PDM’s one-year performance receives little public acclaim

    By
    Summaiyya Qureshi
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    The alliance of 11 parties, the Pakistan Democratic Movement, has completed its one-year after throwing out Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan’s government on April 9, 2022. The discussion of the PDM administration’s financial state is heavily political or uses only certain indicators. If you ask someone how is inflation in the country, the most predictable answer you would get is that it has been increasing. However, If you ask how the government has handled it, the public will have a mixed reaction.

    The general reaction of the Public to PDM’s one-year performance is mixed. Some believe that Pakistan is on the verge of default while others have faith that PDM must be given more time for improvement.

    Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Sunday also published “white papers” evaluating Pakistan Democratic Shehbaz led government performance with the title “One-year dark period” that focused on citing worsened peace and order conditions, human rights breaches, “political exploitation of the institutions,” “confrontation” with the court, failures on several economic indices, etc.

    There are six sections in the “white paper.” The booklet includes information on human rights abuses committed by the current administration as well as statistics on inflation and economic collapse.

    In the first section, it was discussed how PDM purportedly overthrew Khan’s administration through a conspiracy. It goes on to explain how the “lack of any economic policy” contributed to the worsening of the economic crisis.

    The 51 Page long report on PDM performance briefly discusses the devaluation of the rupee in comparison to the dollar from 2022 to 2023. it also discusses GDP growth that according to PTI’s report went from 6% to 0.4%. The report claimed that inflation has gone from 13.37% to 35.4%. The one-year dark period further mentions interest rates, Remittance, Exports, Moody’s rating, and Foreign direct investment that has majorly decreased.

    Different Trends like #9thAprilBlackDay, #امپورٹڈحکومتنامنظور, #چوروںکاایک_سال, #ousted but not defeated, #oneyearofPDM #PDM, etc. have been trending on Twitter. People have been showing mixed reactions to the one-year performance. Some are sad to remember the day of 9th April while some expressed gratitude for the ouster of Khan.

    A Twitter user share a whole threat on how he felt the day Khan was ouster till now

    Another user wrote, “One year of failure and disappointment. One year of brutality and fascism. One year of undermining democracy and the constitution. One year of damage to national institutions.”

    A user in response to Gharidah Farooqi’s poll about whom people will support in elections which showed 75% of people support PTI, wrote “These social media surveys do not have any meaning, that is why Niazi is keeping employees on salary For four years, he worked as a propaganda machine with public money.”

    A Journalist Ihtisham-ul-Haq wrote, “A growing country from 6% to now 0.4% Wha a joke! #9thAprilBlackDay”

    A Twitter user demand a comparison of statistics when Imran Khan became the PM and when he left what was at that point.

    A social media user claimed the stats to be fake.

    A user in response shared a comparison of the 2018 Nawaz-led government to the 2021 Khan-led government

    A user wrote, “When Imran was in the government, he went for Umrah including his wife’s ex-husband and children received in dowry at the government expense? Now that the government is no more, it has been a full year since Umrah”

    Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb in response to the White paper said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan could not defend “his tenure of destruction,” which included “corruption and incompetency,” by only presenting a white paper.

    “Whether he [Imran Khan] issues white, red, or yellow paper, nothing could help him cover up his corruption and incompetency, aside from the constitutional violations he perpetrated during his government’s term,” She added.

    A user added, “Just by looking at this data, one can easily imagine the unmitigated disaster that has been inflicted upon us in the form of PDM’s fascist regime. The human rights violations and curbs on free speech are in addition to it.”

    Summaiyya Qureshi
    Summaiyya Qureshi is a journalist with Minute Mirror and writes about social issues besides geopolitics, foreign policy, and nuclearization. She can be reached at (summaiyyaqureshi4@gmail.com). She is available on twitter at @SummaiyyaQ

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