The curse of the history is once again repeating itself. It is the same old jargon: fragile democracy, absence of rule of law, political upheavals, volatile economy, socially polarised and massive corruption. As if one were forced to live in the decade of 90s.
Local or international media, Pakistan is in the limelight for all the wrong and unenviable reasons. Similarly, we improved our ranking by 8 points in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by the Transparency International. Pakistans 2010 (CPI) score is 2.3 against 2.4 in 2009. It slipped 8 ranks from 42nd to 34th in the most corrupt countries in the world.
The economic volatility was centred on high levels of inflation, decline in GDP growth rate, increase in levels of poverty from 17 percent to 24 percent, acute unemployment rate and further depletion of foreign reserves and devaluation of Pakistani rupee.
The political landscape of the country was marred with the tussles within the parties and between the coalition partners. Political gamers blame one another within and outside the parliament for the institutional confrontation between the judiciary and executive .The two major parties of the country namely, PPP and PML(N), are busy settling scores for their petty politicking instead of evolving a bi-partisan consensus on issues.
But have they learnt any lesson from the history? The blunt answer is a no. Indeed, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. So, in order to change the whole situation, the younger generation of the country has to come forward and play its due part by keeping faith in their ability.
BILAL AZAM
Karachi
