Thought is often unsettled. It moves, at times, toward horizons of expectation, and at others into shadows of pessimism, until it is awakened by a flash of reading, or by a passing observation, that loosens the knot of what had grown tangled and obscure. Such is among the ways of Allah in His creation: He guides whom He wills and leaves astray whom He wills, and in the movement of minds and events there is His far-reaching wisdom.

From this vantage point, we may begin to see a cloud lifting from the judgment of some thinkers around the world as they observe the sharp turn the country is taking in the mechanisms of government work. Wisdom, whatever its source, points to the possibility that this turn was intended for reform, even if some of its partial aims have stumbled, or some of its early features have appeared unclear to different parties.

There is no dispute that stumbling and ambiguity are part of the nature of work and its mechanisms. No path is wholly spared from them. They recur; then they are noticed, read and studied. In the end, work returns to them through corrective mechanisms that seek to set the course right.

Here, a broader reading of the scene becomes necessary. It is a scene of divergent paths and renewed mechanisms of action. Some of those mechanisms have advanced what strengthens governance and accountability. Yet, in doing so, they have also overlooked other paths of greater weight and deeper consequence in shaping the future: paths tied to sustaining the continuity of work, building the productive base, and opening a road of hope and ambition before every earnest citizen.

Instead of governance and accountability remaining permanent instruments, working alongside higher and more far-reaching means to achieve the purpose of this stage, they have, in some of their manifestations, come to resemble the stage itself. The means has become a veil over the end, and the instrument has begun to absorb the purpose it was meant to serve.

There is no harm in restoring the rightful logic governing the citizen’s relationship with passive entitlement. Indeed, this is among the most necessary requirements of the present stage, and among the most closely connected to repairing the logic of both state and society. The point of disagreement is not over correcting that relationship. It is over allowing that correction, or the long span of time it consumes, to become an obstacle to elevating the relationship toward something higher: a relationship of productive partnership.
The partnership sought here is not confined to its narrow routine meaning, nor to the mere inclusion of citizens within an ordinary administrative cycle. It is about building productivity capable of creating value, and capable of extending outward through export, influence and competition. Such productivity ultimately serves the higher aims this stage ought to reach: the sustainability of public finances in funding the model of the state, economic diversification through the creation of value, and the empowerment of the private sector to stand on its own.

What is beyond dispute today runs contrary to what prevailed in the past. The cost of hope has become too high to be reduced to considerations of governance, or to tracks concerned with accountability alone. It is now tied to something deeper and more enduring: building the citizen in the two dimensions of stability and material capacity.

In our present economic reality, those two dimensions do not rest on wishful thinking or on the sincerity of intentions. They rest on productive opportunity — an opportunity difficult to attain unless this stage witnesses a direct, bold and, in its effect, revolutionary push toward the paths capable of creating a relationship of productive partnership, and of rooting it in both public policy and society.

There is no doubt that such a push must be enabling and capable. It must rest on policies that serve the macroeconomy when each of its smaller microeconomic components fulfills its purpose — not the other way around. There are many policies ready to be applied once they are taken seriously, and their effect may be nearer than we think once they are placed where they belong — in a stage that recognizes no path but seriousness.

May Allah ordain for this nation a course of right guidance.

The means has become a veil over the end, and the instrument has begun to absorb the purpose it was meant to serve.

The cost of hope has become too high to be reduced to considerations of governance, or to tracks concerned with accountability alone.