Former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his inner coterie engaged in scorched earth tactics in their blind pursuit of power, and this is not on.
By Ahmer Kureishi
It the end, it did not matter because the International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive board put its seal on the staff-level agreement made with Pakistan in July. But Pakistan is aghast that former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his inner coterie stooped to something treachery in high places does not begin to describe.
It is now established beyond an iota of doubt that Khan and his cohorts engaged in a conspiracy to derail the revival of the Enhanced Fund Facility (EFF) that Pakistan needs to avert sovereign default.
“The full plot to sabotage the IMF deal”, Journalist Talat Hussain said in a tweet Monday as he leaked the audio of multiple telephone calls made by former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin to Finance Ministers of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. “The culprits, the agenda, the directors are well known.”
The content of the audio clips fully bears out the truth of his words.
Hussain shared four audio clips from his Twitter handle, two ostensibly based on telephone conversation between Tarin and Leghari and the remaining two between Tarin and KP Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra.
In the first clip, Tarin is heard instructing Punjab Finance Minister Mohsin Leghari to write a letter to the federal government saying Punjab will not be able to hold its part of the deal with the IMF, signed in July to pave the way for the revival of a billion-dollar Enhanced Fund Facility (EFF).
To his credit, Leghari raises the question if this strategy would not be detrimental to the state. His political instinct seems to have kicked in at this point. Interestingly, Tarin does not assure him the move will not hurt the state. He instead counters by arguing along the lines that yes, it will hurt the state but so do the government measures against “us” and the “chairman”.
In the second audio clip, the former Finance Minister says this was all decided in a meeting the previous day, and adds that the chairman will be consulted once more as to whether to leak this letter to the IMF. Leghari puts in that there is no tool more powerful than the social media.
Tarin agrees, saying the social media would automatically convey the message to the Fund. He also mentions Jhagra’s intimate ties with the Fund’s “No. 2” [in Pakitan], to whom the letter could be leaked informally so that nobody can detect we are hurting the state.
In the third audio clip, Tarin is apparently nagging the KP Finance Minister about “the letter” they previously agreed to write to the federation. He coaches Jhagra to build his argument based on the floods. Jhagra puts in that this is just a blackmailing tactic, because he would not turn up surplus even otherwise.
Tarin then explains the importance of sending a copy of the letter to Esther [Perez Ruiz, the IMF’s Resident Representative for Pakistan]. Jhagra says both Imran Khan and [KP Chief Minister] Mehmood Khan had told him, and it had been discussed in the previous day’s meeting as well, that “we should do a press conference”.
In the fourth audio clip, Tarin explains to Jhagra that the idea now was to hold a seminar on Monday rather than a press conference. He then adds that the three of them [Tarin, Leghari, and Jhagra] can still hold a press conference together, but they must first write the letter, to which Jhagra agrees.
Tarin does most of the talking in the clips. He is clearly in his element hatching and executing a conspiracy to scuttle the deal with the IMF. He is talking down to both Leghari and Jhagra, although at the receiving end of his expletive laden discourse is the leadership of the federal government.
The leaked audio clips are adequate to establish that (1) Tarin is executing a conspiracy to ruin Pakistan’s deal with the IMF; (2) he was aware his action could hurt Pakistan; (3) he even had a plan to cover his tracks; and (4) his endeavor has the blessing of Imran Khan, former prime minister and chairman, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
It is also clear that Jhagra is fully on board, although Leghari (who eventually appears to have somehow wriggled out of it) has his misgivings.
Jhagra followed through on his part in the conspiracy, writing the letter to Finance Minister Mifth Ismail and releasing it over the social media Friday evening, with the Fund’ executive board scheduled to review Pakistan’s EFF program come Monday.
A nation teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and hit by an epic natural disaster can ill afford politicians prepared to recklessly push it over the precipice to serve their narrow political ends. But a political clique trying deliberately and purposely to push it over the precipice is quite the next level.
This is the first time in living memory a political party has been seen putting its narrow political interest over the national interest. Even worse, Khan and his cronies tried to play provinces against the federation to meet their political ends.
The plot has received plenty of condemnation from all sides over both the mainstream and social media, which is as it should be. However, this does not settle the matter.
Now that we have a new breed of politicians prepared to employ scorched earth tactics in their pursuit of power, the state must find ways to fight back against this kind of attack. All three branches of the government – the legislative, judiciary, and executive – have a duty to nip this criminal behavior in the bud, and they will derelict this duty at their own peril.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
