This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed “Bizarre, desperate ploy” carried by the newspaper on Tuesday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, has concluded his argument by saying, among other things, that “One can only hope and pray for the sake of our stumbling system and the country that the current ‘hands off’ wisdom seemingly permeating the establishment’s thinking becomes a permanent norm, since the track record of its manipulations speaks for itself.

There is no alternative gentlemen to letting the political process play out if Pakistan is to at last achieve the goal of a normally functioning democracy, albeit an elitist one at this stage of our troubled history”. While fully agreeing to what the learned writer has argued I would like to express my unease about establishment’s overt ambivalence to the situation.

It’s for the first time in the history of the country perhaps that there exists no script and the actors just have to improvise the dialogue. One example of which could be the fact that prime minister Imran Khan has clearly run out of cards, including ‘’foreign-funded conspiracy’’ card, but he’s still persevering with a view to surviving the vote on no-confidence motion against him.

Sofia Bakhtiar (Islamabad)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022

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