came to politics, I think people in power and that when we say that, that means the people from Raul Pindi, you know, people who run from, run this country from Raul Pindi, they decided that this two party system needs to be broken down. Pakistan people's party and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz need to be, you know, given a challenge. And that challenge was supposed to be coming from Punjab because nobody, no political party can challenge a political leader or politician of some weight as Nawaz had become. We know that he was also handpicked by the army and was, you know, particularly crafted for a particular job, you know, against the people's party. And that is why I think, and I have written about him, Imran Khan as the political Kraken, you know, you might have seen those space movies that, you know, when you do not really, yeah, release the Kraken. So the Kraken was released in Pakistani politics in the shape of Imran Khan to bring down Nawaz Shah. The task was not, you know, to prop him around. The task I believe, and I'm saying it openly, was to bring down Nawaz Shah and he was brought down. Now the cases we do not want to discuss. 2018, Imran Khan was delivered Pakistan. And certain people who have been jumping from one political party to the other political party in the last 20, 30 years of Pakistani politics were, you know, handgiven to Imran Khan. Now those people have been taken away. You know, they have created their own political party. But Imran Khan, because he definitely is, you know, charisma has been sold to millions of young Pakistanis who are sick and tired of the old political parties because they have also failed to connect with Pakistan youth. And that is the only thing which I think is, you know, basically being touted as Imran's popularity. But the thing is, Pakistan's election does not happen like an American election, whether you have two parties. And it does not basically run on two personalities. Pakistan's politics is not one of the four college leaders. Exactly. So the thing is, Imran will actually have to create a new team. Now, while he's in jail, I don't know whether he or his close associates, there are very few now left, you know, will be able to create a new team and that new team will be known to the people. You know, just supposing that, you know, he has achieved a level of popularity that whoever he will give a ticket to, you know, will downright, you know, outright win. I think this is a fallacy of Pakistani politics. I personally think Imran will actually have to face a lot of difficulty, the legal difficulty in the courts. He will be, you know, facing Pakistani courts as he has made the other politicians face in the last five years. And while he will be, you know, running from this court to the other court, Pakistan will go into elections. What I see the future of Pakistan the way you usually ask is, I think Pakistan will actually have a very weak, you know, coalition government. I see, I might be, you know, completely proven completely wrong in a few months time, but I see Punjab and Federation would be given to PMLN. Now, when I say given, that means they will be allowed to win. That they might not be, you know, deliberate or wide scale corruption in the electoral process. The reason is that in the last elections we saw in even in 2018 that Pakistan Muslim youth Nawaz won a lot of provincial seats and Pakistan Punjab has, you know, 141 seats, 142 seats for the national assembly. I personally think they will actually win around 100 seats. Reason is, and then because the Southern Punjab, we have seen again, you know, the emergence of a new political party basically based on all those people who are doubted as selectables or electables in the last elections. Now, those selectable selectables, the main people who are again doubted as Imran Khan's, you know, ATMs, machines are not with him. And they're angry because they did not get what they thought would get under Imran's government. And they will definitely go with the government who would be, you know, winning most seats. And Pakistan People's Party has sinned, you know, completely in their grip. We will see Molana Fazlur Rahman's party again, winning few seats in KP, and he also wins few seats in Balochistan. The other party which was created in Balochistan, the Balochistan Obama, Awami Party, I think that main characters, the main characters of that party would join either PMLN or Pakistan People's Party. And whoever is left will actually have to agree to the dynamics. What I see Pakistan is having, you know, a coalition government based on five to six or maybe seven, eight parties. It will be a weak government given a task to, you know, resurrect Pakistan's economy. Again, the biggest challenge any government would face in Pakistan. As far as Imran Khan is concerned, I think his difficult days are ahead. He is not even over the difficult days. His difficult days are, you know, ahead. Okay. Amrashan, we're running short on time. So very briefly, obviously Pakistan is also located in the neighborhood where you do see the spike in terrorism pretty much. I mean, there's a palpable threat from terrorism. If you've had GTP attacks within Pakistan, the Afghan government in Kabul is not necessarily willing to try and crack down on all these nefarious elements. I mean, you have the lights of the Islamic, you know, the ETIM or the East Pakistan Islamic movement as well as the GTP in Helmand province as well. So how do you think Pakistan will be able to navigate through these security challenges? If you could just briefly just tell me what the security landscape would look like as we move forward. I think the security landscape would, you know, get worse if Pakistan does not, you know, take steps and this steps do not mean that, you know, try to kill all those people because it beats me badly, whether it's the TTP, the Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan groups like them or ISIS or this movement or that movement because most of these groups, you know, you have studied in America and you understand international relations and how international politics is run. You know, it beats me completely how these groups who are working in landlocked areas, you know, whether they were, you know, ISIS when they were fighting in Syria or, you know, Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is now fighting technically, you know, against both enemies, you know, Taliban were not a pro-TTP and Pakistan definitely wants to see the end of them, how they are able to maintain, you know, this warfare for years. So we need to understand that and unless and until Pakistan finds peace with the countries in the region, and I'm saying India and Afghanistan because I was there covering, you know, when the American officials in the highest level came to see the Taliban in Qatar in 2013. Now think is, imagine your enemies, you're fighting your enemies, you're coming to talk to Taliban who are technically your enemies of Afghanistan, but they're based in Qatar, which is the head office of the Central Command. And the American Secretary of State, John Kerry is flying in to me, have a discussion. That means the game is already up. That means Taliban, you know, were working with the Americans, you know, and what we have seen, you know, Afghanistan actually has seen back to back eight years of Karzai and then Ashraf Ghani. And then the way Afghanistan has been handed over to Taliban. I think Taliban are sitting in Kabul. They are not concerned about Pakistan and Pakistan security. They are, you know, maybe dealing with some other bigger issues, maybe the China, maybe the, you know, the, the BRI, maybe the Chinese effort to get via Afghanistan to Iran and other countries. So they might be given a bigger task by other, this is again my theory. Pakistan will have to find peace with India, and how Pakistan will be able to find that peace. It's up to Pakistanis. Pakistan will actually have, again, the way I say in earlier in your program, have to find a workable, you know, relationship with Washington and Beijing. Washington is seeing Pakistan now as an angry old, you know, ally who is ready to ditch Washington in, you know, hope of better relations and better economy with China. And this, the beginning of the new Cold War between Beijing and Washington, you know, Pakistan, you know, cannot be on the wrong side. So Pakistan need to learn from the countries of the region, like Iran, for example, is under 40 years of international sanctions, but it's still surviving. You know, it is talking to the Europeans and also the Americans. And it is selling oil and gas to the Indians and Chinese. So why Pakistan actually has to be a country which talks about its relationship with the West and the East is finding it hard to find peace within. Because remember, Pakistan was not fighting a war with India or China or Afghanistan or Iran. So when Pakistan Army says that, you know, we are the most battle-hardened army in the region losing these many soldiers, the big question to be asked is, who are you fighting with? If you cannot able, if you're not able to actually contain a war within your borders for the last 30 years, you need to seriously revert the model and then, you know, try to find a peace. Veteran journalist Amir Gauri, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thank you, Amir. Thank you for having me. That's all that we have from Islamabad today on Think Tech Hawaii. You can follow us on our social media pages and do provide us with your valuable feedback. Until next time, take care.