An embittered Pir Pagara has made an important prediction in relation to the future of incoming government.

According to him, the government (Pakistan Democratic Movement 2.0) will not last beyond eight to 10 months as per “my information”. It is true that a prediction is a forecast, but not only about the weather.

That the successive Pirs of Pagara have often been found good at making accurate forecasts about country’s politics and political developments is a fact. The current excessively polarized mandate has led to exacerbating political tensions in the country.

Pir Pagara has premised his forecast on the country’s state of economy, which is beleaguered and precarious, to say the least.

The logic that he has expounded makes greater sense, so to speak. No doubt, the country is in the throes of an economic crisis for at least two years. The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government and its successor present caretaker setup have done nothing or little to arrest the economic slide; in fact both the governments have contributed to the common man’s hardships in a big way.

It is, therefore, increasingly clear that the incoming PDM 2.0 government will find itself under massive pressure to bring about a meaningful improvement in country’s macroeconomic indicators by the end of first year of its five-year constitutional tenure in order to avert the prospect of ouster through some constitutional or not-so-constitutional means.

We all know that weather or political prediction has never been a perfect science. Ironically, the prediction that honourable Pir Pagara has made provides little comfort to those already affected by the protracted economic crisis owing to a variety of reasons.

One of these reasons could be the fact that the then Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was found to be equally inept and incompetent insofar as the country’s economy was concerned.

Khadim Alvi (Karachi)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024