Dawn Editorials (with Summary and Vocabulary)

 

DAWN EDITORIALS

February 1, 2024 (Thursday)

Day’s Vocabulary

• Sans. Without
• Improbable.          not likely to be true or to happen
• Interlude.   an intervening period of time
• Bellwether.            the leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck
• Coterie.       a small group of people with shared interests or tastes, especially one that is exclusive of other people
• Wafted.       pass or cause to pass easily or gently through or as if through the air
• Pugilism.    the profession or hobby of boxing
• Consummate.      showing a high degree of skill and flair; complete or perfect
• Foray.           a sudden attack or incursion into enemy territory, especially to obtain something; a raid
• Appalling.  causing shock or dismay; horrific
• Gravitate.   move toward or be attracted to a place, person, or thing
• Splurges.    an act of spending money freely or extravagantly

Climate finance geopolitics

Summary

1. All finance is becoming climate finance:

• Traditional development financing and climate finance are merging due to global climate concerns.
• Trade and economic policies are increasingly influenced by carbon reduction goals.

2. Pakistan's challenges in accessing climate finance:

• Unclear division of roles and responsibilities between federal and provincial levels.
• Limited access to international climate funds compared to needs.
• Need for better coordination and synergy between different funding agencies.

3. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are playing a bigger role:

• Aligning their portfolios with the Paris Agreement.
• Introducing tools like C-PIMA to assess climate impact of policies.
• Increasing their financial commitments to Pakistan.

4. Bilateral donors offer smaller grants but valuable technical expertise:

• Can help build technical capacity in various sectors and provinces.
• Offer opportunities for collaboration on smaller projects.
• Can be a gateway to specialized climate finance vehicles.

5. Engaging bilaterally can strengthen trade relations and regional stability:

• Bilateral aid often combines economic growth, trade, and investment.
• Building partnerships is crucial in a world shaped by global polarization.

Additional notes:

• The article criticizes the lack of clarity and ownership in Pakistan's approach to climate finance.
• It highlights the importance of strategic engagement with bilateral partners.
• The overall message is that Pakistan needs to adapt its strategies to access the growing pool of climate finance effectively.

Article

THE lines of distinction between climate finance and traditional development financing have been blurred. Concurrently, national and provincial roles and responsibilities in Pakistan to access international climate finance have become muddled, if not messy. All international finance, including FDI and international trade, is fast becoming an instrument of global climate policies and geopolitics.

Pakistan is in the process of rethinking its strategies to access climate financing. Several federal ministries and provincial departments have concurrently begun to assume institutional responsibilities to access international climate finance (ICF). But it is not always clear where bilateral donors fit in their priorities or strategies, and how financial flows will be shaped by Pakistan’s global geopolitics.

Economic growth, development, and macroeconomic stability sans environmental and climate concerns are a notion of yesteryear. Ecological and economic priorities in the past were decoupled to achieve economic development, but no longer.

The rationales have merged now. Emissions reduction has an economic rationale. Pollution-free societies are healthier. Likewise, trade relations with the EU, UK and US are increasingly becoming subservient to their carbon-reduction interests and growing trade and technology wars with China. Healthy ecosystems are essential for sustainable economic growth. As they have become inseparable, all finance has by definition become climate finance.

Fiscal space for development financing is at its lowest ebb. No respite is on the horizon of policymakers who are hard-pressed to deliver a socioeconomic turnaround. Recognising that many specialised ICF windows can be accessed, some federal ministries and provincial departments have begun to race to fill the void.

All finance has by definition become climate finance.

While the national climate finance strategy is in the making, the ministries of climate, finance, and planning are setting up specialised climate finance units. They share the same challenges in finding trained personnel, commissioning technical studies, and looking for grant writers. The most stubborn challenge is clarity of purpose for each undertaking and how best to avoid overlaps.

Likewise, some provinces have begun to identify specific policy options ranging from carbon trading to carbon taxes and levies. Punjab, for example, has progressed in finalising its green financial strategy and an action plan for its implementation. In KP, a climate financing framework and climate investment and implementation plans have been developed. Both provinces are probing the possibility of entering the carbon trading market.

While endeavours at the federal level are mostly undertaken with support from multilateral development banks (MDB), in the provinces, it is primarily bilateral financing that is helping them tread new terrains. So far, none of the federal agencies has leveraged itself to convene them for better coordination and synergy.

Overall, Pakistan’s share of international finan­­ce is minuscule. The economic loss and damage of $30.1 billion inflicted by the 2022 floods was more than the total disbursement by all UNFCCC (Uni­ted Nations Framework Conven­tion on Climate Change) funds since their inception: the Global Environment Facility (1991), Adaptation Fund (2001), and the Green Climate Fund (2014).

Acc­o­r­ding to some estimates, they have collectively disbursed about $22bn globally. Pakistan has ac­­cessed less than $1bn from all these three funds in the last 30 years. Clearly, the gap between Pakis­tan’s investment needs for resilience and low carbon development cannot be met by the present climate finance ecosystem.

As against this, the MDBs are the largest lenders of Pakistan. Their portfolio will grow steeply in the next three to four years as all eight MDBs have recently announced to ‘align’ their portfolios with the Paris Agreement. The IFC and IMF have also begun to champion private sectors’ transition and macroeconomic stability with extreme weather events.

The IMF has developed its own Climate Policy Assessment Tool, known as CPAT, for the rapid quantification of impacts of climate-mitigation policies, including on energy demand, prices, emissions, revenues, welfare, GDP, households and industries, local air pollution, and many more. The flagship Public Investment Management Assessment, which has long been used to assess infrastructure governance practices for countries at all levels of economic development, has become a Climate PIMA (C-PIMA).

It involves an assessment of institutions of public investment management that are key to ‘climate-aware’ infrastructures. The release of the next IMF tranche to Pakistan in March 2024 will hinge on our compliance with the commitments made in C-PIMA, posted on IMF website.

Ironically, the IMF, like MDBs, has had limited success in increasing the ownership for reforms despite insistence. If the election manifestos of the PML-N, PPP and PTI are any indicator, they have not even mentioned IMF, let alone acknowledged and endorsed national commitments made under the Stand-By Arrangement.

The World Bank and IMF align their financing flows with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. In fact, all eight MDBs have now committed to globally coordinating their in-country portfolios.

In Pakistan, the ADB and World Bank are now committed to proactively communicating and coordinating their portfolios. This will be useful for better synergy. It, however, also poses the increased risk of cartelisation of international finance, making countries like Pakistan overly vulnerable if the political headwinds of regional geopolitics become stronger.

Finally, while MDB projects are large, bilateral donors have much smaller financial buckets. They often aspire to add to technical know-how, rather than large infrastructural projects. Working with them on a cascade of relatively smaller projects is pivotal to enhancing technical capacities in various sectors and in the provinces. It is in our interest to tap bilateral donors particularly because bilateral projects are often aimed at promoting a combination of economic growth, bilateral trade, and bilateral lending and investments.

This technical engagement can also serve as an enabler to access over three dozen special purpose ICF vehicles that the UK, Germany, France, EU and several others have created, nationally or by pooling resources for specific Paris Agreement goals.

More than anything else, the strategic objective of engaging bilaterally with parties is to augment trade relations and to build their stakes in regional stability and Pakistan’s climate-smart development. After all, it is global polarisation that is leading the flow of international finance, rather than the UNFCCC.

The return of Nawaz Sharif

Summary

Nawaz Sharif's comeback:

• He has a strong chance of forming the next government after the February 8th elections.
• His return from exile and focus on rural voters have boosted his popularity.
• He emphasizes his past performance and promises to fix inflation and unemployment.

Campaign strategy:

• Connecting with voters through rallies and promises of economic relief.
• Leveraging his influence with powerful families in Punjab.
• Making campaign promises without going into details about solutions.

Challenges:

• Delivering on promises, especially with limited resources.
• Balancing his economic agenda with potential IMF program requirements.

Overall:

• Sharif's return has shifted the political landscape in Pakistan.
• His success in the elections and ability to deliver on promises remain to be seen.

Article

OF all the comebacks he has mounted since his first ouster from power more than 30 years ago, the latest one has been the most improbable.

The odds that Nawaz Sharif will be forming the next government after the Feb 8 elections are rising, although it cannot be known with any certainty at this stage. Even if he is not the prime minister himself, chances are whoever assumes the position will do so with his blessings.

The tide has been turning in his favour in slow motion for months now, but the coming weeks will see an acceleration. It began with the announcement of the date of his return to Pakistan after almost five years of exile. Next came the day of his return and first rally in Lahore, in which he laid out his credentials as the prime minister most suited to deliver development and growth for a country wracked by inflation and unemployment

Then came the brief interlude of bargaining for distribution of party tickets, seat adjustments with other parties in the running, and laying down the order of battle for the coming electoral contest. And as the last of the doubts over whether or not the elections would be held were finally removed, once the Supreme Court stripped his main rival, the PTI, of its election symbol, the campaigning began.

Listen to his campaign speeches and you will see the strategy at play here. He is doing two things in his rallies. First is connecting with voters and the second is asserting the old patronage machines that run the rural or peri-urban constituencies he has mainly focused his campaign energies on so far. To voters he is asking questions like ‘how much did one roti cost when I left in 2017? How much was one unit of electricity? How much did you pay for a kilo of sugar? How much for a bag of urea fertiliser?’

The message Nawaz is sending out is to climb onto his bandwagon, because soon it will be the only show in town.

The list of products he reads out varies from one constituency to another, depending on its urban or rural character. And for each product whose price he asks for, he asks the attendees how much they are paying for that commodity today. ‘Who did this to you?’ he asks them. ‘Who committed this cruelty?’ he continues. ‘You should go and ask them, whoever did this, why did they do this to you!’

It’s a crafty message. From 2017 till now, the country has seen an unprecedented surge in inflation. We can debate what caused this. I have written my own views on this numerous times already. But for campaign purposes, it is not necessary to go into why it happened. All he has to do is point out that it happened. And by making 2017 the starting point, he can glide over the fact that the bulk of this inflation came during the period when Shehbaz Sharif was prime minister.

For narrative purposes it doesn’t matter. “I have missed you” he said in one of his campaign speeches. “I have been away too long, and it hurts me to see all that you have had to suffer while I was away.” The campaign message is crafted to first connect with what is hurting voters the most: the difficulty in making ends meet. In Hafizabad, for example, a small industrial town with a large working class, he told the rally-goers “there would be no unemployment in Hafizabad today had I not been removed in 2017!”

In Sialkot, he promised to build a new motorway connecting that city with Lahore, after pointing out all the deficiencies in the current one which was opened to traffic in 2020, during Imran Khan’s tenure. In Mansehra, he promised a railway stop once the revamped railroad under the CPEC ML1 project is completed — it is an $8 billion-plus project. In Vehari, he casually threw in a medical college, saying that is what Tehmina Daultana asked for her constituency. “Ok, we will give you a medical college, but first get the votes and win!”

Which brings us to the second plank in his strategy: leveraging the power that he believes is about to come into his hands to work the patronage machines of Punjab, and rebuild his relationships with the dominant political families of this bellwether province.

In rural and small-town constituencies especially, political families are important. Nawaz knows this better than anybody else, and he and his coterie have the detailed knowledge of who is who, where and for how much. The message he is sending out now is to climb onto his bandwagon, because soon it will be the only show in town.

Then there is his manifesto and the larger macroeconomic promises made in it, like reviving GDP growth to six per cent, resolving the circular debt, and so on. For now, though, his persona is invested in campaign promises, and connecting with voters and political families, and promising them a resolution of the economic issues plaguing their lives.

Next come the elections. After that the summoning of the new parliament, the invitation by the president to the party with the largest votes to step forward and form their majority, the election of the Leader of the House, the appointment of the federal cabinet.

By then, close to nine months would have passed since word first wafted past us of Nawaz’s imminent return from exile. And Imran Khan’s woes would have multiplied manifold, buried under an avalanche of cases, convictions, appeals, disqualifications, defections, arrests, leaks, and so on.

The tide is turning, in slow motion. Nawaz Sharif has returned and will now cement his position in power. The big question is whether he will find the resources to deliver even half of what he is promising. Given how heavily he has invested himself in reviving growth, his commitment to a new IMF programme will become complicated. Nawaz may have returned, but growth and employment may not follow.

Years of unwisdom

Summary

Indo-Pakistani relations:

• History of conflict: The article discusses the long and troubled history of relations between India and Pakistan, highlighting missed opportunities and repeated cycles of engagement and disruption.
• Leadership chemistry: The author notes that personal chemistry between leaders has sometimes raised hopes for progress, but these have often been dashed.
• Key figures: Vajpayee from India and Zia from Pakistan are seen as leaders who made sincere efforts towards peace, while Modi's shelving of a promising peace plan is criticized.

Current situation:

• Uncertainty: With upcoming elections in both countries, the author ponders whether the new leadership will choose to move forward, backward, or remain stagnant.
• Three scenarios: The future of the relationship is seen as having three possibilities: business as usual, conditional optimism, or conditional pessimism.
• Comparison to Northern Ireland: The author draws a parallel to the struggles in Northern Ireland, suggesting that there is no easy solution and both sides must choose to move forward.

Article

MEMOIRS of retired Indian and Pakistani diplomats contain accounts of their postings to Islamabad and New Delhi, spent in professional pugilism and recollected in tranquillity.

Former Indian high commissioner Ajay Bisaria’s book Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan belongs to that genre. Its adversarial counterpart is former Pakistan HC Abdul Basit’s Hostility: A Diplomat’s Diary on Pakistan-India Relations.

Bisaria served in Islamabad for 20 months before being summarily ‘expelled’ in 2019 — the first among his 24 predecessors to suffer this indignity.

His book is the most comprehensive survey to date of the first seven years in a conflict that could well score a century. It is structured to cover seven decades and some years, from 1947 into 2023. It could carry the subtitle ‘Seven Pillars of Unwisdom’.

Bisaria notes that the chemistry between Indo-Pak leaders raised hopes.

According to him, three ideas “of identi­ty, territory, and security have populated scho­larship on the subcontinent”. They recur in his narrative. He tells us that “a lesson all In­­­dian envoys to Pakistan learn at some point or the other: Pakistan policy in India is dri­ven personally by India’s prime minister”.

Since independence, India has drawn its elected PMs from the same democratic pool, installed by popular vote. The PM’s authority is unequivocal, except in the instance of the paloo-tied control exercised by Sonia Gandhi during PM Manmohan Singh’s tenure. In contrast, leadership in Pakistan has passed from governors general, to nominated or self-appointed presidencies, to selected PMs.

Many of them have articulated their views on foreign policy. None has done so as poetically as the late PM A.B. Vajpayee: “The tools of diplomacy are words, eyes, and signs;/ Words, eyes, and signs; plus forks and knives;/ First you shake hands,/ Then wring them in repentance.”

Bisaria notes that personal chemistry between subcontinental leaders has often raised their people’s hopes: “Duos of leaders had held great promise of breakthroughs […]: Zia and Rajiv, Benazir and Rajiv, Sharif and Gujral, Sharif and Vajpayee, even Sharif and Modi, seemed to signal new phases of constructive engagement.”

He recalls: “In the 1960s, Rajeshwar Dayal managed to persuade Nehru to give Ayub Khan a chance, despite Nehru’s instinctive suspicion of the dictator. Natwar Singh became an advocate for Zia in the 1980s despite Mrs Gandhi’s aversion to him. Pakistan’s envoy Jehangir Qazi, through his quiet diplomacy with Advani, managed to get the Agra Summit of 2001 in place giving Musharraf a chance to make his case.”

He singles out Vajpayee for his “sincerity and balanced approach” towards Pakistan. Amongst Pakistani leaders, he thinks “Zia was perhaps the most consummate diplomat for Pakistan who tried to sweet-talk India while running a nuclear programme and a jihad” in India’s Punjab.

Bisaria remembers PM Singh’s remarks in 2006 that “borders cannot be redrawn, but we can work towards making them irrelevant [,] just lines on a map”. Singh’s sponsorship of the Satish Lambah/ Tariq Aziz plan came as close to a working formula for Indo-Pak ties as the two nations will ever reach. On taking over, PM Modi shelved it. In former HC Shivshankar Menon’s words, “the two countries fell into a repetitive pattern or dance of engagement and disruption”.

It is to Bisaria’s credit that, despite being “more of a Europe and Russia hand”, he ac­­cepted the Islamabad assignment with courage. He describes his life there as “never lo­­nely”. “Followed everywhere, wat­ched clo­sely, photographed on cell phones by swa­­rms of men in shalwar kameez, Indian diplomats become either peaceniks or hawks [:] seldom left in the middle.”

Bisaria offers his successor nine unequal pillars of wisdom: cross-border security, coincidence of leadership, safe diplomacy, the role of global forces and multilateral institutions, aspirations of the people, quarantining territorial disagreements, accepting Pakistan’s volatile structure of governance, minority is­­­sues and economic aspects of the relationship.

Peering into August 2047, when India and Pakistan will celebrate a centenary of independence from each other, Bisaria sees three scenarios: “Business as usual; conditional optimism; and conditional pessimism.”

Those who recall the struggles over Nor­t­hern Ireland may remember the response of the then British PM John Major when he was asked what his solution for the Irish qu­­estion was: “We can do one of three things. We can go backwards, or stay where we are. Neither is a policy. Or we can go forward.”

By the end of February, there should be a new government (conceivably led by Nawaz Sharif) in Islamabad. By June 2024, predictably, Narendra Modi will have returned to serve a third term. In which direction will they take us: backwards, mired in history, or forward?

Rich man’s polls

Summary

• General elections in Pakistan are approaching on Feb 8, 2024.
• Elections are perceived as a rich man's playground, with candidates from affluent economic classes dominating.
• Over the past 50 years, elected individuals often come from large landowners, sugar barons, construction tycoons, or business magnates.
• Gender disparity is evident, with 4,807 male candidates and only 312 females (plus two transgender candidates) out of 5,121 total candidates for National Assembly seats.
• The Election Act of 2017 sets spending limits for candidates, but the amounts (e.g., Rs10 million for National Assembly) are significantly high compared to the average household income (around Rs75,000).
• Candidates can incur expenses beyond the spending limit if not permitted by the candidate, making the limit less effective.
• No spending limit exists for political parties, leading to significant expenditures on advertising, disadvantaging candidates without substantial financial backing.
• The article suggests the need for a level playing field for aspirational women and socially challenged individuals rather than perpetuating the dominance of wealthy candidates.

Article

THE general elections to determine Pakistan’s fortunes are just around the corner. On Feb 8, 2024, the people of Pakistan will come out to vote for a party or candidate who they believe is competent enough to rule for the next five years. Much has been said about the level playing field being prepared for a particular party or the lack thereof for another. Yet, Elections 2024 are no different to general elections of yesteryear. Yes, the ‘favourites’ of the powers that be may have changed, but the underlying idea of the general elections being the rich man’s playground continues to be true.

An election in the truest sense of the word is the people’s choice of an individual who will represent them in a particular body. As is customary, elections involve canvassing, ie, reaching out to the masses to market oneself as one whose merits outweigh those of his or her opponents and result in such a person being ‘elected’.

That said, in Pakistan elections have always been about a particular economic class from which emerge individuals of a particular gender to fight it out amongst themselves and to use their financial muscle that can help them get the votes.

A look at the majority of the members who have been elected over the past 50 years to parliament makes this idea clear. A big chunk of the people (read: men) voted into power are either large landowners, sugar barons and construction tycoons or business magnates, whose foray into national and provincial politics is backed by enormous financial clout. This is where the title of the piece comes from.

The average Pakistani will have to save for years to contest.

Meanwhile, the gender difference is appalling. Of the total number of candidates (5,121) contesting for the general seats in the National Assembly, 4,807 are male and only 312 are females (two candidates from the transgender community). For all their claimed progressiveness, even the three leading political parties have allotted only a handful of seats to women nominees. While there are reserved seats for women in parliament, there is little to show that parties are taking a significant stride towards plugging the gap between men and women candidates for the general seats. At the other end, female voters make up around 46 per cent of the total eligible voters — an improvement from the past but one can still see how women are being shortchanged in elections as they are in every other facet of life.

Having established that Pakistan’s general elections have an unhealthy obsession with men at the helm of affairs, we can dissect the financial clout which has become the very foundation of Pakistan’s electoral activity.

The Election Act, 2017, hailed as a complete code of polls in Pakistan, actually facilitates the triumph of rich men over those with fewer resources in the electoral arena. Section 132 of the Act specifies the amount a candidate is allowed to spend. As per the said law, a candidate for the National Assembly on their own and through his supporters and political party cannot spend more than Rs10 million and for a candidate of a provincial assembly that cap is Rs4m. Now contrast that with the average household income in Pakistan which stands at around Rs75,000.

This means that for an average person in Pakistan to be able to spend even close to the spending limit for election to the National Assembly, they will need to save all their income for over a decade. That’s not even the irony. The irony is that the spending limit only applies where a candidate permits such expenditure. If expenses are in­­curred for a candidate which he or she does not permit, in light of Section 132 of the Election Act, those expenses are not considered part of the candidate’s official expenses to which the limit applies.

To add fuel to the fire, no spending limit exists for political parties, just as long as their expenditures are duly accounted for, legally sourced and not directed towards a particular candidate. This is why when you open your browsers to surf the internet, watch videos or scour your television, you see various political parties advertising themselves having bought valuable ad space and airtime worth millions of rupees. It is only natural then for such political parties to gravitate towards candidates who can finance these splurges.

The purpose here is not to relegate a rich man to the comforts of their expensive homes but to lay bare how the ‘level playing field’ being sought by one and all should actually be realised for aspirational women and socially challenged individuals rather than for the same pensioners who continue to rule the roost in Pakistan.