Is COAS Economic Plan attempt to escape Elections?

Army Chief of Pakistan General Syed Asim Munir has held long meetings with a large number of business community in Karachi and Lahore for Economic Plan.

Talking in Geo News’ program ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada K Sath, business leaders President FPCCI Irfan Iqbal Sheikh and Zubair Motiwala have revealed that Army Chief General Asim Munir’s meetings with the business community are thought to restore the economy. The following are the eight important points that are being made to implement a project.

1. Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman complained to the Army Chief about Pakistani bureaucracy and corruption and asked him to control them. Bureaucratic obstacles in the way of investment will be removed.
2. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have assured investment of 25, 25 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia will invest in IT, minerals, agriculture and defence.
3. Four tasks will be created for smuggling, FBR, border control and social media.
4. The Army Chief has instructed the Corps Commander that not even a litre of Iranian petrol should come to Karachi.
5. Money exchange companies will be brought into Tax net and transparency will be brought in the exchange rate.
6. Corruption will be stopped and possession mafia, extortion mafia will be controlled.
7. The Army Chief will also visit Qatar and Kuwait to bring investment.
8. Only 1.1 million registered Afghan refugees can stay in Pakistan, the rest will have to go to their own country, Afghanistan.

Has COAS mandate to make Economic Plans?

It is impossible to achieve the goals of the above mentioned points of the economic plan put forward by the Army Chief in a few months. It seems that the elections will be postponed for one or two years. Whether the economic goals are achieved in this period or not, the political opponents will definitely be disposed of.

The question is, how did thousands of tons of sugar smuggled from Pakistan to Afghanistan in the last few months? Who is responsible for border control? Iranian oil is being smuggled to Pakistan with whose permission? Why are the institutions that collect salaries not doing their job?

Pakistan is facing the worst economic crisis today, which is mainly due to two regime change operations in the recent past. The way the leaders of the better performing PML-N government were jailed in 2017 and then what was done to the PTI government may take more than a decade to recover from.

Today, in every city of Pakistan, citizens are protesting against electricity bills and the poor are committing suicide. In the last six months, four and a half lakh Pakistanis have left the country, including doctors, engineers, IT experts, bank managers and people from other fields.

Instead of making this country a laboratory, the authorities should allow a fair and transparent election by following the constitution and law. Stop playing games with high courts. Respect their decisions. Let the people decide what is good or bad. According to Senator Raza Rabbani,

“Any attempt to escape from the elections can be dangerous for the federation.”