New year challenge

WITH crises-battered 2019 behind it, Pakistan enters 2020 with cautious hope, as an optimistic prime minister promises economic stability and jobs in the new year — a view hardly shared by an opposition reeling from the cases against its leaders, including a former president and prime minister.

Crises hit the nation with rapidity, engulfing every segment of state and society as inflation worsened, political polarisation sharpened and judicial pronouncements made waves. Yet what has baffled even the most ardent of the PTI chief’s admirers is his inability to shed the ‘container syndrome’.

He will need to; besides the economy, the biggest challenge before Prime Minister Imran Khan now is the uphill task of reviving the people’s faith in his commitment to democracy and proving by deeds that he can carry the opposition along in the task of nation-building without compromising his promise of accountability.