The four-way balance

FINANCE Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is getting the drift. He has spent his 10 months in power trying to ensure he leaves none of his core constituents unhappy. The establishment wanted him to stabilise the economy by staying the course with the IMF and getting onto a successor programme, which he managed to do in September of 2024, when the Extended Fund Facility received board approval. His own government has its fault lines, though so far these have remained more or less muted, notwithstanding periodic protests by the PPP around specific issues, which are unlikely to become systemically important. Most significantly, the fault line is within the ruling party itself; between those tied to the party president Nawaz Sharif and those congregating around his brother, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. So far, there is little competition between these two camps, but that can change, especially as the pressure mounts to win back the voters the party lost to its rival, the PTI, in Punjab.