Unite Pakistan

THE existential threat to Pakistan starts with the letter ‘T’ — but it’s not the Taliban. It’s ‘Taxes’. More precisely, it’s the lack of a fair and equitable taxation system, and the unwillingness and inability of successive governments to fix it. This was the gist of the first part of my column two weeks ago. This part will outline what can be done about it. But first, it will be useful to review the recently presented federal budget for 2013-14 from the perspective of fairness of ‘burden sharing’. While the budget does make a welcome — albeit somewhat modest — attempt to widen the tax base, it falls short of the standards of equity and fairness by placing an unduly large burden on existing and honest taxpayers. Take the case of the higher tax incidence on salaried persons — a group of around 900,000. While this group of captive taxpayers will be coughing up substantially more tax revenue, the group of professional service providers (doctors, lawyers, architects,...

IT is our war. It is America’s war. Thousands of Pakistanis have perished in this war. And all we do is take part in this debate. We do nothing to end it. If one could put it down to a simple lack of will or spine it would have been bad enough. That a fair bit of the discourse on terrorism represents ideologically motivated obfuscation is unforgivable, particularly given how many compatriots have had to sacrifice so much. The dominant argument is that Pakistan’s support to the US-led war in Afghanistan and the CIA’s drone attacks are the only drivers of terrorism in the country. Ergo, this support to the US is not just blamed for terrorism but also advanced as a justification for the mass murder of our people. Refusal to accept this view in its entirety is immediately pounced upon as being tantamount to condoning or worse still supporting the drone attacks that mostly kill our civilians, women and children, and occasionally the militant in the tribal areas. God ...

AN excellent Asian Media Barometer tool has been developed by the Friedrich Ebert Siftung Foundation, a German political organisation that seeks to educate ordinary citizens about democracy and pluralism. The 2012 AMB was launched recently with a roundtable discussion about media and ethics, which made it clear that Pakistan’s media, especially our television channels, has been going down the wrong path for such a long time that getting back to the right one is going to take a lot of hard work, vision, and commitment from all players. The AMB, originally developed for use in Africa, was first used by FES-Pakistan in 2009 to analyse the state of Pakistan’s media. Last year, a panel of five media experts and five members of civil society rated the national media environment on a scale of one to five in 45 predetermined indicators, which make up four main sectors where goals need to be met: freedom of expression in the media should be protected; the media lands...

A ccording to WHO, only three countries remain polio-endemic in 2012, out of which Pakistan is the only country which somehow has showed an increase in its polio cases of 2011-2012 than were recorded in the previous years. India got cleared from the list just recently whereby Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only three in the world where polio virus still fights back. Unfortunately the number of cases in Pakistan has increased to what it was back in 2010. With this worsening condition in Pakistan the greatest blow has just hit recently where series of attacks have been carried out on anti-polio workers. A three day country wide anti-polio rally was organized this week by UNICEF which took the lives of eight anti polio health workers! The three-day drive sprained with blood is now over. What has come as a serious shock is that major part of the killings took place on Tuesday in the capital city of Karachi, where four female vaccination workers were killed...

Many believe and rightly so that the upcoming elections would be the crucial milestone in Pakistan’s democratic history. It would be the first time that a democratic government (without a general sitting in its driving seat) will complete its five years tenure and will held elections to transfer powers to another democratically elected government. This democratic transfer, if hopefully is made rightly would mark Pakistan’s first ever democratic transition and it could bring Pakistan to new horizons of democracy where the chances of military rule are minimized by transfer of power to sovereign parliament and not otherwise. Although elections held in 2008 were considered pretty fair and democratic as well yet there were few big hiccups which can defame the claim altogether, like the elections were actually held under the rule of a military dictator and not under a democratic regime. And there was the fact that leaders of two biggest political parties PPP and PML (N) we...

S omething peculiar! Yes. For all purposes and intentions everything that has been going on the current political stage especially with this “turning Islamabad into a seized city and World’s largest Tahrir Square” is not regular of course. But what is more disturbing is that there erupted a sudden need to disrupt a democratic structure and to hamper the to-be-first ever democratic transition where one elected government (not under a military dictator) would be seen handing over power to another. The question is why Pakistan’s steps towards democracy are being hurdled now? For Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran leader Tahir-ul-Qadri the answer lies in revolution! One in the footsteps of Arab spring to “save the nation”, bring reforms and to “give rights back to the poor”. And all these revolutionary ideas came to his mind right before the election time. Qadri, a Canadian citizen recently returned to Pakistan after a five-year-stay in Britain. He came back with an agenda that...

R evolution - is what many like to call it, but I would go with a more seasoned term - realization ! People are now taking up streets to voice their needs and demands. This is the image of a more realized nation who has finally shown that yes they can stand united for a cause, no matter what it is. They have shown that they are capable of protesting peacefully and can face adverse conditions (weather and terrorist threats) and could still stand firm as a rock. Over the two weeks Pakistan has seen quite a drama going on in its political wing where sudden serious changes have taken place. With Qadri’s long march in full swing, no one expected a little that PM Raja Pervaiz Ashraf would be lashed out like this. On Tuesday, Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and 18 others on account of massive corruption pulled out of the Rental Power Plant case. Qadri congratulated the whole nation on this verdict of SC and considered his l...

P akistan’s central bank on Saturday kept its key discount rate unchanged at 15 per cent amid warnings of a significant economic slowdown and demands from businessmen for interest rate cuts.” We are going to have lower industrial growth than most years but services and agriculture will grow near to normal levels to give us GDP growth rate of about 3.7 per cent” said Salim Raza Pakistan’s central bank governor in his first monetary policy statement since taking charge about a month ago.  Businesses however demanded interest rate cuts to make bank borrowing more affordable in a period marked by the effects of an economic slowdown.  The latest estimates on Pakistan’s industrial performance showed car sales fell by about 48 per cent in the second half of 2008 compared to the same period a year ago. ”Interest rates have to be reduced in order to tackle this situation. The business sector is suffering very badly” said Tahir Malik vice president of the Lah...

D emocrat warns that $1.5 billion could backfire if it's seen as bribe. Supporters see few options to persuade Islamabad to fight militants. A senior Democratic senator raised questions Wednesday about theObama administration's plans to prod the Pakistan government to take more aggressive action against extremists by increasing foreign aid to Islamabad. Sen. Carl Levin (D Mich.) chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said he thought the Pakistan strategy would be effective only if Pakistanis have decided to forcefully confront religious extremists. "We've got ambivalent evidence as to whether or not they're committed to that goal " he said The plan — first proposed by Vice President Joe Biden when he headed the Foreign Relations Committee and now being pushed by Sen. John Kerry (D Mass.) the new committee chairman — would offer $1.5 billion in non military assistance to Pakistan over five years. The plan has been endorsed by...

P akistan's top economic policy maker said the International Monetary Fund which gave the Asian nation a $7.6 billion bailout loan in November had agreed there is scope to lower interest rates.  ``We were able to convince the IMF that as inflation is coming down we are looking at reducing interest rates in the next few weeks and months and they have agreed with us '' Shaukat Tarin finance adviser to Pakistan's prime minister told a news conference in Islamabad today. Tarin met with IMF officials in Dubai last week. Lower borrowing costs may help revive South Asia's second largest economy which is challenged by renewed tension between the Pakistan Peoples Party led coalition government and the biggest opposition party. In November the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by two percentage points to 15 percent the highest in more than a decade as part of conditions for the IMF loan. ``Room has been provided for some sort o...

P akistan plans to raise $500 million in the next 12 months through bonds aimed at Middle East investors as a debt sale in other overseas markets would be too expensive central bank Governor Syed Salim Raza said. “The credit default swap rate for Pakistan is still high so to go to cold nosed commercial markets wouldn’t suit us ” Raza 63 who worked for Citigroup Inc. for 36 years in the Middle East Africa and Europe said in an interview. “But there are a number of countries in the region who understand Pakistan’s politics very well.” Raza who took over as governor on Jan. 2 is seeking to revive Pakistan’s faltering economy as political tensions distract the government from tackling slowing growth and worsening security. President Asif Ali Zardari’s hold on power was weakened yesterday when he relented to pressure from opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and reinstated judges fired under military rule in 2007. “The state of global financial markets will decide w...

KARACHI: The volume of foreign investment witnessed a slight improvement in the first half of this fiscal year, but experts think if the political chaos continues the FDI inflows would not sustain in the remaining months of 2012-13. The Sate Bank reported on Tuesday that the foreign direct investment improved by six per cent during the first six months of the fiscal compared to the same period of last year. The hike was fed by sudden increase of investment from Hong Kong. According to State Bank, the total FDI during the first half of the current fiscal rose to $562 million from $531 million in the same period last year. The business community said the country’s political uncertainty may dissuade foreign investors as a peaceful working environment is a precondition for investment. Analysts have been indicating another crisis in their reports for prospective investors, besides the energy shortfall that hurt trade and industry that was generally depressed failing t...