Pakistan\u2019s political elite, falling all over each other in their naked lust for power, need to do no more than look at the capital markets to see where their antics are taking the country. Day after day, the equity market haemorrhages hundreds of points, and the rupee sets a new historic low, primarily because of the political uncertainty that has gripped the country like a curse.
\nThat latest round of troubles started when Imran Khan, driven by nothing more than political point-scoring, froze petrol and electricity prices, which threw the IMF bailout program off the rails and brought endless trouble to the economy and the people. The new government, too, took its sweet time in reversing the subsidies to revive the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), out of fear of burning political capital, which later turned out to be true during the Punjab by-elections, and once again, the people had to pay for it, quite literally, through their nose.
\nAnd now, as PTI pushes the country towards general elections \u201cas soon as possible,\u201d the threat of sovereign default is staring us square in the face like never before. It can only be hoped that the election for Punjab chief minister today will finally end the uncertainty that has hung over the most important province in the federation since early April when the PTI government in the centre was removed by a no-confidence motion.
\nThis game of musical chairs, in which the country\u2019s senior-most politicians have put their hatred for each other on open display, has gone on long enough and cost the public in too many ways already. If today\u2019s election is followed by more blame games, more excuses and more threats, everybody fighting over the right to lead and represent the people should be prepared for burdening them with unending economic and financial misery because financial markets don\u2019t have much more room to fall without tearing the entire economy down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan\u2019s political elite, falling all over each other in their naked lust for power, need to do no more than look at the capital markets to see where their antics are taking the country. Day after day, the equity market haemorrhages hundreds of points, and the rupee sets a new historic low, primarily because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[9762,9761],"class_list":{"0":"post-272849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorial","7":"tag-important-message","8":"tag-market-sending"},"yoast_head":"\n