Where is the leaky boat going to Pakistan? Photo: Gilbert Kolonko
Prime Minister Imran Khan steered the leaky boat Pakistan through the corona storm with surprisingly few victims. Nevertheless, the mutiny is being prepared: The new captain is said to come from a well-known family clan again
There is little hope for Pakistan in the medium term. In 1947 when it was founded it had 30 million inhabitants. Today it’s around 220 million. The UN says for 2050 the figure is 403 million, the birth rate is also falling sharply in Pakistan: Too late. The why should be clear to everyone: The masses had hardly any participation in education and prosperity. The reasons do not lie in the now, but are complex – but first for now.
Pakistan runs out of water. The country is also already excessively affected by climate change: the heat waves too Temperatures above 50 degrees will increase and in the Karakoram Mountains thousands of glacial lakes are waiting to flood the banks.
There is less and less work for most of the poorly educated population. Heroin addicts in various stages of decline are now even sitting on the familiar one Mall Road in Lahore a shot. Right in front of them on Regal chouke A gigantic anti-Macron poster has been hanging for two weeks. A huge fine dust scale would make more sense: as early as November, air pollution in Lahore exceeded the limit values of the World Health Organization by up to 60 times.
The air will not get any better: Chinese coal-fired power plants for electricity production were Beijing’s first loan investments in Pakistan – located in the Sindh region huge coal reserves. The Pakistani elite are turning a blind eye to the decline: “We still have atomic bombs.”
There are no social movements of note nationwide other than travel influencers, which are used by the government to spread an image of Pakistan that is predominantly consists of snow-white mountains and chicken biryani.
It is thanks to Imran Khan that Corona did not give the country the “death blow” economically: From the beginning he said that his country could not afford a complete lockdown as in India because of the many poor. The number of corona deaths in Pakistan has proven him right. Even if the data from Pakistan are even less to be trusted than those from India, there has been no noticeable increase in the death rate.
The reason is likely to be the same as in India: a predominantly young population who have been “tempered” by Darwinism – either a child survives to adulthood a number of diseases that have almost died out in the West, or they “go” early.
Still rise food prices and the economy stutters even more than before. But what can Khan do about it? He took over a broken boat from his predecessors and at least said: The boat is rotten, we have to renew it. However, he hardly has any financial means to do this: 41 (!!) percent of the state budget for 2020/21 will go in debt settlement.
Even the mighty Pakistani military can no longer keep up – despite budget increase. No, the 41 percent is not for Chinese loans, but mainly for the interest on the old loans of the usual creditors. Beijing’s Pakistani Silk Road loan investments, while not self-interested, are the only tiny glimmer of hope. The Karakoram Highway has even been renewed mainly with Chinese money.
Imran Khan can be blamed for many things: For being a former playboy. An inexperienced politician. To practice rituals that range from questioning fortune tellers to shaman-like customs to a conservative interpretation of Islam – Exactly, that doesn’t go together. But he’s not corrupt like them Sharifs and Bhuttos with their real estate in London and the Panama accounts. Or General Pervez Musharraf, who only became a millionaire as a dictator from 1999 to 2007. Imran Khan even brought money with him and used it to build hospitals, and during his tenure from 2013 when he ruled the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Have millions of trees planted.
There, too, have the Bhuttos, Sharifs and Generals A good job done with the deforestation alone.
Khan will shortly recognize Gilgit-Baltistan as an official part of Pakistan, thereby practically legitimizing that the part of Kashmir administered by India belongs to India – the 70-year-old Kashmir conflict between the two countries would theoretically be resolved.
In addition, Khan quickly learned politics: He currently accused Macron of being a populist against Islam. Not a word about China and the way it treats its Muslims – a prime minister doesn’t bite the hand that is feeding his country with billions in investments. Only “stupid” for Khan that others are better at upholding Islam: the radical priest Khadeem Hussain Rizvi and his supporters completely paralyzed the main access roads between Rawalpindi and Islamabad with anti-Macron protests on November 15th and 16th.
In Imran Khan’s third year in office, support is crumbling. Photo: Gilbert Kolonko
The “political” opposition mobilizes against the government on the streets. So the paid party people of the Bhuttos and Sharifs. For this, the farmers of the allied landlords are usually carted up – and lately young people have been taking to the streets against Khan, who only recently shouted his name cheerfully: The desperation over the miserable economic situation in Pakistan is enormous.
The “chosen” hope will be 47-year-old Maryam Sharif, daughter of ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in exile in London. Maryam caught the eye in 2017 when she vehemently defended her father against allegations of having money in Panama accounts.
Since Sharif had fallen out of favor with the army, voices immediately arose that praised her as a courageous campaigner for democracy: Yes, one few tweets full of facts the journalists Bastian and Frederik Obermayer proved that Maryam Sharif lies or tells fairy tales.
Since headlines such as “A woman is conquering Pakistan” or “Maryam, the new Benazir Bhutto” could soon appear in the western media, the following is a look at the “democratic family clans of Pakistan”.
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