DESPONDENCY. Disappointment. Disillusion. Take your pick of the word to describe the year that is limping its way across the finish line. In 2021 all key stakeholders on Pakistan’s political landscape exemplified failures in their targeted objectives and resultant outcomes. None shall be glad to see the back of the calendar page as we enter its last week.

The year illustrated all that is wrong, weak and inadequate in our politics. The government could not govern, the opposition could not oppose and the establishment could not finish what it started. Faced with an uncertain situation, all are shuffling their way back to the drawing board. But have they learnt the right lessons?

In hindsight it is clear that the PTI government never recovered from its victory in the 2018 elections. It has literally been downhill from the day that Prime Minister Imran Khan took oath of office in August of that year. That was the highest point for the PTI. Each year since then has weakened the government’s performance, diluted its credibility and undercut its viability as a party that is fit to rule. If it somehow survives in office in 2022, it would do so as a weakened shell of its original self. The humiliating defeat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa local government elections has provided this evidence, if one was needed.

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Has the PTI leadership learnt the right lessons? Or any lessons?

The year 2021 was especially harsh on the party. Though the scourge of inflation has dogged it since previous years, it was this year that it really cut deep into household budgets and incinerated what was left of the government’s goodwill. Not all of it was the government’s doing — Covid supply issues creating mayhem across the globe — but much of it was. And is. The inability of the government to manage the supply side of essential commodities, and the bumbling way in which it tackled macroeconomic policies, fed into the monster of inflation. Even today, there is no end in sight.

Perhaps equally damaging was the government’s inability, even after three years in power, to grow beyond blaming the opposition for everything and provide a clear roadmap of governance. Try as it might — and it did not try too hard — it could not shrug off the perception that its competence to govern a complex country like Pakistan had fallen far short of the level needed. The more it struggled with governance, the more it reverted to attacking the opposition in a language, and with the substance, that harked back to the years prior to 2018. Digging your way out of a hole has never been considered an effective strategy.

As the year ends, PTI is in worse shape than it was when 2021 had dawned. It is now struggling to stay afloat in a sea of mounting troubles and there are genuine existential fears haunting it as it braces for a fresh onslaught from opponents in the coming year. Has the party leadership learnt the right lessons? Or any lessons? The answer may be more important for the party than it may want to admit.

The PML-N on the other hand is grudgingly acknowledging that it has learnt some lessons. Through the year, the party struggled against the government, and against itself, and failed to come on top on both fronts. Whether it was through the PDM, or via its solo flight against the government and the establishment, the PML-N was unable to achieve the stated objectives of dragging the PTI down in the centre and in Punjab. The duality of narrative inside the party kept asserting itself in obvious — and often crude — ways without any indication that it might reconcile one way or another. Post-budget it appears that the PTI was coasting along smoothly for the rest of the term while the PML-N was floundering on the basis of its own contradictions.

Until help came from an unlikely source — the prime minister himself.

The controversy over the appointment of the DG ISI created the space that the PML-N wanted but was not getting. However, the party that had been criticising the establishment for bringing in the PTI government struggled in the initial weeks to figure out how to now engage the establishment. It now transpires that the party leadership appears to have internalised the reality that if it wants to claw its way back to power, it will need to somehow deal constructively with the elephant in the room. It may still be premature to say that something has been worked out, but it is safe to say that the party is ending the year on a higher note than the one it started the year with.

The establishment has also gone through various ups and downs and the seminal moment of the year was without doubt that DG ISI appointment issue. This one event changed the course of politics and is in fact still reverberating across the landscape because of the enormity of stakes involved. There are now fairly clear indications that the establishment is swinging the pendulum back towards a certain equilibrium. The effects will manifest themselves in the coming weeks. The institution did, however, signal fairly emphatically that its internal transfers and postings remained out of bounds for the political leadership. It was a lesson that had to be learnt the hard way by all concerned.

The year 2021 has been like a Netflix series season — it is ending on a suspenseful note just as the situation reaches a crucial twist in the plot. The next season, starting in a week, will grapple with the biggest question: is there a change in the offing or will the government overcome yet another challenge? Tune in to watch the same characters grappling with fresh challenges in a battle that cannot have too many winners.

Here’s hoping that 2022 will bring Pakistan much-needed stability and clear the way for us to become a normal country.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Islamabad.

Twitter: @fahdhusain

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2021