UK trip decisions.

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet ministers have returned from the UK, and have met party supremo Mian Nawaz Sharif, but have not achieved the clarity on certain issues that they had gone to seek. Basically, there are two issues, and they are interlinked, being the petrol subsidy and the timing of fresh elections. It is apparent that the split within the PML(N) is so great that Mian Nawaz was not able to paper over the cracks, let alone resolve the differences and thus end them.

One dangerous difference that has come into the open is that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif believes the petrol subsidy should continue, because the poor cannot bear the burden of inflation that would follow. That inflation is going to be made worse because of the depreciating rupee, while Finance Minister Miftah Ismail made it clear in his remarks after returning that he favoured at least a partial removal of the subsidy. He probably fears the time when the government is unable to meet the subsidy. The subsidy is not sacrosanct, being only introduced by the PTI government as a populist measure in its dying days. The Shehbaz government would not have introduced it, and would probably have absorbed the blow of its withdrawal by now. With no end to the Russo-Ukrainian war, and rising world oil prices, in sight, the increasing burden can...