This is a satire piece and any eventual accuracy in its predictions will be completely coincidental.
We’re now officially a quarter of a century into the third millennium, which is just a more scholarly way of saying that 2025 has begun.
Every new year in Pakistan means new hope and new resolutions but also new problems and new solutions.
In line with Dawn.com’s tradition of making predictions for the incoming year, we put our case Pakistan in the proverbial Magic 8 Ball, and this is what we got:
After the men’s cricket team’s incredible come-from-behind 3-2 win in a home Test series against Namibia, the recently installed selection committee is credited for the result.
So pleased is the prime minister with the committee’s picks that he decides to entrust it with the task of picking judges for the top court as well.
“We’re looking for our diamond in the rough,” the chief selector of the cricket and judicial committees tells a never-before-seen array of sports and court reporters under one roof at Gaddafi Stadium Lahore.
“We will go to all the high and low courts to unearth the best legal talent. In fact, we will conduct a talent hunt programme at grass-root levels in district and sessions courts, and whoever passes our ‘Yes Test’ will be shortlisted.
When asked what the Yes-Test is, the selector replies: “It’s an advanced version of our Yo-Yo test and it will be mandatory for all the judges to pass to make it to the top.”
Another member of the selection committee announces that trials for aspirant top judges will be held at Rashid Latif Cricket Academy in Karachi. “This will be an open trial but merit will be central to our selection criteria. The trialists will have to demonstrate their speed in indicting the rival team’s players and their technique in granting clean chits to own boys.”
With the supply of cases against an incarcerated populist leader running alarmingly low, the government lodges a fresh FIR against him for violently coughing in his jail cell.
“I was doing my guard duties outside the prisoner number ***’s cell when I heard the sound of him trying to clear his throat,” says the complainant in the FIR. “When I approached the cell, I saw that he was violently coughing and desperately trying to keep his airways clear.”
“This was quite clearly an action against the state and an attempt to incite the public.”
With no actual new footage of the leader in the new year as well, the public will be obviously expected to trust the nefariousness of the cough.
Ahead of the new academic year, the country’s federal board of education decides that it is finally time to update the Urdu textbook for Class 7. Off go Khushal Khan Khattaks, Akbar Allahbadis and Dipty Nazeer Ahmeds to make room for more contemporary lessons.
The incoming chapters include:
“This should have been done a lot earlier, but better late than never,” says the federal minister for education at a daytime press conference held at the Press Information Department in Islamabad. “At first, there was no consensus as some committee members were not consensus-ing to the changes but then they were reasoned with IPPs-style [independent power producers]. Then, they consensus-ed immediately.”
The minister, who doubles as the minister for culture, also confirms the government’s plan to launch a pair of new drama serials by the name of ‘Aien ki Ayyarian’ (Constitution’s cunningness) and ‘Yes Sir, Yes Sir’.
The national cricket team’s preparations for the Champions Trophy 2025 on home soil are thrown into disarray when their head coach quits half a day before the start of the tournament. His eleventh hour replacement is a cricket-turned-pundit whose vitriolic takes have made him more name than his six-match playing career did.
The new guy installs Saim Ayub as the new captain, and under his captaincy, the team makes it to the final where Australia does Australia things: win the final comprehensively and spoil the party for the hosts.
With the nation disappointed, the federal cabinet decides to renegotiate the defeat with the Australian team. “We cannot continue to bear the brunt of Australia’s brilliance at cricket. In the national interest of Pakistan, Australia should give up their eight-wicket victory and settle for a 25-run defeat,” the information minister says in a press conference the next morning.
The Australian cricket team rejects the idea and dubs it “preposterous” but agrees to hold a dialogue after it is placed on the Exit Control List.
“Sir, we made the IPPs agree to the early termination of their contracts so we can do something similar with the Aussies too,” the interior minister tells the prime minister in a cabinet meeting, according to that one source who is usually privy to the matter. “If that does not do it, we can even implicate them in the Jinnah House case; they are, after all, cricketers.”
Despite the KSE-100 Index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange having exceeded 200,000 points, a self-proclaimed expert of all things economy sticks to his original assessment that it’s a pump-and-dump scheme and its bubble would burst soon.
“The big seths are doing satta,” says the expert with 19m tweets, 19,000 followers and Rs1,900 in the bank. “It will implode soon, just wait and watch. The PSX is where the big fish swallow the small ones. This run from 37,000 points to 200,000 is all artificial. It is a hallucination. It is not even happening in real life.
“Allah ki kasam the economy is in dire straits, it’s about to implode. Don’t look at the stock market. It is not the best indicator for the economy anyway. The fundamentals are just as bad as ever. The storm is just days away. We are all going to die.”
While the expert maintains his public stance, he was last seen exiting the office of a brokerage house clutching an account opening form.
Having realised that the construction on the University Road is not going to be completed during their lifetime, Karachiites rush to cryonics.
“I can’t remember what year they started building this BRT Red Line in but the pace at which they are working, I am sure it will be a long time before we see the last of these excavators, cranes, dust and diversions,” says a 9-to-5 commuter.
“It’s better to die in full once rather than dying a little every day going from Gulshan to II Chundrigar during rush hours. Therefore, I have decided to have my body frozen for the next 100 years to the time when the government is finally (hopefully!) able to complete this project.”
Meanwhile, Karachi’s sole cryonics centre says it is getting more cryopreservation orders than it can currently process. “It’s not just about the University Road,” says the manager at CryOrTry. “There is no gas in winters, electricity in summers, water in taps, security on streets and justice in courts. It’s quite possibly the worst time to be alive in Karachi, which is why so many of this city’s residents are considering cryonics.”
“Right now we only have one fully functioning facility near Civic Centre but we are opening more branches in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, FB Area and Nazimabad.”
Despite the economy improving on paper and in talk shows, the middle and lower income people continue to complain that the benefit of the improving economy is yet to trickle down to them.
“What’s the point of all this economic goodness when food and groceries are just as expensive as before, if not more. We still can’t feed our children three times,” says a street vendor in a video clip that goes so viral that the finance minister is asked about it in his very next press conference.
“This is a question that irks me quite a lot,” admits the finance czar, who has a PhD from the Wharton Business School and gave up a monthly salary of Rs50 million before joining the cabinet.
“The level of ignorance is beyond belief. Bhai (brother), if you are having trouble paying for food, switch to a macros diet. Start your day with a healthy breakfast of current account surplus, a little before midday have a bowl of falling CPI inflation, and for lunch have a plate of foreign exchange reserves with a side of stable PKR. In the evening, have something light like 5pc growth in economy and for dinner you can have a serving of souring stock exchange.
“There you go, problem solved.”
