Almost nobody has named the culprit, though everyone in Pakistan knows the victim: the household paying Rs 114 in levy on every litre of petrol. Nearly a year ago—long before the war between Iran and the United States ignited—Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman, Ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, sat across from me with his core team. Their questions were heavy and urgent: How do we fix the crushing circular debt? How do we secure our water and energy future? How do we reinstate the Indus Waters Treaty?

My answer was simple: produce a series of rigorous White Papers on Pakistan’s most critical threats—energy, water, and climate security. I may not be a political scientist, but I know what institutional memory is worth. In a functioning democracy, a genuine opposition doesn't just shout—it exposes failure with undeniable evidence. It dissects the systemic rot, lays bare the ruling regime’s incompetence, and then does the hardest work of all: it delivers real solutions. They nodded, and I have been waiting a year for the first page.

The frustrating part is that JI already owns the machinery. Its Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad was vibrant under Professor Khurshid Ahmad, a place where research made ministers uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way it became a think tank like most others in Pakistan, a tank only in the sense that it holds the founding vision while the money drains out, with no quality reports to show for it. Meanwhile JI spent months pressing the government to waive the petroleum levy, Rs 114 a litre on petrol and Rs 100 on diesel, arguing, correctly, that 260 million Pakistanis are being crushed by inflation, unemployment and unaffordable fuel and food. But a waiver won at the negotiating table, without ever naming what forced the levy into existence, is a request for mercy. It is not reform. The levy did not fall from the sky. It is a fiscal patch stretched over a hole our own planners dug. Let me show you the scene of the crime.

In 2013, PML-N inherited a power-sector circular debt of about Rs 480 billion and cleared it in 47 days, a genuinely competent start. Then came the decisions that mattered. As CPEC opened,........

© The Friday Times