This is exactly what I expected from someone living in “The Matrix”, where propaganda is reality, failure is a success story, and every disaster comes with a press conference declaring victory.
Honestly, this whole thing reminds me of cow dung molded into a rasgulla, dipped in sugar syrup, and wrapped in malai. Looks delicious from the outside, but one bite and the entire family needs therapy.
The establishment and the government seem to have mastered one particular skill…creating a mess and then presenting themselves as the only people qualified to clean it up. That’s like setting your own kitchen on fire, arriving with a glass of water, and demanding a national award for firefighting.
And now they expect to sell this choran to the Pakistani public and the international community? Good luck with that. You can control the microphone, manage the headlines, and arrange a standing ovation, but you can’t force an economy to clap.
Let’s get real for a minute.
Suppose Imran Khan is killed or PTI is banned. Then what? Will terrorism disappear overnight? Will law and order suddenly become Switzerland? Will rivers of milk and honey start flowing through Pakistan, with dollars swimming alongside them? Will electricity bills fall so low that people start checking whether the government forgot to charge them?
Banning a political party isn’t an economic policy, and removing political opponents isn’t a substitute for competent governance.
Pakistan’s problems are much bigger than one politician or one political party. We have a narrow tax base, weak exports, recurring balance-of-payments crises, widespread poverty, and an economy that keeps returning to the IMF like a student who never studies but somehow expects to pass every exam.
Remittances help keep the country afloat. Petrol levies and taxes squeeze people who are already struggling. Meanwhile, the productive economy needs investment, better education, industrial growth, and policies that actually encourage businesses to grow.
And ordinary people? They’re busy calculating whether they can afford electricity, petrol, groceries, and school fees in the same month. For many families, budgeting has become an Olympic sport and the government keeps adding new events.
The World Bank has documented the scale of poverty and economic vulnerability in Pakistan. Millions of people struggle to meet basic needs, while the privileged have far more ways to protect their wealth and influence. Concerns about capital flight and illicit financial flows also deserve serious investigation and accountability.
Apparently, the solution is to keep squeezing the people who are already paying while hoping the economy will somehow fix itself.
That’s not economic policy. That’s trying to charge an empty wallet a convenience fee.
And my message to Asim Munir is simple..,enough with the topi drama. If the establishment wants to exercise power, it should stop pretending that it has nothing to do with the consequences. You can’t enjoy the steering wheel and then blame the passenger when the car hits a wall.
If you genuinely want to fix Pakistan, stop treating politics like a personal wrestling match and start fixing the system.
Reorganize the administrative structure where it makes practical sense. Strengthen local governments. Put qualified technocrats and professional administrators in key roles through transparent, merit-based recruitment. Give local governments predictable funding and real authority. Reform the NFC and fiscal arrangements so money reaches the communities that need it. Break the grip of feudal patronage and elite capture.
Invest in exports, industry, agriculture, education, energy reform, and job creation. Build an economy that can stand on its own feet instead of borrowing a pair of crutches from the IMF every few years.
I’ve suggested a model involving eight regions and 34 administrative units. That idea deserves serious analysis, not blind acceptance. The boundaries, costs, constitutional implications, and benefits would all need to be examined properly. No administrative map, however attractive, is a magic wand.
And please, spare us the idea that 30 years of martial law will solve everything. If authoritarian rule automatically produced prosperity, Pakistan would have been an economic superpower by now. We’ve had decades of political experiments, strongmen, emergency measures, and grand promises. We should have learned by now that changing the person at the top doesn’t fix a broken system underneath.
My point is simple, if you want to play on the front foot, take responsibility for the entire game. Don’t hide behind civilian governments when the scoreboard looks embarrassing.
Pakistan doesn’t need another self-appointed savior who promises to rescue the country after everyone else has been blamed. It needs functioning institutions, accountability, economic planning, and leaders who understand that public service is not a family business.
Because you can ban a party, silence critics, control the narrative, and arrange a hundred press conferences. But you cannot arrest inflation, detain unemployment, or put the national debt behind bars.
You can fool people with the packaging for a while, but eventually somebody takes a bite of that rasgulla. And then the whole country finds out what’s inside.
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