The PML -N swept the polls and won a resounding victory in the recent general election, taking an absolute majority of national assembly seats and that of Punjab Province. The PML (N) got the best result because of their Punjab government performance during the last five years. At Federal and Punjab level, PML-N will form the government with 35 percent of votes. PTI came second with 19 percent of vote and surprised many. Pakistan People’s Party, Zardari’s ruling party for the last five years, came third with only 15 percent of votes; and was confined to Sindh province only.
The PPP was punished for their blindly toeing the policies of U.S, obeying the dictation from IMF and World Bank to implement all the conditional ties of hiking prices of all the basic services, open sale of public appointments and for massive load shedding of electricity and gas. Private sector workers were the most affected class during PPP regime. It was a government littered with rampant corruption and bad management of all sectors of life. The vote Bank of PPP dropped from 2008 general elections 36 percent to around 15 percent in 2013, even less than 50 percent.
The simple, sane, and mature people of Pakistan were closely watching the performance of the political parties and knew who could serve them in right way. They had determined as to who practiced rampant corruption bringing the country to a point of devastation, and who served honestly and dedicatedly during the past five years. The results came as a big blow to the PPP, which secured only 31 seats in National Assembly despite a high-pitched media campaign that had been kicked-off by the PPP.
After the state has been nearly bankrupted, the incoming government will inherit an economy confronted with multiple challenges at the moment: slowing growth, worst law and order situation; growing energy shortages, shutting down industry; drying investment, soaring budget deficit and public debt, devastated public corporations; rising unemployment and poverty and so on. Debt has reached at all time high about 70 percent of our GDP, which is a horrible situation for the country.
Electricity prices in Pakistan have gone abnormally high in addition to unprecedented load shedding. The gross electricity shortage touches every facet of almost everyone’s lives in Pakistan. Many of Pakistan’s manufacturing industries have already fled overseas, after the collapsing years ago as a result of a lack of power. The power crisis presents similar challenges like the fiscal deficit; it cannot be addressed without changing the structure of government. Pulling the country out of darkness should be at top priority of the newly elected government. The masses should be provided gas and electricity on reasonable tariffs without load shedding.
Government decisions, in total disregard to merit, fair play and transparency, based on personal monetary gains for a few individuals in the PPP government have grossly compounded the economic miseries of Pakistan and turned several government organizations into insolvent corporate entities. PML (N) is always committed to implement neo liberal agenda effectively. PPP government was unable to carry out privatization of even loss sustaining entities under a massive resistance of masses against it, being untrustworthy. PML (N) with its vast support can carry out privatization of loss making public sector departments to reduce state losses on these institutions. It should however be ensured that only loss making entities are privatized.
Pakistan is one of the worst corruption-hit countries and according to media reports, its assets worth Rupees 18000 billions have been stolen during the last five years. The PPP leaders plundered the poor masses of the country in order to fill their own pockets. Now one of the top challenges is recovery of the money plundered. People’s money is plundered, our rights are pillaged, and our hopes are destroyed too. Further, the high priced state land was grabbed everywhere in the country by the land grabbers including big cities like Islamabad, Karachi, and Peshawar, who enjoyed the support of the high-ups. It also needs to be retrieved.
The pressure on Pakistan’s exchange rate is likely to push the country once again back into the trap of the IMF with anti people conditionality clauses. One year of heavy debt repayments is in the offing. Since debt repayments is the main reason why the country’s external position is weakening, we can look ahead to how things will fare after the two bulky payments due in August and November. The issue here would also be of controlling the budget deficit and accelerating the GDP growth. It is imperative to drastically reduce the non-productive expenditure and substantially increase development expenditure to release the constraints to growth, such as electricity generation and transmission, ports and transportation infrastructure and skilling and educating the youth. Improvement in deteriorated standards of education is another big challenge.
Today young people do not have employment and have to leave abroad. Due to PPP government’s failure to focus on growth-oriented policy; unemployment has witnessed an upward trend in the country. The employment to population ratio has registered a nominal rise to 50.4%. Unemployment is today one of the biggest problems of Pakistan which needs to addressed.
Pakistan is running out of water so fast that the shortage will strangulate all water-based economic activity by 2015. It will have to be negotiated with India on priority basis. Pakistan needs also needs to conserve its water, use it more wisely and set up new reservoirs on an urgent basis.
In the end, everything about the upcoming phase remains uncertain. A tough set of challenges awaits the new government which can not be discussed individually in this short space. These issues might become truly worrisome. However people expect PML-N`s winning in election is likely to have much positive impact on Pakistan’s economic direction and meeting these challenges.
