Tough tasks ahead

When the present parliament ends its term tonight, the tenure of the government will also be over and the focus will shift to the elections and then the challenges facing the new elected cabinet.

The present government may say it inherited many of the challenges it faced owing to Pakistan`s rather ambivalent participation in the so-called US-led war on terror but it will also know that much of the mess it is leaving for the incoming leaders could perhaps have been avoided.

Let`s look at how the regional environment may inform Islamabad`s decisionmaking in the coming months and particularly as the US/Nato forces complete their planned pullout from Afghanistan next year with the race intensifying when  the present parliament ends its term tonight, the tenure of the government will also be over and the focus will shift to the elections and then the challenges facing the new elected cabinet.

The present government may say it inherited many of the challenges it faced owing to Pakistan`s rather ambivalent participation in the so-called US-led war on terror but it will also know that much of the mess it is leaving for the incoming leaders could perhaps have been avoided.

Let`s look at how the regional environment may inform Islamabad`s decisionmaking in the coming months and particularly as the US/Nato forces complete their planned pullout from Afghanistan next year with the race intensifyingbetween various aspirants to the Kabul throne.

One will be the i n c u m b e n t President Hamid Karzai who, ahead of the US pullout, has started sounding like an Afghannationalist particularly as the news emerges of some contacts between the Americans and the Taliban leadership.

Hamid Karzai seems to be making anti-American noises in an attempt to somehow try and remain relevant in the Kabul set-up that will emerge once the pullout is complete. Many contacts are being made and negotiations going on in the shadows, and very few details are emerging in the public domain.

The Pakistanis on their part will have to calibrate whether taking sides is prudent. In the recent past neutrality has been rejected as an affordable luxury. In what is perceived as a zero-sum game with India, Delhi`s heavy investment in the current set-up was seen with suspicion and therefore Pakistan seemed to stand with the other side.

Our policymakers have not earned a name for themselves for learning any lessons from history. So who knows whether they`ll continue to side with the Afghan Taliban after the pullout? They could also reach the conclusion that the West`s arming and training of the Afghan National Army has made the security force into an effective fighting unit.

If it is the latter, perhaps, a more neu-tral stance would be the safest bet for Pakistan and it can use its good relations with the Taliban leadership that it has been accused of sheltering over the past decade for leverage in getting favourable policy responses from the Kabul administration.

Some hint of this has already been forthcoming when Afghanistan reportedly accepted the offer of Pakistani military trainers for its forces. Such small measures can go a long way in soothing Rawalpindi`s nerves regarding hostile Indian influence on the Afghan military leadership.

Whatever shape the final outcome takes over the next 18 months or so, it is clear that fleet-footed responses and a flexible policy are likely to deliver the most benefits to Pakistan which has had to bear the brunt of the scourge of terrorism over the past five years blamed on the Afghan strife.If a power-sharing deal in Afghanistan is possible then perhaps a (friendly) and non-hostile regime will leave the Pakistan government and the military to deal with the existential threat to the country being posed by religious militancy.

Cracking down on militant groups, perhaps even going after their sanctuarles in North Waziristan once the Haqqani network has moved back to their home country thus circumventing the fear of a clash with it, can improve the security situation and create a domestic environment conducive to economic growth.

There is no denying that the current government`s burgeoning deficit has created a ticking bomb if some experts are to be believed but it is equally true that if economic growth picks up from the current 3.5 per cent the deficit could be rapidly reduced.

Admittedly this will only happen if the incoming government is able to show more spine than the current `coalition` where the diverse interests of coalescing partners didn`t allow the expansion of the income tax base or the imposition of a general sales tax.Even a dramatic improvement in the security situation and a drastic cut in the deficit, more as a result of better tax collection rather than merely a reduction in government expenditure, on their own may not work if a serious attempt isn`t made to resolve the energy shortfall that has dogged the country.

The incoming government may have to take the exceedingly unpopular decision of more or less turning off the valve on the use of compressed natural gas in private vehicles in order to utilise the same resource for the generation of power till projects such as the gas pipeline with Iran are not completed.

Of course the fate of the failing publicsector corporations will also need to be decided and a progamme of stabilisation will have to be initiated before any investor will step forward in an eventual privatisation process. It has been amply demonstrated that corporations can`twork without such a programme.

Where the legislative record of the current parliament has been decent in certain areas, the next one will need to think of drasticall-encompassing legislation to deal with terrorism, intolerance, etc. If it means a programme of anonymity for judges on the lines of the US witness protection programme so be it.

The burden of reintegrating all the alienated Baloch nationalist politicians will fall on the caretaker administration as only their free participation in the polls will create a scenario where some of the Baloch wounds will at least have some chance of healing.

Equally the slide in the law and order situation in Karachi may need to be arrested in the same six, seven weeks period as the major stakeholders once elected may not have an attitude different to what was demonstrated over the past five years.

This is a far from exhaustive list of challenges the next elected government may face. Whether it will have the ability to take difficult, yet prudent, decisions may well be demonstrated in new appointments to the powerful positions of the army chief and chief justice of Pakistan in 2013, its first year in office.•

The writer is a former editor of Dawn. abbas.nasir@hotmail.com