Pakistan seems to be suffering from the same syndrome. The obsession and the unwavering trust in multilateral agencies, including IMF, and the traditional foreign bilateral partners, particularly Saudi Arabia in the context of helicopter money, and the bells & whistles attached with the helping-hand ever extended by them in the past, fits the bill perfectly to categorise the situation, as such, in the context.
There’re broadly two fundamental issues with these ‘physiological alliances’ with our ‘hijackers’ – firstly, they follow their own template to address our economic challenges whilst our issues are very unique (like a typical emerging market country) and it doesn’t necessarily fit into the stereotype constituencies set by these agencies for the other countries, albeit emerging ones.
All government actions shall move in this direction to achieve the desired results even in medium-term to long-term. The key, therefore, is that we need to develop our own indigenous economic revival and management plan. We can’t continue to be banking on our ‘captors’ for the solutions of our freedom.
Most importantly, the onus of execution of the plan rests with us and our economic and political managers only. This has been our biggest deficit which leaves us vulnerable to arm-twisting by our captors.
This is what our history says and this what will continue to happened in the future too until and unless we have our own indigenous plan in-place with full commitment and buy-in from all stakeholders – Government, Opposition, Establishment, etc.
In other words, we need a much needed “charter of economy and reforms”; otherwise, in the absence of that we would continue to wonder around and remain hostage to “Stockholm Syndrome”.
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