by Mohammed Hanif
Imran Khan campaigned to become prime minister on the promise that he would create a “new Pakistan.” The country was going to be like the state of Medina that the Prophet Muhammad founded — a welfare state — Khan promised. Less than a year after coming to power, he has delivered a new Pakistan, and it looks like a struggling dictatorship.
Major opposition leaders are in jail; others aren’t allowed in the media. Parliamentarians are arrested on terrorism or drug-trafficking charges and denied bail. In this new Pakistan, the economy has been practically handed over to appointees from the International Monetary Fund. The price of bread is soaring, and bazaars where the poor do business with the poor are being demolished while barons of the stock exchange get government handouts.
Khan once talked about “dignity” and how you lose it when you take money from foreign powers. But what was one of his first moves after taking office? Chauffeuring Arab princes in the hope of getting soft loans.
He has said that he would prefer death to going to the I.M.F., but soon after becoming prime minister he went into a huddle with the I.M.F. chief and after protracted negotiations secured a loan of $6 billion. During election campaigns, politicians usually make promises that they have no intention and no way of keeping. Here is one promise that Khan is trying to keep: To punish corrupt politicians and force them to pay back the money they have stolen — the billions, he says, that have been stashed in Swiss banks. By now, though, it’s quite obvious that even if there is looted money in foreign banks, there is no way of bringing it back. Former President Asif Ali Zardari, who is in jail on money-laundering charges, was asked if he was willing to strike a deal with the government. “I will not give them six dollars,” he smirked.
Since the corrupt aren’t going to cough up their loot, Khan has had to go back to the mundane business of borrowing money and collecting taxes. But his passionate appeals that more Pakistanis pay their taxes don’t seem to be working. The tax-to-gross domestic product ratio is the lowest in five years, the tax authorities said recently. Maybe that’s because the people have seen too many of their leaders not pay what they owe. Although Khan’s assets were estimated at 3.8 billion rupees (about $36 million) in 2017, he pays fewer taxes than many mid-ranking journalists.
Khan used to claim that he is the best team-builder around. He has surrounded himself with the same political carpetbaggers he once railed against. More than half of his cabinet served the last military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Of the man who now runs the railways ministry, Khan once said that he wouldn’t hire him as a peon; another person he called a bandit has become a crucial ally, as the speaker of the assembly in Punjab Province.
The New York Times for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)