+- Forums (https://www.globalvision2000.com/forum)
+-- Forum: Think Tanks (https://www.globalvision2000.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Think Tanks (Rest of the world) (https://www.globalvision2000.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=16)
+--- Thread: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2030 (/showthread.php?tid=624)
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 07-14-2023
THERE ARE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS BEING ASKED IN THE VIDEO ABOUT THE INERTIA IN THE MUSLIM WORLD. IN ORDER TO ADDRESS AND FOCUS UPON IT THE CONCEPT OF TAJDID-RENEWAL AND ISLAH-REFORM FROM ISLAMIC HISTORY WOULD BE ESSENTIAL TO EXAMINE. BY DEFINITION THIS MEANS LOOKING AT VARIOUS POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD.
AUTHENTIC ISLAMIC REVIVALISM NEEDS TO BE SEPARATED FROM POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES LIKE TERRITORIAL ETHNIC BASED NATIONALISMS AND LIBERAL SECULAR MODELS IMITATING THE NONMUSLIM EUROPEAN WORLD. ALSO IDEOLOGIES LIKE FASCISM, NAZISM AND COMMUNISM WHICH DIVIDED AND DESTROYED EUROPE ARE NOW IRRELEVANT AND IN THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY.
THIS NARROWS DOWN THE FOCUS OF ATTENTION AND ENABLES CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THIS QUESTION. ON REVIEW OF MODERN ISLAMIC POLITICAL HISTORY WE WILL FIND THAT JABR -COERCION AND SUPPRESSION OF ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS BY THE ARMY AND SECULAR WESTERNISED ELITES HAVE BEEN USED REPEATEDLY TO CONTAIN, CONTROL OR DESTROY.
NEVERTHELESS MUSLIM PEOPLES POLITICAL FREEDOMS AND ASPIRATIONS CAN NOT BE SUPPRESSED FOREVER. WE HAVE WITNESSED THE STIRRINGS OF DISSENT AND REVOLUTION WITH THE ARAB SPRING. BUT THE COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY FORCES RUTHLESSLY PUT IT DOWN. THE REAL ISSUE IS ABOUT A NEW ISLAMIC AWAKENING RISING TO THE SURFACE. THE CHALLENGES IT FACES TO MANIFEST WILL BE EXAMINED.
FRENCH REVOLUTION, PAKISTAN & THE MUSLIM WORLD ?
WHY THE MUSLIM WORLD HAS NO ORIGINAL IDEAS?
WHY I SAY THE ENTIRE ARMY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PAKISTAN's DEVASTATION & NOT JUST GENERALS ?
WHY PAKISTAN AND INDIAN ARMIES BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY?
ONE MERCENARY, THE OTHER NATIONALISTIC !
WHAT MILITARY CONTROL AND RULE HAS DONE TO PAKISTAN!
WHY ARMY REFORM IS CRITICAL FOR SURVIVAL !
BAJAUR BLAST, ELECTIONS, CONSPIRACIES AND INTRIGUES BY ASIM MUNIR , PMLN, PPP!
A TERRIBLE LAW
https://www.dawn.com/news/1768167
THE National Assembly — a forum elected, empowered and entrusted by the nation to safeguard the public interest — has once again capitulated to unelected powers to pass legislation that gravely undermines civil rights.
The amendments to the Official Secrets Act passed by the Lower House on Tuesday read like an autocrat’s wish list: sweeping powers to search and detain; to brand anyone an ‘enemy’ of the state on mere suspicion; to pry into citizens’ personal affairs without a court-issued warrant; to freely use force against suspects who resist such intrusions; and to treat anyone as guilty until they are proven innocent.
It is deeply troubling that whoever had this law drafted clearly not only felt that such extreme measures were ‘appropriate’ against citizens of this country, but that they should also be given sanction. Thankfully, the Senate has refused to abdicate its responsibility. Facing stiff opposition from both government and opposition benches, the Senate chairman has referred the NA-passed bill to the relevant Senate committee for further debate.
It is unfortunate that so few legislators are speaking out while Pakistani democracy is being frogmarched into the shambles by their own hands. A law which empowers the state to consider anyone an ‘enemy’ — even if they have unintentionally interacted with any person or entity deemed to be working against the country — not only runs counter to the established principles of justice, it is dangerous in the hands of a state that routinely brands its own citizens, including elected prime ministers, ‘traitors’.
Likewise, any law that gives intelligence agencies carte blanche to “enter and search any person or place, without a warrant, and if necessary, by use of force, and seize any document, sketch, or like nature, or anything which is or can be evidence” on the basis of mere suspicion is excessive and will only serve to create a climate of perpetual fear.
The same bill also pushes for all materials collected by intelligence agencies during their investigations to be considered admissible as evidence, even when they may not have been collected by legal means. This would include secretly taped conversations or video recordings done without a warrant from a court of law.
Do our lawmakers really want to give intelligence agencies complete impunity to conduct surveillance operations against anyone, which would include themselves, and conveniently justify their intrusive activities later by calling them part of an ongoing investigation?
Even in the worst period of oppression in Pakistan’s history, such a brazen attempt to jettison civil liberties would have prompted an outcry from the thinking segments of society. When the implications are this serious, it is critical that this law is debated further — not just in parliament, but by civil society too. The Senate, meanwhile, must do its duty.
SHORTCUTS TO NOWHERE
https://www.dawn.com/news/1768170
SEEKING ways to get around the crucial reform agenda the country has to implement, in order
to escape its regular cycles of boom and bust, is as old a reflex as the reform agenda itself. For more than three decades it has been known that the country needs to expand its tax base, its export base and raise productivity to become competitive in products beyond simply textiles. It has been known that the power sector is riddled with inefficiencies and leakages that can only be rectified if it undergoes deep-rooted reform of its governance and pricing structures. On all these issues — tax reform, state-owned enterprise (SOEs) reform (or outright privatisation) and power sector reform — the roadmaps are old, the emphasis is old, the priorities have been laid out as far back as the early 1990s.
But little has actually been done on any of these fronts. Instead successive governments since then have preferred to search for shortcuts that enable a short term period of growth that are inevitably followed by a crash so severe the country lands up on the doorstep of the IMF, with reserves depleted, the fiscal equation in blowout, inflation skyrocketing. The same adjustment follows every time: devaluation of the currency, hike in interest rates, a rain of taxes, sharp contraction in expenditure and sharp hike in inflation.
Each boom over the decades has been engineered using the same methods. There is runaway printing of money at home, and runaway borrowing of dollars from abroad. With the economy flush with liquidity, what follows is a consumption binge that leads to a blowout in imports while exports lag. This consumption binge is presented by the rulers of the day as their signature achievement. Every government since at least 1998 has come into power saying ‘we inherited a broken economy’. Every government since then (with the exception of the PPP in 2008) has left power arguing ‘while we were ruling the economy grew, but when our rule was replaced by somebody else’s, the economy suffered’.
Each episode sees the country’s ruling elites go around the world searching for ways to finance its dysfunctions rather than do the work necessary to actually address them at home. This is the reflex that has driven up Pakistan’s debt levels to the point where they are now described as “highly risky” by the IMF, the one body all creditors look towards to assess the creditworthiness of the sovereign.
What ails the country is the inability of its system to generate the liquidity required to operate a modern economy.
This search for shortcuts takes various forms. The Musharraf regime partook heavily of 9/11-related inflows that came into the country in the middles of the 2000s. The PML-N government of 2013 found inflows from bilateral sources like China or the Gulf countries. The PTI government found a bonanza following Covid when debt-service obligations could be suspended, the Fund programme temporarily suspended, and Covid-related facilities made available in ample supply, along with bilateral borrowing from China and the Gulf monarchies.
Now one more time this story is gearing up for another cycle. A framework is being put in place to bring in more dollar inflows, that may not be borrowed, but nonetheless create liabilities that the country may or may not be able to afford in the longer run. Something akin to how CPEC-related inflows created assets that in the short run appeared like an impressive achievement, but in the longer run turned out to be too expensive for an aging, leaky and highly inefficient power sector to be able to afford.
The framework today consists of a number of things. First is a law passed in the summer of 2022 called the Intergovernmental Commercial Transactions Act of 2022 (ICTA). Second is the creation of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC). And the third, probably the least likely to actually take off, is the creation of a sovereign wealth fund, to be capitalised by resources from existing SOEs, reportedly to the tune of Rs2.3 trillion.
The framework focuses on providing assets against dollars in government-to-government transactions. Its first test case was the transfer of operations of the Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT) to the Abu Dhabi Ports Group. Some people have tried to paint this transaction in a sinister light, thinking that somehow all of Karachi port has been given to Abu Dhabi. Nothing of the sort has happened. Only the rights to operate one terminal, consisting of a few berths, have been leased to AD Ports Group once the lease of the existing operator, also a foreign company, expired.
But as a test case of the new framework, the PICT deal is crucial. Having shown that the ICTA works, that it can create sufficient confidence on the part of a foreign SOE to acquire operating assets in Pakistan, it can now be built upon. That’s where the SIFC comes in.
The SIFC can now streamline the negotiation process, close deals under the ICTA, and use resources from the Sovereign Wealth Fund should any equity participation be required from Pakistan’s side, to close deals in mining and agriculture as well.
None of this is wrong or objectionable on the face of it. What would be wrong and objectionable is if this framework comes to be seen as a panacea for reform, which is very likely to happen. What ails Pakistan is not just an inability to accumulate foreign exchange reserves. That is a symptom of the problem. What ails the country is the inability of its system to generate the liquidity required to operate a modern economy — the limited tax and export base, and the leakages in the power system and the burden of the SOEs, to name some of the top problems. If these remain as they are and we see massive dollar inflows coming into the country against deals concluded under this new framework, we can rest assured that an old story is repeating itself, and its ending will be no different. It will be nothing but another shortcut to nowhere.
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 07-30-2023
ATTEMPT TO MILITARILY GRAB PAKISTAN OCCUPIED KASHMIR WILL BOOMERANG
LT.GEN KIDWAI HAS ISSUED ENOUGH OF A WARNING
EASA ALERT AIRLINES
BJP WILL GO TO ANY EXTENT BEFORE 2024
US URGES PAKISTAN AND INDIA TO ENGAGE IN TALKS
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-03-2023
INDIA's ECONOMIC GROWTH vs PAKISTAN's ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION
WHOSE EYES ON PAKISTAN's MINERAL TREASURES
ANTICIPATING PAKISTAN's OUTLOOK IN THE COMING MONTHS
Brig ® MIAN MAHMOUD ON PAKISTAN's PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE !
ALLAH, ARMY AND AMERICA
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-05-2023
LEAVING ASIDE EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CONVICTION, ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF IMRAN KHAN. IT IS IRONIC THAT A FORMER PRIME MINISTER HAS BEEN UNCEREMONIOUSLY THROWN INTO ATTOCK JAIL BUILT DURING BRITISH COLONIAL RULE. NO SPECIAL TREATMENT AT ALL AND THROWN AMONGST MURDERERS AND VIOLENT CRIMINALS. THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT A COUNTRY'S HERO NOR BUILD SOCIAL COHESION.
SO MANY QUESTIONS ARE RAISED HERE ABOUT HOW PAKISTAN FUNCTIONS OR MALFUNCTIONS. ALSO SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RULE OF LAW WHICH HAS DESCENDED INTO DE FACTO MARTIAL LAW AND RULE BY FEAR AND COERCION.
HOW LONG CAN A NATION OF 240 MILLIONS GO ON LIKE THIS? IS PAKISTAN AWAITING FOR SOME TIME FUSE TO EXPLODE WHICH DIVIDES THE ARMY LEADING TO CIVIL WAR AND DISINTEGRATION. OR WILL PEOPLE POWER COME ONTO THE STREETS LIKE A VOLCANIC EXPLOSION OF LAVA SEEKING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND LEGITIMATE GOVERNANCE?
REGARDLESS THOSE WHO HAVE OCCUPIED PAKISTAN'S GOVERNANCE NEED TO REALISE THAT THE SACRIFICE OF MILLIONS TO ESTABLISH PAKISTAN MUST NOT GO IN VAIN. PAKISTANIS MUST RECLAIM THEIR COUNTRY AND THEIR FUTURE. IF NECESSARY THEY NEED TO PREPARE FOR A NEW PAKISTAN MOVEMENT TO ESTABLISH AN ISLAMIC REPUBLIC WHERE RULE OF LAW IS SUPREME AND ISLAM IS ESTABLISHED IN ALL DOMAINS.
IS THIS THE END OF IMRAN KHAN'S POLITICAL CAREER?
IMRAN ARRESTED . WHAT's NEXT FOR KHAN AND PAKISTAN
IMRAN KHAN PRISONER: WILL IHC RELEASE KHAN ON 9 AUG? ECP DISQUALIFIES KHAN FOR 5 YEARS
CIPHERGATE!
Pakistan's Defenders become Traitors! Bajwa, Asim & PDM leaders to be hanged!!
HOW CAN THE PAKISTAN ARMY BECOME NATIONALIST/
PATRIOTIC AND ALIGN TO WHAT PAKISTANIS DESIRE?
HOW PAKISTANIS CAN UPROOT MILITARY CONTROL SHORT OF OPEN DEFIANCE AND VIOLENCE!
PAKISTANIS ARE EXPLOITED DUE TO LACK OF DEFIANCE. HERE's HOW TO DEFY AND BRING DOWN THE SYSTEM
IF PAKISTANIS DON'T COME OUT AND FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, PAKISTAN HAS NO FUTURE !
I'M CONVINCED PAKISTANIS WILL RISE AND BREAK SHACKLES OF SLAVERY! OUR FUTURE IS VERY BRIGHT !
IMRAN'S LIFE IN DANGER. PAKISTANIS MUST COME OUT TO FIGHT FOR PAKISTAN'S FREEDOM
IMRAN KHAN IN DEATH CELL AND MURDERERS, CRIMINALS, CROOKS, THUGS RUN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
INSIDE ATTOCK JAIL: AN INSIGHT INTO LIFE BEHIND BARS
IMRAN'S ARREST FALLOUT- ASIM's PLANS TO STAY ON FOR 9 YEARS. WILL ELECTIONS TAKE PLACE?
ASIM MUNIR's POISON AGAINST IMRAN, PAKISTANIS AND OVERSEAS PAKISTANIS
MENTAL TORTURE TO BREAK HIS WILL? WHAT DO THEY WANT?
WILL COURTS INTERVENE?
IMRAN KHAN: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE AGAINST ARMY OF CROOKS, CRIMINALS AND FRAUDS
THE PARLIAMENT THAT MURDERED DEMOCRACY
https://www.dawn.com/news/1769090/the-parliament-that-murdered-democracy
There can be no doubt about the fact that parliamentary democracy in Pakistan will take years to recover from the devastation inflicted upon it in the last five years.
Over the last few years, Pakistan’s parliamentarians, individuals who have sworn to protect and uphold the Constitution, have betrayed both the letter and spirit of constitutional democracy in the country. This betrayal has come on the back of years of rhetoric about the rule of law, democracy, and constitutional norms. And the culminating act of betrayal has unfolded over the past few weeks, where Parliament, the very institution that politicians draw their strength from, has been made a mockery of.
But the betrayal of Parliament was simply not enough in the unfolding saga. Democracy, which was already on its deathbed, has also been murdered by these ruling elites, who colluded with undemocratic forces from within and outside to conduct this heinous act.
Hollowing out the foundation of democracy
The latest act of this tragedy began unfolding soon after the 15th National Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was sworn in on August 13, 2018. Imran Khan’s PTI had emerged as the largest party in Parliament after a contentious election. Political parties opposed to the PTI alleged that the election was rigged while the European Union said that there was a “lack of equality of opportunity” ahead of the elections and “systematic attempts to undermine the ruling party” had been made prior to election day.
This antagonism was on full display in the halls of Parliament as well, where opposition lawmakers were chanting slogans against the newly elected prime minister as he made his first speech as Leader of the House.This early confrontation began a slow and steady process through which Parliament became dysfunctional and was weakened.
As Leader of the House, Imran Khan attended parliamentary sessions only 11 per cent of the time. This was a decline from Nawaz Sharif, who as prime minister from 2013-17 attended Parliament only 14pc of the time, which in and of itself was a low bar.
When Parliament functioned, questions were raised about the manner in which it was conducting its business. For example, when it met to pass legislation focused on extending the army chief’s tenure, the government did not “allow debate on the bills in committee or on the parliamentary floor”.
This rushed vote came on the back of a rather rare show of consensus across the aisle, which itself raised questions about the way in which everyone in Parliament came together to “unconditionally and hastily” pass the law “without even a perfunctory debate, let alone dissent”. The only thing that could bring politicians together, it seemed, was not a desire to improve the lives of ordinary citizens but to provide legal cover for an extension in the army chief’s tenure.
Then came the SBP Amendment Bill, which granted increased autonomy to Pakistan’s central bank. When this legislation was first debated in the public discourse, this author supported efforts to provide increased autonomy to the central bank.
But once again, Parliament failed to do its duty by not having an open, transparent debate on why this was a necessary reform. Instead, the entire process was short-circuited and the legislation was passed in a rushed vote, which only undermined those who wanted the legislature to debate, own, and then push through such laws.
The vote to pass this legislation was “not included in the agenda” on the eve of the vote, and was only “added to the agenda in the morning”. Senator Sherry Rehman’s tweets about the agenda showed that all was not well in the Senate, but this did not slow down anyone. In fact, the legislation was not even discussed in the Senate’s Finance Committee prior to its passage. The voting pattern showed that the opposition had colluded with the ruling party in this rushed vote as over a dozen senators “were absent, majority of them belonging to the opposition”.
The rushed votes also showcased the inability of Imran’s government to muster together votes on contentious issues. With parliament dysfunctional, the PTI government began to rely on ordinances to get its agenda through, pushing a total of 74 ordinances in the first four years of the 15th National Assembly — according to the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development
and Transparency (PILDAT), the PTI government pushed “54pc more ordinances than the PML-N government”.
This included contentious ordinances such as the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Ordinance, 2022, which was later struck down by the Islamabad High Court. In its order, the court said that the “criminalisation of defamation, protection of individual reputations through arrest and imprisonment and the resultant chilling effect violates the letter of the Constitution”.
The final act of undermining Parliament was the way in which individuals within the institution were targeted. An example is the way in which the Speaker of the House conducted himself with regards to the rights of his own colleagues — his refusal to issue production orders to bring elected members of Parliament like Ali Wazir to attend ongoing sessions provided the evidence to undemocratic forces that Parliament was not even willing to stand by its own, even when the law permitted them to do so.
Another, perhaps a more blatant example, revolves around how an attempt was made to spy on senators gearing up to vote in the upper House of Parliament. Senator Musadiq Malik and Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar “allegedly discovered spy cameras installed near and inside
the polling booth” that had been setup for the Senate chairman elections in March 2021. While there was a brief uproar related to this development — and other allegations were made about how parliamentarians were being coerced and intimidated to vote a certain way — not much was done.
Several months later, the spying attempts would take on an even more sinister approach, leaving Shehbaz Sharif — who by now occupied the Prime Minister House — red-faced after purported audio recordings of his conversations were leaked on social media. This time too, there was no real attempt to investigate who was behind the leaks while those who carried out these violations against the sanctity of Parliament remain unpunished.
It was only after he was removed from office that Imran Khan informed the public about what was actually going on in Parliament, saying that his party “could only keep our majority intact
by telling the army, the ISI, look, you must make sure that they come, my members appear for voting” in Parliament.
Murder in broad daylight
But democracy was not murdered on Imran’s watch. The tragic irony here is that the murder of democracy occurred under the leadership of the PML-N and the PPP — the two leading parties that had given birth to the ‘charter of democracy’ many years ago.
The scheming began soon after Imran was ousted and decided to have his lawmakers resign en masse from the National Assembly — a tragic mistake. With no opposition to speak of, the new ruling coalition led by the PML-N and PPP decided this was the perfect moment for them to run roughshod over parliamentary and democratic norms.
The process began with the amendment to election laws, where the government took away “the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs)”. In addition, the government amended NAB laws, which it argued was “used for suppressing the voice of opponent politicians”.
Without the largest political party in the country present in Parliament, the rapid passage of such amendments in the assembly raised some questions about democratic norms in the country. Rather than prepare the country for elections and ensure democratic continuity, the ruling coalition was more interested in bending the rules to favour its leadership and those aligned with its agenda.
Things reached a fever pitch towards the end of the Parliament’s tenure, with the government passing legislation at such speech that even the National Assembly’s website could not keep up. In a single sitting, Parliament passed passed 28 private member’s bills without a quorum, with the Speaker of the House Raja Pervez Ashraf permitting lawmakers to move motions for the passage of the bills, even when legislators moving these motions were not present in the parliament!
Amendments to the Army Act were made in a manner that sums up how Parliament has been made a mockery of: the legislation was passed during a rushed vote in the Senate, and there is no accurate count of how many senators voted for the legislation. PTI senators also helped pass the legislation, and while the PTI has announced a probe, nothing has come out of that investigation to date. Following its approval in the Senate, the legislation was subsequently passed in the largely empty lower House of Parliament.
[/url]
The push to pass the Official Secrets (Amendment) Bill, 2023 led to some backlash, forcing the government to [url=https://www.arabnews.com/node/2348511/pakistan]backtrack in the Senate after it was “tabled in the lower House of Parliament”, where it was “approved despite protests from the opposition benches”.
But these protests have been too few and far in between and the government has managed to railroad over 100 pieces of legislation in the last few weeks of its tenure. These included everything from amendments to the Army Act and the blasphemy law, legislation focused on DHA Islamabad, and almost two dozen private university bills.
Encouraging lawmakers to pass a bill that would set up a new authority to counter money laundering and terror financing, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that the legislation “should be cleared on Sunday because it will cause us harm internationally by delaying it”. Someone in the Senate should have asked the finance minister what exactly this harm would be, given that his government had failed to pass the legislation despite being in power for over a year.
A dark legacy awaits this Parliament
When historians fully document all that has happened to Pakistan’s democracy in the last few years, they will most definitely focus on the role of the military establishment, the conditions that led to Imran’s victory and subsequent ouster, and the failures of the superior judiciary.
But in order to fully document the tragic demise of Pakistan’s flawed and floundering democracy, historians will also have to focus on the role of parliamentarians in bringing irreparable harm to itself and by extension, democracy. Pakistan’s history is riddled with undemocratic forces trying their level best to undermine democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law. But perhaps never before in its short and bleak history has the country’s Parliament capitulated in a way that we have seen in the last few months.
With elections all but delayed, the outgoing 15th National Assembly of Pakistan will be remembered as being responsible for voluntarily opening the door for unconstitutional rule in Pakistan. While some may argue that a bit of a delay is not that bad, given Pakistan’s history of overt military rule, these individuals are mistaken about where things are headed in Pakistan.
Undemocratic forces have developed a new playbook since the democratic transition began in 2008, first finding ways to weaken democratic governments through superior courts, and subsequently relying on growing antagonism within Parliament. This approach has allowed for
a dramatic expansion of the power wielded by the establishment, while at the same time restricting the powers of other constitutional authorities such as the apex court, which found itself powerless to force timely provincial elections despite its orders.
The real focus, however, must be on the role of the PDM coalition. Blinded by its hatred of Imran Khan, the ruling coalition has voluntarily destroyed the little power Parliament had. It has played an active role in disenfranchising the people of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and paved the way for a delay in elections beyond the constitutional limit.
That the party which claims to have given the Constitution to Pakistan has paired with the party that until recently talked about vote ko izzat do to undermine constitutional democratic rule in Pakistan can never be forgotten. In their twilight years, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari have both destroyed their legacy and their parties’ reputation, perhaps beyond repair.
There can be no doubt about the fact that parliamentary democracy in Pakistan will take years to recover from the devastation inflicted upon it in the last five years. The impact of these developments will be all the more significant given the economic crisis at hand. Requiring major reforms, Pakistan needed a Parliament that could engage with the broader public on the hows and whys of reforms. Instead, those that derive strength from this institution have themselves decimated its role and stature.
What awaits the country remains to be seen, but perhaps the only salvation for members of the ruling coalition would come from a final decapitation of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan, following which perhaps the next generation of political leaders can regain some of the honour lost.
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-11-2023
AS AUGUST 14 APPROACHES TO CELEBRATE THE 76TH ANNIVERSARY OF PAKISTANI INDEPENDENCE. IT IS TIME TO REFLECT ON THOSE WHO CLAIM THAT PAKISTAN NEVER ACHIEVED FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE FROM DAY ONE.
THIS WILL BE REVIEWED URGENTLY.
Brig ® MIAN MAHMOUD ON PAKISTAN's PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE !
AUGUST ELECTIONS ARE NOT THE ANSWER. REVOLUTION IS NEEDED TO DESTROY THIS CORRUPT ARMY LED SYSTEM !
ON HOW PAKISTANIS CAN UPROOT MILITARY CONTROL SHORT OF DEFIANCE AND VIOLENCE!
WAR TO UPROOT PAKISTAN's SYSTEM IS TO BE FOUGHT IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES !
CORRUPT SYSTEM IS STRONG, ORGANISED, TRAINED TO KILL. YOU ARE NOT! HOW TO DESTROY IT ?
EXPERTISE AND ORGANISATION IS CRITICAL TO OVERTHROW
A TERRIBLE SYSTEM
WARNING OF AHL E NAZAR : 4 MONTHS LEFT
NEW GOVERNANCE PARADIGM
https://www.dawn.com/news/1769662
THE scion of a political dynasty finally spoke his heart out. During his last address in the National Assembly on the eve of its dissolution, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari “indirectly expressed displeasure over the policies of his elders”, asking heads of the two mainstream dynastic political parties to “make decisions in a way that makes politics easier, and not difficult” for the next generation of ‘heirs apparent’ currently active in potential leadership roles.
“It seems that our elders have decided that whatever they suffered in their 30-year-long political career, they want us to suffer in the same way over the next 30 years.”
This is a bold and bitter recognition of the ugly political landscape since the 1990s that both the PPP and PML-N had to face due to the machinations of the security establishment and the deep state.
Bilawal Bhutto stressed the need for dialogue among all political parties and state institutions either to devise a new charter of democracy or adhere to the one signed in London in May 2006, between his late mother Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
“We need to settle on the rules of the game and decide which code of conduct we are to follow, the premise of which should not only be limited to interactions among political parties but also with institutions,” he added.
He also urged state institutions to function within their domain. He candidly admitted that the PDM coalition government “somehow failed” to keep “institutions within their domain during their 16-month stint” as rulers.
“History will be the judge of whether we were successful in our efforts or not,” he said, concluding in view of the approaching elections that “all political parties [should] consider how they can resolve this issue”. He asked “whether these parties would continue to tackle the same issues as in the past”.
It was Bilawal Bhutto’s nascent five-year tenure as a member of the National Assembly and baptism as minister that provided him with the opportunities, which he availed, to harness his potential in a future political leadership role.
During the final year and a half, his experience as foreign minister certainly groomed him in the art of diplomacy and politics. He is articulate, can stand his ground, and possesses a pleasant and smiling disposition, all of which are signs of evolving maturity.
His farewell remarks on the need to bring on board all political parties, even those outside the Assembly, on the back of a charter of democracy clearly indicate that his generation of politicians can be amenable to a broader understanding to changing ‘the rules of the game’ of the politics played thus far in our nation’s chequered history.
Stakeholders must come up with new charters of economy, democracy and governance.
This writer has consistently pleaded for all key stakeholders to rise above their narrow self-interest and come up with new charters of economy, democracy and governance in sync with our national interests. A hybrid regime cobbled together by the string pullers in 2018 lasted for about three and a half years.
The ‘same-page’ mantra stood exposed in the clash of interests. But the replacement was a hybrid-plus coalition of political parties that became willing partners to not only dislodge the
new political kid on the block but also to dismantle the party whose leader had the ‘temerity’ to challenge the military establishment and the deep state.
This is the crossroads at which we stand today: continuing as a praetorian state of “partial law”, or letting sanity prevail so that we change course and tread the path of democracy in letter and spirit by holding free and fair elections within the time frame prescribed by the Constitution.
Accordingly, all eyes are on the caretaker setup which, unlike the ones put together in Punjab and KP, could be capable and determined enough to take the bull by the horns and embark upon a new governance paradigm by setting examples of decisions based on merit and fair play, and by upholding the rule of law.
A template for good governance is needed soon. The federal caretaker cabinet may comprise a maximum of 25 ministers and advisers known for their integrity, experience and impartiality.
This apex body of the government should take all the decisions that have political and administrative ramifications.
The national focus should be on coming up with interrelated charters of economy, democracy and governance after deliberations among the key stakeholders, including political parties, the military command, intelligence agencies, civil services, law-enforcement departments, criminal justice institutions and civil society.
An economic advisory council comprising economics and finance professionals, practitioners and experts can put together a charter of economy that aims to take the country out of the debt trap, create investment opportunities, and address the core issues of socioeconomic disparities and elite capture.
An internal security advisory council can assist the cabinet in the effective maintenance of law and order as well as in implementing the CT National Action Plan.
The Election Commission of Pakistan, assisted by the stakeholders concerned, must work to develop a consensus-based code of conduct before holding the elections. All political parties should be taken on board on issues related to funding, internal party elections, and transparency in public declarations before the conduct of national polls.
The caretaker cabinet and ECP must ensure that key administrative posts are assigned on merit and meet the criteria of integrity and impartiality. In this connection, the posting of federal secretaries, chief secretaries and inspectors-general of police in the provinces, and other heads of the law-enforcement agencies must be made after due diligence.
Finally, all eyes will be on the army chief to see how he steers his institution and the intelligence agencies away from perceived political engineering and towards the primary task of ensuring security against the existential threats posed by militants and terrorists.
The military is a national institution. We the people own the armed forces, not the other way round. A relationship of trust rather than fear will strengthen the bond.
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-13-2023
ALLAH ARMY AND AMERICA COMES ROUND AGAIN WITH THE PAKISTAN CIPHER GATE CONSPIRACY. LEAVING ASIDE DETAILS IT IS CLEAR THAT PAX AMERICANA ISSUES DICTATS TO ENFORCE IT'S WORLD ORDER OR IS IT DISORDER. IN THIS CASE IT WAS TO INSTRUCT THE IMRAN KHAN PTI GOVERNMENT OF WASHINGTON's DISPLEASURE AND ANGER ON PAKISTAN' S NEUTRALITY IN THE UKRAINE RUSSIA WAR.
THE HISTORY OF USA INTERFERENCE IN PAKISTAN IS HISTORIC AND DEEP ROOTED. IT EMPHASISES THE POINT THAT PAKISTAN IS NOT A FREE AND SOVEREIGN COUNTRY LIKE THE REST OF THE MUSLIM WORLD. IF THIS IS THE REALITY THE MUSLIM WORLD NEEDS TO TAKE STOCK OF IT'S PLIGHT AND START THE NEGLECTED STRATEGIC TASK OF RE-ORIENTATION, RE- EVALUATION AND REVOLUTION .
KEY STAKEHOLDERS IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES ARE DEEPLY COMPROMISED AND NEED REFORMATION. BUT THIS NEEDS THE EMERGENCE OF NEW PATRIOTIC AND MUTAQQI FORCES TO MANIFEST. A NEW GENERATION HAS TO RISE TO DEAL DECISIVELY WITH THESE CHALLENGES AND NOT JUST HARK BACK TO THE QUAID OR WHOEVER. INDEED THE QUAID'S ERRORS NEED TO BE HIGHLIGHTED.
FOR INSTANCE AT THE DAWN OF PAKISTAN'S CREATION HE REINFORCED THE IDEA THAT THE COUNTRY WAS FREE IN 1947. AS GOVERNOR GENERAL OF PAKISTAN HE HAD TO TAKE AN OATH TO THE CROWN (BRITISH MONARCHY). THAT TITLE SHOULD HAVE BEEN REJECTED AND ONLY AN OATH ON THE QURAN SHOULD HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN. BUT IT WAS NOT AND THE REST IS HISTORY AS THEY SAY.
FURTHERMORE JINNAH SHOULD NEVER HAVE CONSENTED TO A BRITISH GENERAL FRANK MESSERVY BECOMING THE FIRST COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE PAKISTAN ARMY ON 15 AUGUST 1947. THIS WAS A FATAL MISTAKE AS HIS COMMAND TO THE PAKISTAN ARMY TO INVADE KASHMIR WAS REJECTED.
THIS PROCESS HAS TO BE UNDERTAKEN NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES. FREEDOM, SOVEREIGNTY, DIGNITY AND ALLAH's RULE IS NOT DELIVERED ON A PLATE. MUSLIMS REALLY NEED TO GO BACK TO BASICS AND UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THE SHAHADAH COMPLETELY AND HOLISTICALLY. THE FIRST STEP FOR MUSLIM SOCIETIES IS TO DISABUSE THEMSELVES OF THE DELUSION THAT THEY ARE INDEPENDENT ENTITIES. ONE CAN ARGUE THEY ARE ACTUALLY SUBSERVIENT, SLAVE NATIONS CHAINED TO A DAJALLIC DESTRUCTIVE NWO.
THIS CAN ONLY END AND LIBERATION AKA AZADI, ISTIKLAL, HURRIYET AND MERDEKA ACHEIVED BY THE SMASHING OF THE MENTAL, SPIRITUAL, IDEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND MILITARY SHACKLES. NOTHING AND NOTHING ELSE WILL DO. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE JOB SPEC GIVE US A CALL NOW. BRING IT ON THE DOUBLE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN AND WRITE YOUR PAGE IN HISTORY OR GO DOWN IN SHAME AS WIMPS.
EXCLUSIVE - INSIDE THE INTERCEPT's CIPHER STORY
SECRET CABLE SHOWS BIDEN STATE DEPT PRESSURED PAKISTAN TO REMOVE KHAN FOR CHALLENGING NATO
CIPHER LEAK:
HISTORY OF AMERICAN INTERVENTION IN
THE AFFAIRS OF PAKISTAN
CIPHERGATE!
Pakistan's Defenders become Traitors! Bajwa, Asim & PDM leaders to be hanged!!
CIPHER SAGA
https://www.dawn.com/news/1769658/cipher-saga
THE enigmatic cipher is back in the spotlight. The purported text of the internal diplomatic cable sent by our then ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed Khan, after a meeting with State Department official Donald Lu last year has recently been published by the American outlet The Intercept, reigniting debate around the cipher’s contents.
While the text of the cable — the veracity of which has not been denied either by the US or Pakistani authorities — does not strengthen the PTI’s narrative that a grand conspiracy was hatched to dislodge it from power, it does speak of the massive power imbalance between Washington and Islamabad, with the former using a tone more suited to an imperial overlord threatening his vassals.
Mr Lu was apparently unhappy over the PTI administration’s “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine conflict, while telling Mr Majeed that if a no-confidence vote against Imran Khan succeeded, “all will be forgiven”, or else things “will be tough going ahead”.
One diplomatic exchange does not constitute a regime change conspiracy, and the PTI itself has changed positions on the issue numerous times. It is also true that as prime minister, Imran Khan milked the affair to boost his domestic standing. Yet there is much in this reported document that reflects American arrogance and unwarranted meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs. The most problematic aspect of the cipher is the tone the American official reportedly adopted while addressing the ambassador of a sovereign state.
While Mr Majeed did attempt to question the American perspective, and at one point the diplomat pointed out that US support for issues close to Pakistan, such as Kashmir, was insufficient, a much stronger protest should have been lodged to indicate that this country did not appreciate such sermons on its internal affairs.
Unfortunately, American meddling in Pakistan’s internal matters is nothing new, and commenced soon after independence, with this country hopping onto the West’s Cold War bandwagon. From thereon, Washington has exercised an oversized influence in Islamabad, offering ‘advice’ to both dictators and democrats.From putting in their two cents about suitable candidates for Pakistan’s top offices, to working with military strongmen such as Zia and Musharraf to achieve their geostrategic aims in Afghanistan, the Americans have for long weighed in on decisions that should have solely been the prerogative of Pakistan’s people.
Yet, the fact is that we have ourselves bargained away our sovereignty due to our political instability, lack of democratic continuity, and financial profligacy. When we frequently petition Western capitals for bailouts, we can expect more of the same condescending tone purportedly found in the cable. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons to be drawn from the cipher drama is that to command respect globally, we must put our own affairs in order.
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-14-2023
ALLAH ARMY AND AMERICA COMES ROUND AGAIN WITH THE PAKISTAN CIPHER GATE CONSPIRACY. LEAVING ASIDE DETAILS IT IS CLEAR THAT PAX AMERICANA ISSUES DICTATS TO ENFORCE IT'S WORLD ORDER OR IS IT DISORDER. IN THIS CASE IT WAS TO INSTRUCT THE IMRAN KHAN PTI GOVERNMENT OF WASHINGTON's DISPLEASURE AND ANGER ON PAKISTAN' S NEUTRALITY IN THE UKRAINE RUSSIA WAR.
THE HISTORY OF USA INTERFERENCE IN PAKISTAN IS HISTORIC AND DEEP ROOTED. IT EMPHASISES THE POINT THAT PAKISTAN IS NOT A FREE AND SOVEREIGN COUNTRY LIKE THE REST OF THE MUSLIM WORLD. IF THIS IS THE REALITY THE MUSLIM WORLD NEEDS TO TAKE STOCK OF IT'S PLIGHT AND START THE NEGLECTED STRATEGIC TASK OF RE-ORIENTATION, RE- EVALUATION AND REVOLUTION .
KEY STAKEHOLDERS IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES ARE DEEPLY COMPROMISED AND NEED REFORMATION. BUT THIS NEEDS THE EMERGENCE OF NEW PATRIOTIC AND MUTAQQI FORCES TO MANIFEST. A NEW GENERATION HAS TO RISE TO DEAL DECISIVELY WITH THESE CHALLENGES AND NOT JUST HARK BACK TO THE QUAID OR WHOEVER. INDEED THE QUAID'S ERRORS NEED TO BE HIGHLIGHTED.
FOR INSTANCE AT THE DAWN OF PAKISTAN'S CREATION HE REINFORCED THE IDEA THAT THE COUNTRY WAS FREE IN 1947. AS GOVERNOR GENERAL OF PAKISTAN HE HAD TO TAKE AN OATH TO THE CROWN (BRITISH MONARCHY). THAT TITLE SHOULD HAVE BEEN REJECTED AND ONLY AN OATH ON THE QURAN SHOULD HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN. BUT IT WAS NOT AND THE REST IS HISTORY AS THEY SAY.
FURTHERMORE JINNAH SHOULD NEVER HAVE CONSENTED TO A BRITISH GENERAL FRANK MESSERVY BECOMING THE FIRST COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE PAKISTAN ARMY ON 15 AUGUST 1947. THIS WAS A FATAL MISTAKE AS HIS COMMAND TO THE PAKISTAN ARMY TO INVADE KASHMIR WAS REJECTED.
THIS PROCESS HAS TO BE UNDERTAKEN NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES. FREEDOM, SOVEREIGNTY, DIGNITY AND ALLAH's RULE IS NOT DELIVERED ON A PLATE. MUSLIMS REALLY NEED TO GO BACK TO BASICS AND UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THE SHAHADAH COMPLETELY AND HOLISTICALLY. THE FIRST STEP FOR MUSLIM SOCIETIES IS TO DISABUSE THEMSELVES OF THE DELUSION THAT THEY ARE INDEPENDENT ENTITIES. ONE CAN ARGUE THEY ARE ACTUALLY SUBSERVIENT, SLAVE NATIONS CHAINED TO A DAJALLIC DESTRUCTIVE NWO.
THIS CAN ONLY END AND LIBERATION AKA AZADI, ISTIKLAL, HURRIYET AND MERDEKA ACHEIVED BY THE SMASHING OF THE MENTAL, SPIRITUAL, IDEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND MILITARY SHACKLES. NOTHING AND NOTHING ELSE WILL DO. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE JOB SPEC GIVE US A CALL NOW. BRING IT ON THE DOUBLE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN AND WRITE YOUR PAGE IN HISTORY OR GO DOWN IN SHAME AS WIMPS.
WHAT IS INDEPENDENCE ? INDIA, PAKISTAN & ISRAEL:
76 YEARS AFTER BRITISH EMPIRE?
PAKISTAN GARRISON STATE :
ORIGIN, EVOLUTION AND IMPLICATIONS
76 YEARS OF (IN)DEPENDENCE
PAK's NEW CARETAKER PM + ARMY's NEXT MOVES
CARETAKERS ARE LIKE UNDERTAKERS TO BURY PAKISTAN !
Imran's cases?
ONLY ARTICLE 6, CONSTITUTION, MASS PROTESTS CAN STOP ARMY AND ARMY CHIEF FROM ABUSING POWER !
BREAKING FROM THE PAST
Maleeha Lodhi
https://www.dawn.com/news/1769964/breaking-from-the-past
PAKISTAN celebrates the 76th anniversary of its independence today in an environment of political uncertainty and economic fragility. It confronts multiple, interconnected challenges which have, over the decades, been feeding off and reinforcing each other in an unbroken cycle.
They include the structural crisis of the economy, erosion in the state’s institutional capacity, persisting education deficit, uncontrolled population growth, and climate change. Security challenges also persist with an unstable Afghanistan on the western frontier and a hostile India on the country’s eastern flank.
This is a moment for introspection as well as thinking about the future. Pakistan’s history shows that successive governments have spent a good deal of time fire-fighting in crisis management mode. The country has been so mired in one crisis after another that long-term planning has been elusive. So has thinking about durable ways to address the country’s challenges and ensure a brighter future for people.
True that Pakistan has weathered many storms and crises in the past. Its resilience has never been in doubt. This enabled it to overcome its troubles of the time. But present-day systemic challenges are fundamentally different. They are the cumulative consequence of decades of misgovernance and squandered opportunities. These problems can no longer be kicked down the road. All need to be tackled simultaneously if Pakistan is to move forward and embark on a path of economic and political stability and prosperity for its people.
The choice today is stark. Either the country continues to be trapped in a quagmire of weak governance, politics-as-usual, economic stagnation, and eroding public faith in state institutions, or it can take advantage of the social and economic changes underway to chart a new course. The choice is between a dysfunctional governance system and one that works and responds to the needs and aspirations of all citizens, not just a narrow power elite.
Can the old mould of politics be broken by socioeconomic changes underway?
A key impediment in breaking from the past is that representational and electoral politics have remained frozen in an old mode and increasingly lagged behind the social and economic changes that have been altering the country’s political landscape.
The economic centre of gravity has been shifting to urban centres from the countryside, but politics — and most political parties — have yet to catch up with all its implications. Several developments in recent decades offer opportunities to realign politics and governance to public purpose and not remain hostage to the interests of an elite whose preoccupation is with ‘rulership’ rather than public service.
This does not mean entrenched structures of politics can be transformed overnight or that long-persisting fault lines will easily fade away. But prospects for a departure from politics-as-usual are better today. This is due to a number of trends or factors.
The first is the emergence of a larger middle class in the context of increasing urbanisation. The 2023 census shows greater urbanisation, with almost 40 per cent of the population now living in urban areas — a significant increase from the last census in 2017.
The increase in the urban population has been evidenced in all provinces across the country. Although there is little agreement among Pakistani scholars about the size (and definition) of the middle class, there is no dispute that it has been growing in recent decades.
It is now an influential economic and social group that wants a bigger voice in national affairs. While not a homogenous group, it includes educated, professional groups as well as middle-income employees in state and business enterprises.
Members of the urban middle class in general are becoming more politically assertive in voicing their expectations and demands for better governance and a political system that is responsive to their needs and aspirations. Of course, to be an agent for change, they would have to act in an organised way.
The shift in the economic centre of power is also creating new political dynamics. An important indicator of this is the declining share of agriculture in national output. This has fallen to around 22pc at present. Urban Pakistan now accounts for much of GDP.
These economic realities are intersecting with technology-driven changes and the information revolution to disperse political power. This, in turn, has the potential to transform the old political power structure of clansand traditionally influential families, whose stranglehold on politics has obstructed reform.
The third trend is a more ‘connected’ society empowered by modern information and communication technology. Access to technology is making people better informed and more aware of their rights. Most people now have access to more than one information channel and are more engaged with political affairs.
The exponential expansion of the broadcast media has offered a potent platform to the public to raise issues and influence opinion. So has social media, especially for younger citizens. Although the print and broadcast media has been subject to official control and restrictions, it has still managed to hold governments to account, subject executive action to oversight and suggest policy courses for national problems.All this is gradually changing the relationship between state and citizen as well as how people evaluate governments and their performance.
The fourth trend is the growth of a more diverse and vibrant civil society. With space opening up for newer civil society organisations to emerge, these have come to reflect the interests and concerns of a more politically aware urban society and enabled members of the middle class to press their views and interests with greater vigour. This holds the possibility of changing the nature and content of political engagement.
Together, these factors can be a counterpoise to traditional ways of conducting politics. In fact, the confluence of greater urbanisation, a more ‘connected’ society empowered by modern communications, and emergence of a larger middle class all offer a transformational opportunity, opening space for the emergence of challenges to traditional, hereditary and personalised politics.
The question is whether the increasing mismatch or disconnect between socioeconomic changes and family or clan politics can unleash dynamics to break the old political and governance mould anchored in patronage and clientelist politics rather than public policy. But a different kind of leadership is needed to understand and leverage these changes to transform the way Pakistan governs itself.
WILL PAKISTAN's " NAZUK MOR" EVER END?
https://www.dawn.com/news/1769603/will-pakistans-nazuk-mor-ever-end
Till the ideological foundations of the establishment remain uncontested, Pakistan’s nazuk mor shall remain a perpetual roundabout.
April 14, 1919. The sun rose on an India gashed and mutilated by a horrific display of brutality, the likes of which she had seldom seen before. In Amritsar, more than 1,500 unarmed civilians — gathered at the Jalianwala Bagh to partake in the cultural festivities of Vaisakhi a day before — had met the unbridled wrath of the Raj.
The sheer callousness of the British military drew ire from even the most stone-hearted quarters. Even Churchill — for whom committing genocidal atrocities was like a regular Tuesday — was hesitant to lend his name to the bestiality that was the Amritsar Massacre.
A little north of seven months after the incident, General Reginald Dyer, the officer who commandeered the violence, was called in to testify before the Hunter Commission. The following is an extract from his harrowing account:
“I fired and continued to fire until the crowd dispersed, and I consider this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce if I was to justify my action. It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view not only on those present, but more especially, throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity.”
A century later, it is still interesting to contemplate the threat less than a couple thousand unarmed protesters presented to the all-mighty British Empire for Dyer to feel compelled into such extremities. Interesting still is that according to Dyer, the purpose of the violence went far beyond the corporeal elements of the gathering.
Legal historian Nasser Hussain expounds that the relationship between legal and extralegal violence used to frequently collapse in colonies in order to devise a permanent state of emergency. This peculiar situation would arise at the behest of an intrinsic sense of paranoia amongst elite echelons of the Raj, who feared that popular dissent could escalate into an open mutiny against the Crown as it did in 1857, leaving bare the fragility at the heart of colonial terror.
Reinforcing the political frameworks of the Raj was an elaborate substructure of historical and cultural violence, carefully manufactured and meted out over the course of a century. As anti-colonial sentiment peaked across the subcontinent, the foundational myths — upon which the Empire carried out its social and economic plunders — had begun to give way. And so when Dyer entered the gates of the Jallianwala Bagh that evening, he sought not only to defend the political authority of the Raj, but in his own words, the ‘moral’ and ideological writ of the Empire as well.
Generational fallacies
To dismiss the disgraced general’s anxieties as a one-off enterprise by a colonising regime desperate to sustain a dying empire is to miss the forest for the trees. In post-colonial Pakistan for instance, independence from British rule did little to uproot the colonial structures of governance. The new nation-state not only inherited the Empire’s railway systems and ornate stone buildings, but her paranoiac behaviours too.
The phenomenon of a khaki-laden General speaking directly into a television camera to utter the ominous words, “Mulk ek nazuk mor se guzar raha hai” (The nation is going through a difficult turn) is one that hits a little too close to home for every Pakistani. Once the nazuk mor is established, a state of emergency ensues in which the military is granted unimaginable concessions. From wide-scale operations across cities to military courts for civilians, from massive cuts in the annual budget to policing speech on social media — on Pakistan’s “nazuk mor”, the state can do no wrong. After all, desperate times often call for desperate measures.
As we stand in the aftermath of the May 9 protests, we can clearly trace the ideological dimensions of Dyer’s actions that evening play out in real time. At the time of writing, one of Pakistan’s largest political parties remains largely decapacitated. Scores of its supporters await trials in military courts — See: Can the military dispense justice — while much of its top leadership faces a myriad of court cases (which seem to mysteriously vanish after the accused announce their resignations from the party). Journalists and activists hounded by unidentified men are all but a common sight on one’s social media feed. The country seems to have back-pedalled into a time best described by Faiz Ahmed Faiz during his incarceration in Hyderabad in 1951:
My salutations to thy sacred streets, O beloved nation!
Wherein a peculiar tradition has emerged- that none shall walk with his head held high,
Lest one walks in devotion to thee, they must walk, eyes lowered, the body crouched in fear
Hardly two months prior, the situation was much different. The PTI chief’s onslaught against the military establishment was beginning to draw first blood. Formerly the face of the same-page mantra, Imran Khan’s firebrand of populist rhetoric, coupled with his domination of social media and strong political footprint in the establishment’s legacy stronghold, Punjab, had carved an obvious split in what was hitherto the country’s most organised institution.
Forced into uncomfortable press conferences and startling admissions, it seemed the establishment had no idea how to deal with the Imran threat, mumbling and stumbling into a defensive position they had not occupied perhaps since Benazir Bhutto’s massive election victory in 1988. Optimists among the lot saw the ex-prime minister’s offensive against the powers-that-be as some kind of groundbreaking exposé, maybe even the genesis of a possible revolution. It didn’t take long for the military to prove them wrong.
In December 2022, Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir, in an address at the Pakistan Naval Academy in Karachi, dusted off the age-old playbook:
“Pakistan is passing through one of her most critical junctures and this requires development of national consensus by all stakeholders to sail through the confronted challenges of economy and terrorism.”
Once the narrative of the ‘nazuk mor’ had been swung into play, the PTI’s political dominance was but a house of cards, just waiting to disintegrate. But the pertinent question still remains — how did the PTI’s narrative collapse so quickly and so remarkably? To attribute it simply to Imran’s political miscalculations (which, granted, were more than a few) is to operate within the same misapprehensions as the PTI chief himself — that the establishment’s influence in Pakistan is purely and absolutely political and hence, can be mitigated through political action alone. In Pakistan’s circular history, the PTI is hardly the first to pursue this line and fall, something the PPP of the 1980s, the MQM of the 1990s, and the PML-N of the early 2000s would wholeheartedly attest to. It would hardly surprise French Philosopher Louis Althusser who posited:
“No class can hold state power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the state’s ideological apparatuses”.
Not much unlike its European predecessor, Pakistan’s military establishment is also a fundamentally ideological enterprise, one that frequently calls upon the trope of a perpetual ‘nazuk mor’ to reassert its relevance in the country’s political landscape.
What the PTI chief did not anticipate was that to palliate the political role of the military without engaging with the ideological underpinnings that perpetuate such a role in the first place is a fundamental logical fallacy. It would be akin to treating a patient diagnosed with malaria by handing them a handkerchief for the night sweats.
The chronicles of two Pakistans
Even if we were to concede, however, that the deep-state is a fundamentally ideological apparatus, it hardly explains how success in the ideological realm translates into policy infrastructure in the material.
From the Doctrine of Necessity to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2020 — which criminalised ‘intentional ridiculing of the Armed Forces’ — an entire judicial and legislative infrastructure ensures the military’s hegemony in the country’s political arena. To understand this enigma, one must go back to the history of the decade preceding Pakistan.
The winter of 1937 had been a particularly frosty one for Jinnah. The All India Muslim League had suffered grave embarrassment in the provincial elections, unable to secure a seat in a single province. The Congress, meanwhile, won 711 out of 1,585 general seats, going on to form eight provincial ministries.
As it turned out, the Muslim League had grossly misjudged the subcontinent’s political terrain. In areas where Muslims were a minority, the party still retained a substantive constituency amongst the Muslim electorate. However, much to the dismay of Jinnah, in the Muslim-majority provinces of the West, the popular vote fell neither to the Congress nor to the Muslim League.
This was largely due to the fact that within Muslim-majority provinces, Jinnah’s rhetoric barely left a mark. His appraisal of Hindu tyranny fell on ears that could not have been more nonchalant, especially since the threat of Hindu domination would be laughed off as heresy in provinces where Muslims held majoritarian status. Jinnah’s charisma held more currency in Muslim-minority provinces, where the possibility of Hindu domination was thought to be much more concrete.
In Punjab, regional Muslim parties — such as the Unionist Party — which were largely dominated by feudal landlords and zamindars, raked in massive poll numbers. Thought to belong to the martial races, these landlords and zamindars were absolutely integral cogs in the Raj’s machine. They were of prime importance to the Raj when limited elections were held, as they would use their economic hegemony to win their constituencies, giving rise to the concept of electables — party-hopping constituency dealers — which continues to influence Pakistani politics to this day.
If Jinnah were to leverage support in the Muslim-majority provinces to secure greater concessions for Muslims in provinces where they were in minority, the support of these landlords was absolutely critical.
Therefore, post-1937, there was a massive shift in the political rhetoric of the Muslim League leadership. As the British and Russian empires locked horns in the Great Game, Jinnah realised there was gold in the streets. He turned his guns on the socialist quarters within the Congress, in a master stroke which effectively won him Pakistan. In an address to the Aligarh Muslim University in 1941, he warned:
“Another party which has become very active as of late is the Communist Party. Their propaganda is insidious and I warn you not to fall into their clutches. Their propaganda is a snare and a trap. What is it that you want? All this talk of socialism, communism, national-socialism and every other ‘ism’ is out of place.”
Writing himself up as an imperial anti-hero to Nehru’s socialist slants, Jinnah accused the socialist quarters within the Congress, somewhat counterfactually, of aiding the rise of Hitlerism.
“The Congress is struggling to achieve independence and to establish a communistic and socialist government … This has been constantly dinned into the ears of the youth. When you think you will be able to destroy the British Government, the zamindars, the capitalists with one stroke, refer to the conditions of Europe. In Germany, Hitlerism came into existence because of socialistic and communistic movements. So did Fascism in Italy.”
Jinnah’s newfound imperialist rhetoric was a political masterstroke, killing two birds with one stone. His propensity towards Western models of capitalism and his proclivity to join a prospective Commonwealth of Nations made him a favourable horse to bet on (as opposed to Nehru) for the British, who were looking to safeguard their own geopolitical interests in the event of a Soviet expansion into Asia. According to General Officer Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Command, Lieutenant-General Sir Franis Tuker:
“There was much therefore to be said for the introduction of a new Muslim power supported by the science of Britain. If such a power could be produced and if we could orient the Muslim strip from North Africa through Islamia Desertia, Persia, Afghanistan to the Himalayas, upon a Muslim power in Northern India, then it has some chance of halting the filtration of Russia towards the Persian Gulf.”
Ergo, Jinnah’s imperialist rhetoric effectively aligned the bifurcation of India with Britain’s geopolitical strategies in a post-colonial world order.
But it did much more than that. The Unionist Party, which was largely regional in its political footprint, saw Jinnah as a worthy political investment to shelter itself from a united India, wherein the Congress’ socialist tendencies would bereave its landowning members of their lands. Vying for economic survival, large groups of feudal lords threw their weight behind Jinnah’s movement for Pakistan, culminating in a massive election victory for the Muslim League in 1946.
In a conversation I had with historian Dr Akbar Zaidi, he attributed this change in rhetoric, not only to a political sleight of hand, but also to the Quaid’s ideological subscriptions: “Jinnah tended to look at Muslim interests from an economic point-of-view. His concerns lay with what he termed the ‘salariat’ (salaried) classes of the Muslims, who he thought would succumb to majoritarianism and would not be able to maintain their economic hegemony in a post-colonial India.”
So when Pakistan finally achieved nationhood, it was built on the backs of India’s economic elite. With Partition allowing them to consolidate their power like never before, Pakistan’s new feudal class leveraged an unprecedented amount of political currency, and any lingering hopes of fundamental economic reform waned into a distant dream.
When the events of 1947 finally came to pass, what was created was not one but two Pakistans — one for the people, who to this day, endure gut-wrenching poverty, and one for a tiny elite, who have managed to retain an exorbitant amount of the country’s resources.
In 1945, despite being persuaded by the younger ranks of the Muslim League, Jinnah did constitute a committee to investigate the problem of mass land ownership. The nominal agriculture reform committee of the Muslim League, headed by Mumtaz Daultana (another Oxford-educated heir to enormous lands) marked 80 per cent of land in Sindh and over 50 pc in Punjab as being owned by landlords.
But after the League’s landslide victory in 1946, land reforms faded from Jinnah’s concerns, never to surface again. He remained aloof when his constituted committee described landlordism as “benevolent and in the best interests of the peasant”. The repulsion towards any institutional reform finally reached its logical culmination in 1989, when the Federal Shariat Court declared land reform to be “unIslamic”.
According to the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), 5pc of agricultural households in Pakistan own nearly two-thirds of Pakistan’s farmland today. The country’s inability to implement basic economic reform gave rise to a political class dominated by feudal elites. In 1951, around 70pc of the Second Constituent Assembly’s members were of feudal lineage. These feudal classes, which have since entered marriages of convenience with the deep-state, are at the helm of every major political party and drive nearly all policy reform. The country’s Parliament serves as a nepotistic dump for their children and is frequently used to secure massive tax concessions on income and land revenue.
The establishment ensures that the external and internal political climate remain conducive for the sustenance of the feudal elite. Though it is international financial institutions that ensure that the country’s economy artificially stays afloat, in the realm of geo-economics, there is no free lunch. To assist the economic structure on which the elite build their havelis, the state uses its strategic significance to act as a guard for Western, imperialist powers. Driven by the reckless extravagance of its national elite, the state facilitates global capital by prostituting its territory for the strategic interests of the Global North.
The state also ensures the management of internal dissent, cracking down heavily on all calls for fundamental reform. Alternative economic ideas are censored, a tradition which emerged out of 1954, when the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) became one of the first political parties in the country to be banned. The custodial murder of Hassan Nasir — a proletarian leader of the CPP — in 1960, and the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — the socialist prime-minister who nationalised vast amounts of industries and lands — in 1979, speak to a systematic uprooting of alternative economic ideas.
In return for this generosity, the country’s elite leverage their constitutional power and massive political footprint at the grassroots to construct a praetorian legislative infrastructure which all but ensures the military’s hegemony in the political sphere. Whilst inhabiting the mecca of the country’s democracy, they owe their loyalties neither to their constituencies nor to the political ideologies they claim to espouse.
So when draconian bills such as the recent Official Secrets Act Amendment Bill 2023 — a death knell for due process in the country — are bulldozed through the Lower House in the wee hours of the night by a party decrying izzat for the vote just a couple of years ago, it should hardly be a surprising development in the Parliament’s long, tragic history of bending its knee to undemocratic powers.
Prisoners of the present
But had the bid for Pakistan merely been economic, it would not have stirred up the mass mobilisation that it did. Jinnah knew that an ideological layer would be critical in securing a sustainable political currency amongst his electorate. And although Sir Syed’s infamous Two-Nation Theory had been frequenting book stalls, libraries and study circles around Aligarh for a while, it trickled into the streets as an independant idea when it was picked up by the rhetoric of the incredibly charismatic, dangerously articulate barrister in Jinnah. In a letter to Gandhi dated Sept 17, 1944, he detailed the ideology in a manner as coherent as it was concise:
“We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation. We are a nation of a hundred million, and what is more, we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions — in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all cannons of international law, we are a nation.”
The problem, however, was that the Two-Nation Theory wasn’t entirely an accurate depiction of historical reality. Long before the British set sight on the subcontinent, Muslims and Hindus of the region shared a common political ancestry — they collectively identified as belonging to something known as ‘Hindustan’. Mediaeval historian Manan Ahmed in The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India details Hindustan as a place of territorial integrity that encompassed the entire subcontinent and that diverse communities of different faiths, castes, and creeds inhabited in tranquillity from AD1000 to AD1900.
Enter the British. To govern a people they did not fully understand, it was essential that obscure versions of history were developed to cohere with European post-enlightenment notions of rationality. Colonial archives reinterpreted, omitted, and rewrote much of the literature from native historical accounts. What emerged was a subcontinent where Muslims were caricatured as invaders and outsiders, prior to whom the subcontinent was populated by “timeless, history-less Hindus”, a land of primitive people without any political or social agency. The idea of ‘Hindustan’ faded away and a faith-differentiated India was manufactured. It was within this India that the Two-Nation Theory was conceived.
Fundamentally built around a Muslims-are-different-from-Hindus philosophy, the discourse which drove the Pakistan Movement never really discerned the subcontinent’s pulse. Within this discourse, the movement for independence from British colonialism became inconsequential, and was replaced by a more teleological — something which serves as a function of its end as opposed to its cause — Pakistan ‘freedom movement’. The antagonist in the country’s grand crusade to freedom was no longer the British imperialist, but the Hindu from whom the Muslims of India are said to have won their political freedom.
Today, Pakistani students are seldom aware of the critical role played by Gandhi, Nehru, Gokhale, Patel, and Bose in bringing independence for 300 million colonised Indians. Legacies of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh (who fought the last battle of his life in Lahore), Udham Singh, Rani Lakshmibai, and Sukhdev Thapar have been systematically wiped off of national syllabi.
This contortion of the past divorced an entire people from their own historical evolution. Memories of colonial subjugation were wiped off and replaced with imaginary battle lines drawn where none had historically existed. And the post-colonial Pakistani, whose memory of the colonial project had been effectively erased, was to become ripe for the state project forevermore.
Consequently, when the country’s feudal elite and military establishment fraternise in a ‘partnership’ reminiscent of the vice-regal democratic system instated by the Raj post-1857,
none really seem to bat an eye.
And when sitting MNA Ali Wazir is jailed for more than two years on charges barely worth the paper they are printed on, none seem to draw parallels with the contentious relationship the Raj had with its own dissidents.
And when the PTI is systematically dismantled to create the Istehkaam-e-Pakistan and the PTI-P in an effort to undercut Imran Khan’s political footprint in Punjab and KP, none seem to remember the Raj’s reliance on kingmakers to give some semblance of democracy to an India crippled by exploitation.
But premising national identity on such fallacious ideas of being and belonging was to give rise to more than just a dilemma of knowledge. It birthed a forever war that all but solidified the military’s relevance in Pakistan’s political sphere.
The forever war
To justify a partition that killed millions, it was necessary for the Two-Nation Theory to materialise as a potent nation-building tool, and fast. From day one, the theory pitted Pakistan and India as ideological counterparts to one another.
This ideological conflict did not take long to disintegrate into a geopolitical rivalry — a defining feature of the country’s ‘national interest’ for decades to come. From securing strategic depth against India via a Taliban-led Afghanistan, to nurturing a Pak-China camaraderie to neutralise Indian power in the subcontinent, Pakistan’s foreign policy has long revolved around resolving the Kashmir crisis, often at the expense of its social development.
According to an assessment by former COAS Mirza Aslam Baig, Pakistan has had to ensure its survival in the face of a constant threat posed to it by a country which is much bigger in terms of population, territory and military spending. This view has had its dissidents, even within the armed forces. Air Marshal Asghar Khan, for instance — the man credited for organising and training the Pakistan Air Force — pointed out that of the four military conflicts with India, all have been a result of Pakistani adventurism and ambition.
Another obstacle the country had to overcome was the growing realisation that the Pakistan Movement took place far beyond the borders of what eventually became Pakistan. To acquire credibility amongst the people it now governed, the new-born nation-state of Pakistan was compelled to partake in a mission of elaborate nation-building.
Jinnah himself hoped that in due time, cultural and linguistic ‘angularities’ would equalise into a meta-narrative of Pakistaniat. In his presidential address to the first Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947, Jinnah asserted:
“In course of time, all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards to Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalese, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.”
Dr Zaidi recorded his disagreements with Jinnah’s expectations: “The way to address these ‘angularities’ would have been to create multiple administrative units in Pakistan, where different provinces are opened up into different units based on linguistic, economic, and ethnic demographics. The problem even today is that after 76 years, we are still looking at colonial administrative units, and we think that this is God-given.”
Jinnah’s sentiments were also echoed by his lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan who declared in March 1948: “We must kill this provincialism for all times to come.”
It is no coincidence that two years into the country’s first bout with martial law, Gen Ayub Khan thought it necessary to replace ‘history’ with ‘Pakistan studies’ — an implicit effort to indoctrinate a diverse population into a singular Pakistani identity. KK Aziz, in The Murder of History, evaluates each Pakistan studies textbook to highlight inaccuracies, distortions, and exaggerations.
In the words of Dr Zaidi, “Pakistan’s history and a history of Pakistan’s people and their land, become two conflicting narratives”. He was also quick to point out the comedic paradox that ensnares the country to this day: “It is ironic that Muslim nationalism, led by Mr Jinnah, achieved statehood based on her minority status. Yet, its own minorities, whether they be ethnic, national, or religious, remain gravely repressed.”
It turns out, however, that repression hardly entails an end to unwanted realities. During its formative years, the country was mired in sectarian, linguistic and ethnic violence. The crises in Balochistan and KP seem to aggravate by the day, with Sindh not faring any better. Religious minorities are subjected to horrendous crimes on the reqular, with little to no reproach from the state. From secessionist struggles to terror outfits, the state seems to have entangled itself in a Gordian knot of internal chaos, one that requires enormous amounts of political concessions to the military.
In Pakistan’s forever war, the establishment retains monopoly over the mass production of traitors and patriots. From autocratic prime-ministers like Bhutto to eccentric poets like Jalib, from journalists like Hamid Mir to civil activists like Asma Jahangir, all have found themselves having to battle the same, worn-out labels — ‘RAW-funded’, ‘pro-Indian’, ‘communist’.
Even Fatima Jinnah, the “Mother of the Nation”, was called pro-Indian during her opposition to Ayub’s tyrannical reign in the ’60s. These labels tend to last just so long as it is politically expedient.
Naya Pakistan
But some demons simply cannot be exorcised. When she lost her Eastern wing in 1971, Pakistan also lost something intrinsic and metaphysical to her foundational idea. After decades of economic and political depredation, Bengal bid adieu to her Western counterpart in a bitter divorce that left thousands dead. A grim sadness permeated the air, best expressed in a 1974 ghazal penned by Faiz.
We stand estranged, after countless hospitalities,
How many meetings will it take for us to get acquainted once more?
When will we behold the unblemished bloom of viridescent fields?
How many rains will it take to wash away the stains of blood?
As the flag of Bangladesh rose in Dhaka amidst cheers, her Muslim brethren in the West looked on in unrelenting disbelief. The Two-Nation Theory was dead. The surrender to India had left the military utterly humiliated. More than 90,000 of her civilians and military personnel became Indian prisoners of war and Gen Yahya Khan, architect of the great secession, was forced to make a dishonourable exit from the corridors of power. With the establishment on the verge of collapse for the first time since Ayub’s martial law in 1958, Bhutto assumed the reins of power.
In a hectic reign spanning 6.5 years, Bhutto dominated the political arena. He was an enigma — democratic but authoritarian, populist but vindictive. The India-centric orientation of the Pakistani state, however, remained unchanged. Instead of looking inwards at the decades-long mistakes that led to the creation of Bangladesh, Bhutto bolstered the age-old doctrine that a credible defence against a hostile India was imperative to Pakistan’s survival.
His reign was marked by a tormented Ahmeddiya community, victimised political opponents, a war-torn, insurgent Balochistan, one rigged election, and a political impasse with the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) that deadlocked the nation. His autocracy lent life-support to the demoralised military, a sleeping monster he thought he could tame. As time would go on to prove, Bhutto himself threaded the noose from which he was later to hang.
With the Two-Nation Theory under attack and the political climate in upheaval, Zia inherited a highly volatile Pakistan. By overthrowing an elected, highly popular prime-minister, Zia had to devise a strategy that would secure the military government’s political hegemony and popularity.
Consequently, more than any other ruler of Pakistan, he sought to resuscitate the Two-Nation Theory, not merely as an ideological concern in relation to India, but as an ideological enterprise in its own right.
Thus began Zia’s infamous Islamisation project — an ideological and cultural indoctrination of the military as an Islamic fighting force armed with offensive capabilities to deal with a Hindu India. Borrowing the dogmas of Maududi (the founder of political Islam), Zia sought transformative nation and state building. According to renowned historian Tariq Ali: “It was General Zia who created a ‘Naya Pakistan’. The current version is counterfeit.”
In Zia’s Pakistan, being Muslim was no longer a mere nationalist marker but a theological one as well. The pre-existing nexus between the military and the economic elite was bolstered by a third, more powerful force — the religious clergy. It was to act as an ideological guardian of the praetorian influence of the military in Pakistan’s internal political arena. By curating an interpretation of Islam that glorifies jihad, conquest, military prowess, and pan-Islamic domination, the clergy ensure a subconscious admiration and adoration for the military. If Pakistan is a fortress for Islam, her military is its valiant keeper.
According to political scientist Carol Christine Fair, “Articles in Pakistan’s professional military journals also use Islam to sustain popular appetite for unending conflict with India and the army’s continued dominance over Pakistan’s internal and external affairs”. The military frequently tends to garner support by describing its adversary, often Hindu India or its “agents”, as nonbelievers and framing the conflict primarily in religious contexts.
Consequently, the struggle with India is depicted as a jihad against nonbelievers who pose a sustained threat to Islam as a whole. As Pakistan’s forever war ensues, in the mind of the people, the enemy transcends their somatic significance to a potentially ideological one as well.
Within this narrative, the military assumes the role of guardian, not only of the country’s physical frontiers, but of its ideological ones as well. A fifth-generation war, the reality of which has been refuted by numerous political scientists, adds another dimension to the country’s nazuk mor.
Within this discourse, the enemy is no longer one who will knock on our front doors with thunderous pounding and blazing guns. They might not even be seen. The enemy approaches with alternative ideas of change, which threaten existing, archaic ideas. Hence, when the state fails to address the material needs of her population, the people are distracted with cultural anxieties to suppress alternative ideas, vindicate political opponents, and maintain the status quo of distortion and manipulation.
The sole exit
Till the ideological foundations of the establishment remain uncontesded, Pakistan’s nazuk mor shall remain a perpetual roundabout. The sole exit is best manifested by an incident that transpired during a Sindhi demonstration in the early ’80s.
After the decision to execute Bhutto went public, rural Sindh became highly volatile. Paramilitary police units were called upon by the Zia regime to quash ensuing demonstrations. The policemen had been taught to taunt the Sindhi protestors by questioning their loyalty to Pakistan by repeatedly shouting, “Your Bhutto’s mother was Hindu!” This of course was a well-known fact and the response was nearly always along the lines of “She had converted to Islam”. But this response was playing within the ideological confines set by Zia’s regime. Being Hindu or being Muslim should have had no bearing on how Pakistani Bhutto or his supporters were.
So during one such demonstration, when a policeman repeated the supposed slur in the face of a Sindhi peasant woman, she innocently retorted, “Was our Prophet’s mother a Muslim?” Utter silence prevailed. The policeman was left flabbergasted. He had nothing to say. It is within these dialectical questions that real change lies.
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-20-2023
PRESIDENT ALVI AND OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT ?
SEHBAI PREDICTS DIRE CONSEQUENCES FOR CARETAKERS AND POWERS BEHIND THEM! PLANS UNRAVELLING
WILL PAKISTANIS AND ARMY ACCEPT UNCONSTITUTIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF ASIM MUNIR FOR 26 YEARS ?
WHO KILLED THE LEADERS FROM JINNAH TO BHUTTO?
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-22-2023
DR.KAISER BENGALI PREDICTS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE SOCIETAL IMPLOSION, US$ @ Rs 400 by ....?
QUOTING QURAN, Dr. BANGASH EXPLAINS WHY ASIM MUNIR , HIS GENERALS AND SUPPORTERS ARE MUNAFIQS !
ZAFAR BANGASH IS CONVINCED THE ONLY OPTION IS FOR PEOPLE TO FIGHT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
FAYYAZ BAQIR's REVOLUTIONARY IDEA TO EMPOWER PEOPLE AND USE THE SYSTEM TO FIGHT THE SYSTEM !
IMRAN KHAN AND SHAH MEHMOOD CYPHER DRAMA OFFERS FIREWORKS BUT MAY ALSO FLOP IN A FEW DAYS
BUREAUCRACY OF PAKISTAN EXPOSED
NEXT 3 MONTHS FOR PAKISTAN
RE: PAKISTAN'S VISION 2025 - globalvision2000administrator - 08-27-2023
MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE HAS BEEN IGNITED BY THE PEOPLE NOT PAYING ELECTRICITY BILLS. SO WHERE IS PAKISTAN HEADING?
THE FAKE NEWS vs THE REAL NEWS
WHAT DO IMRAN's CASES TELL US ABOUT PAKISTAN?
WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR, AGAINST WHOM AND WHY?
ARMY SCARED ! SOLDIERS WEAR PRIVATE SECURITY GUARD UNIFORMS! STOP PAYING ELECTRICITY BILLS !
WE ARE UNABLE TO PAY HIGHER ELECTRICITY BILLS THIS TIME
PAKISTANIS ARE NOT PAYING THEIR ELECTRICITY BILLS AFTER ANOTHER HIKE
PAKISTANI BUSINESSMEN ARE UNABLE TO RUN FACTORIES
WILL THE SUPPLY OF FREE UNITS FOR OFFICERS COME TO AN END IN PAKISTAN?
THE GATHERING STORM
Zahid Hussain
https://www.dawn.com/news/1772979
INFLATED electricity bills in the country have triggered an eruption of public indignation that had been simmering for long. Discontent over the escalating cost of living has now exploded into mass protests. The unbearable hike in electricity rates seems to be the proverbial last straw.Angry protesters are now out on the streets, threatening to bring down the edifice of the state. It is now left to a hybridised interim administration to face the public’s wrath. Stuck between the IMF deal and growing unrest in the country, the options for the caretaker set-up are limited. The crisis over excessively priced electricity indicates a structural problem that has been aggravated by flawed policies pursued by successive governments over the past several decades.
A patch-up job will not help resolve a chronic problem that requires massive systemic reforms. And that is beyond the capacity of a short-term interim arrangement led by a novice who has apparently been imposed by the security establishment. The multiple taxes and surcharges included in the electricity bills are nothing less than extortion by a state unable to collect taxes from the politically powerful landed and business classes. The burden has shifted to the already overtaxed middle and lower middle classes.
What has made the situation extremely combustible is the prevailing political uncertainty. The spontaneous outburst of public anger has all the potential of turning into a mass movement against the existing system. You just have to listen to the chants of protesters against the privileged power elite. Events like this could easily ignite a prairie fire engulfing the entire system.
The public outrage over inflated electricity bills is just a symptom of a much deeper problem.
The ongoing public protests have brought to the surface contradictions embedded in the existing power structure. They have also deepened the predicament of political parties that were part of the former ruling coalition. The alliance bears much blame for the worsening economic crisis. The disastrous policies of the Dar period may not have been solely responsible for the economic downslide but they are just as much to blame as the approach of previous dispensations. The situation has posed a huge dilemma for the PML-N, with elections approaching.
It will be hard for the party to go to the polls with such a liability. The optics of the former prime minister and his finance minister arriving in London for consultations with the supreme leader were hardly comforting for party supporters and voters. The party is at a loss as to how to react to the public protests, particularly in its former stronghold of Punjab, just two weeks after its government ended.
It is apparent that the decision to include excessive taxes in the electricity bill was taken by the PML-N-led government and certainly not by the caretaker administration. While exempting the retailers and thriving real estate businesses, the former finance minister conveniently shifted the burden to the common people. It is a lame excuse that it was necessary to meet IMF conditionalities. The fiscal gap could have been bridged by removing those exemptions as per the requirement of the IMF rather than fleecing the public.
With little to show for its performance during its 16-month rule, and now with street protests breaking out, it is hardly surprising that the PML-N favours an extension in the election date, as suggested by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in order to complete the delimitation process required under the recently concluded population census. Given this uncertainty and the prevailing confusion in party ranks, it is hardly surprising that Nawaz Sharif has yet again delayed his return to the country. He is now expected to come back in mid-October.
Meanwhile, differences within the former ruling alliance over the election timeframe have become sharper, with the PPP taking an obvious U-turn and demanding that elections be held within 90 days as stipulated in the Constitution. It seems that the PPP’s changed position on the election timeframe is for reasons of expediency, as the party doesn’t want any delimitation of constituencies in Sindh that could result in an increase in National Assembly seats in Karachi at the expense of the rural areas. The issue has become more contentious with the MQM now siding with the PML-N over the delay.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Bar Council, too, has demanded that polls be held within 90 days. However, it seems highly improbable that the ECP will change its plan and agree to hold elections on the basis of the old population count. It may lead to yet another court battle, deepening the political turmoil. Growing public unrest over inflation has simply added to the multiple challenges the state confronts.
The public outrage over inflated electricity bills is just a symptom of a much deeper problem. The escalating cost of living has pushed millions of more people below the poverty line and massively increased the ranks of the unemployed. The worsening state of the economy and growing political instability have also put our national security at risk. It is perhaps one of the most serious situations the country has faced in recent times. The prospect of a nuclear-armed nation collapsing under its own contradictions is frightening.
But the powers that be seem completely oblivious of the gathering storm. They remain occupied with their own agenda. While the country is imploding, the security agencies have apparently intensified the crackdown against the opposition, further destabilising the political situation. Recent draconian laws are now being used with impunity against everyone who dares to speak out.
It is perhaps unprecedented in Pakistan’s history that so many women are being kept in detention, most of them without any charge. The vindictiveness of the security establishment has been further amplified by the arrest of Imaan Hazir Mazari, a young civil right lawyer, under antiterrorism laws. She was rearrested after being released on bail. Similarly, the fate of Khadija Shah and several other PTI women prisoners hangs in the balance. This is the last thing the country needs while facing an existentialist threat. The rumbling of the coming storm is loud and clear, if the ruling elite are prepared to heed the warning.