Reza Baqir, a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), has stated that for Pakistan to advance, it must get rid of conspiracy theories and myths and deal with contextual reality.
The former head of SBP highlighted three myths that pervade Pakistani discourse and policy. He was presenting at one of the sessions of the Future of Pakistan Conference 2023, which was organized by the LSE Student Union (LSE).
General (retired) Haroon Aslam, Justice Ayesha Malik, Farzana Shaikh (moderator), Dr. Amber Daar (moderator), and Ali Farid Khawaja were among the other speakers at the various sessions.
There is a larger conspiracy against Pakistan that is negatively affecting our progress, foreign organizations like the IMF are to blame, and Pakistan is a unique country and our problems are peculiar, according to Reza Baqir, who singled out these three “myths” as hurdles to Pakistan’s progress that civilians must recognize as untrue. Reza Baqir claimed that although the GDPs of our neighbors’ countries are bigger, their debt levels are as well.
Exemplifying that, bigger debts don’t mean that a country cannot grow. He claimed that while debt in and of itself is not always a problem—there are countries with debt levels higher than Pakistan—the issue arises when the debt is held in a foreign currency and the government decides to withdraw reserves in order to pay it off. To avoid this, he advised letting exchange rates fluctuate naturally rather than attempting to fix freely fluctuating rates.
Dr. Farzana Sheikh, a Pakistani researcher, stated at the conference that since the success of the Vote of No Confidence (VNC) against Imran Khan in April of last year, Pakistan has been in a state of chaos due to a confluence of political, economic, flooding, and terrorism issues.
Indirectly, Imran Khan has blamed the military for triggering his government’s collapse through a so-called US-led conspiracy. She claimed that the military is criticized for having initially put Khan in charge.
General (retired) Haroon Aslam stated that Pakistan was a military state because of the way the law of necessity was applied there, which took the form of the military state.
He stated that although the military is held responsible for the majority of Pakistan’s issues, it has never ordered the civilian government or officials to stop doing their jobs.
When questioned about the Theory of Necessity, Michael Kugelman stated that Pakistan must abandon the doctrine if it is to advance. He stated that Pakistan has not been a democracy for much of its existence as unelected forces impose their will on elected forces; dissidents and critics of this such as journalists then suffer consequences.
In conversation with Dr Amber Darr, Justice Ayesha Malik recounted the challenges and opportunities she faced in her personal journey as a female in the legal profession and as a member of the superior judiciary.
She also discussed a number of her judgments in which she had interpreted the law for the benefit of women (such as the Sadaf Aziz case) and children caught in a custody battle (Raja Muhammad Owais v. Nazia Jabeen).
