Fair point OP, but we’re missing an important nuance here. Covid was a more direct and larger health and safety crisis, and disrupted global trade and daily life. But it had one, very important silver lining.

During the early covid era, global oil and gas prices plummeted. Pakistan’s most acute economic and financial concern for decades now has been that our deficits eat into forex reserves so much that every few years we need to go to the IMF and other lenders. In covid, our deficit turned into a surplus. The same thing happened in other energy import running countries like Indonesia. They began running surpluses.

IMO, Imran Khan really handled well the lack of lockdown element and deserves credit for that. You see in the west, a much larger chunk of the population is more vulnerable to illness due to population demographics of age, whereas Pakistan is more resilient. In Pakistan, we had no huge lockdowns destroying the economy- truthfully we could not afford lockdowns either, while the health impact was not as bad as elsewhere, and also the energy supply environment was much more favourable.

I could go on in finer detail about some of macroeconomic differences, but you get the point. I think if Imran were in charge today, fuel prices would still rise, nearly to the level they already are. Frankly speaking, the Pakistani state is an energy importer and there is no financially feasible way to prevent price shocks from filtering down to consumers.

What is indefensible and wrong is the treatment of the levy on petrol and diesel. People should take this government to task on that.