According to former finance minister Miftah Ismail, political unrest and closures in Pakistan are now causing a daily loss of Rs 300 billion to the country’s GDP. Political parties are urged to sit down and start a dialogue to work out the instability.
Referring to PTI’s planned agitation, he advised the party to concentrate on developing democracy rather than simply doing so for the release of its imprisoned leader, Imran Khan. “Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Yasmin Rashid, and other PTI leaders are also imprisoned, but the party seems fixated only on Khan’s release,” he said.
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He lamented that major cities such as Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad are close to being completely shut down, all factors very influential to the contributing daily losses, “Even if only Lahore or Islamabad are shut down, it’s going to amount to Rs 100 to Rs 125 billion loss a day,” he noted. The closure of schools meant the loss of an educational term.
DIG Raza visits PIMS to ask about the injured officer. Ismail lists the disputes over the transparent elections and the violations of the constitution, emphasizing the importance of restoring judicial independence. He dismisses the likely outcome of PTI’s planned protests, saying, “Even if 20,000 or 100,000 people rally, it won’t make a difference,” and describes the use of the state machinery in these demonstrations as illegal.