Despite Imran Khan's talk of a foreign conspiracy, did the economic situation bring down the PTI government?

ISLAMABAD -

The dust of the political battle in Islamabad that succeeded earlier this week by the Pakistani opposition in overthrowing the PTI government led by Imran Khan, through a vote of no-confidence that has been the subject of controversy and controversy between the government and the opposition for weeks, has not yet settled.

After this vote, Imran Khan became the first Pakistani Prime Minister to overthrow his government as a result of the vote of no confidence in Parliament.

The fall of the government of Imran Khan and the Insaf Party, raised questions about the reasons that led to this downfall, especially that Imran Khan had stated before his overthrow that the movements witnessed by the Pakistani street and the incitement against his government came against the background of foreign interventions and what he called a "foreign plot", to topple his government. .

Opponents of Imran Khan believe that the policies pursued by his government in the economic file, as well as in foreign relations, and the lack of experience of the government team, were the main reason that affected the balance of his government.

On the other hand, his supporters say that the challenges facing the government were caused by influential internal and external factors, in addition to his new and independent foreign policies, as Khan openly accused the United States of seeking to overthrow his government, whose policies he said angered Washington.

government attempts

Shaukat Tarin, Minister of Finance in the former Imran Khan government, defends the performance of the PTI government, and said in his statements, which were reported by the Pakistani newspaper (News International) on Wednesday, that the government tried a lot to engage with economic experts, but these attempts met with explicit opposition from members of the opposition. And Pakistan lost as a result of its inability to deal with these people.

In response to the tweets of a pro-opposition economist, Tarin said that unlike previous regimes, the PTI government attempted to separate from the rentier economy favored by the elite.

He noted that the government has targeted incentives for labor-intensive sectors, including construction, agriculture, export industry, small and medium-sized enterprises, manufacturing, tourism and information technology, to provide a significant boost to job creation for young people.

He also continued that as a result, we see that the Pakistani economy has not only outperformed its regional and global peers in terms of recovering from the coronavirus crisis, but the quality of growth has also improved significantly, as evidenced by the record increase in job creation, he said.

accumulations of corruption

One of the most discussed issues in Pakistan during the past period, was the opposition's accusation of the Insaf Party in managing the economic file, and this is what caused demonstrations over the years to protest the economic conditions that the country is going through, which created a justification for the opposition parties to criticize Imran Khan and the performance of the party. His government in particular, according to observers.

In the same context, analysts believe that the failure of the Khan government was caused by complex factors and previous problems that had accumulated before it came to power.

In this context, journalist and political analyst Subuh Sayed says that Imran Khan, since taking power, has said that Pakistan, over the course of 35 years, has been robbed from the parties that were rotating in power, in reference to the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif's wing), Deposit funds in offshore banks.

Sayed added to Al-Jazeera Net, that Imran Khan, in his first business, said that he would work to return these funds to the Pakistani state treasury in order to improve the economy, so that he would not have to borrow from the International Monetary Fund.

But according to Sayed, the Insaf government, after 3 and a half years, failed to return any sums from abroad, and ministers in the government admitted that.

living situation

Syed adds, this matter forced Imran Khan to carry out reforms at the Federal Revenue Authority, which is responsible for customs and taxes, to compensate for the budget shortfall, and this affected the living conditions of people and the high prices of most commodities.

Sayed says that one of the reforms that the government has tried to do is to cooperate between government institutions to regulate the economy. There were disagreements between the two agencies which caused the government to fail to regulate taxation and investment.

In the same context, Abdul Karim Shah, a political analyst and director of the Islamabad Center for Political Studies, says in a television interview, that what Imran Khan promised and emphasized was to fight corruption, but the slowdown in the judiciary in Pakistan affected that and was unable to bring the corrupt to account.

Shah added, that the previous parties that succeeded in ruling the country, corruption prevailed during their reign, which affected the economic file.

wrong policies

On the other hand, Sahar Kamran, a senator from the Pakistan People's Party, told Al Jazeera Net that the main reasons that led to the overthrow of Khan's government were the failure to fulfill electoral promises such as providing one million jobs and other promises, in addition to placing unsuitable people in sensitive places in the country.

Kamran added that Imran Khan could not build a strong team, and his government has always witnessed ministerial changes such as changing the Minister of Finance 3 times, and this actually indicated an economic failure.

On the other hand, an expert in international relations and foreign policies, Muhammad Mahdi, says that the government of Imran Khan made grave wrong decisions in the economic field, as people faced many difficulties in managing their expenses, and as a result the military moved away from him, because his economic team did not understand the changing situation.

From another point of view, the director of the Media, Research and Translation Center in Islamabad, Saeed Rahman Abdul Sattar, says that the reason for the economic failure of the Imran Khan government is due to the lack of economic experts and their lack of focus on solving economic problems, and he did not resort to economic experts and traders to solve these problems throughout the period wisdom.

Corona crisis

For his part, Subuh Sayed believes that the government of Imran Khan has taken very effective measures to confront the economic impacts of the spread of the Corona epidemic, and that Pakistan was at least one of the best countries in the region, which faced this pandemic and reduced its impact, as vaccines were provided free of charge to all residents. .

This is confirmed by Abdul Karim Shah, who said that the indicators of inflation and unemployment, and the sharp decline in the exchange rate of the Pakistani rupee, were the result of the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, which affected the entire world and not only Pakistan.

While Saeed Al-Rahman Abdul Sattar says that the Corona pandemic, global high prices and other factors, did not have a major and pivotal impact on the failure of the Al-Insaf government, on the contrary, the government received significant foreign aid to combat the pandemic.