Unite Pakistan

State and security Sunday was again a day of carnage in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 50 people are dead in both incidents – bomb blasts. Quetta’s Hazara Town once again saw a large number of its own, 30 at last count, die along with scores injured – nearly all of them from the Hazara Shia community. A Frontier Corps’ convoy was attacked in Peshawar, where 18 were reported dead and more than 45 injured. Police and other security personnel and women and children died in both the attacks. Yet again the terrorists have struck at a minority community. And yet again the usual words come from those in high positions – leading to nothing of substance. There also seems to be a distinct lack of unequivocal condemnation from the political parties so recently elected on the back of promises to make a positive improvement in the lives of all, no matter their sectarian adherence. It is not just a particular sect that is under attack, it is the very fabric of the st...

Forays into friendship The British Prime Minister David Cameron is the first leader of a foreign government to visit Pakistan since the election that brought the PML-N and Nawaz Sharif’s government to power. His visit comes back-to-back with a trip to Afghanistan. High on the British agenda is the nature of the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in particular the timbre of that relationship as the wind-down of foreign engagement in Afghanistan accelerates. In a more than usual anodyne press conference (at which neither leader took a single question) there were assurances about the enemies of Pakistan being the enemies of the UK, and the eternal friendship that exists between the two countries. Afghanistan got a mention too as Cameron spoke of the UK government’s support for President Karzai saying that any peace process will be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned, a mantra that is looking distinctly threadbare in the light of the debacle in diplomatic terms tha...

  Bucks stopped For years – and not just for the life of the last government – there has been what can only be described as a culture of impunity when it came to state institutions paying their dues. Thus virtually every state owned entity, from PIA to the Pakistan Steel Mills to the Pakistan Railways to provincial governments and large corporations and the power generation and distribution sector as well, were defaulters on taxes and utility bills. This was equally reflected down to the micro level where individual but powerful households failed to pay their dues, but expected the services to continue despite never being paid for. Over time the nation became massively indebted to itself. This, eventually becomes completely unsustainable and the PML-N government inherited the governance of the country at a point at which its self-indebtedness became an existential threat – and it cannot evade the consequences. The government is twisting to and fro in the tran...

Fast track Promises made on the campaign trail have an ephemeral quality about them and often fade away from political memory once power is attained. Unusually, but providentially, the promises – some of them – that the PML-N made about getting on top of the problems in the power sector are being fulfilled with quite remarkable speed. The country has yet to see any relief from the chronic loadshedding that is making life a misery for millions, but it is at least possible to see the process by which power will once again come down the wires. The country was promised a retirement of circular debt within 60 days. But, a significant portion of it will have been retired by this time next week and the rest, hopefully, by the middle of July or thereabouts – well within the 60-day target. Circular debt is a man-made monster, and has its birth in poor management and weak political appointments to jobs that required detailed technical skill sets and top-flight management ab...

  Secrets and lies Transparency, honesty and accountability have never loomed large in the national political life of Pakistan. While the law of averages compels an understanding that there must be politicians as straight as the proverbial ruler, they remain a shy and rarely-seen species. The latest revelations in the Swiss letter saga do nothing to dispel the above perception. Conspiracy theories abound but rarely have substance. However, the revelation that a letter was written to the Swiss authorities, in secret and running counter to an earlier letter to them at the behest of the Supreme Court, really does have more than a whiff of conspiracy about it. Three leading figures of the last government – former law minister Farooq Naek, former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and the former federal law secretary Yasmin Abbasey – conspired together to deceive the judiciary and by extension the rest of the population. They were seeking to prevent the Swiss gove...

A judge survives The long arm of the TTP has reached out once again, this time in an attempt to kill a senior member of the Sindh judiciary. A device attached to a motorbike, and weighing perhaps 8kg, was detonated remotely as Justice Maqbool Baqar of the Sindh High Court was passing by in his car on his way to the court. The powerful blast killed nine and injured 15 others unfortunate enough to be in the area at the time. Shops were damaged. Justice Baqar survived and is said to be recovering in a private hospital in Karachi. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan was quick to claim the crime, with its spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan saying that the TTP had attacked the judge because he delivered verdicts that did not comply with shariah laws and was taking decisions that were ‘harmful to the mujahideen.’ The judge was the subject of a precise hit that was based on good accurate intelligence and efficient construction of a remote-controlled device. There was a singular lapse...

High treason Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has announced in the National Assembly that former military dictator Pervez Musharraf is to be tried for high treason under Article 6 of the constitution and it is now for the law to take its course. Gen Musharraf is to face charges of abrogating the constitution of Pakistan and for illegally removing the supreme judiciary to prevent it from working through the imposition of an emergency in November 2007. The ex-dictator must be rueing the day he made the ill-advised decision to return to the country prior to the elections. He quickly discovered that umpteen thousand Facebook followers did not translate into political capital or votes. His reception was at best lukewarm and with the outcome of the election so decisively in favour of the PML-N the charges he is now called to answer were virtually a foregone conclusion. He has spent much of the last two months under house arrest at his home on the outskirts of Islamabad. Bot...

The SC can save the media Collateral damage can sometimes be totally unintentional but could, at times, turn out to be fatal. In its intervention – as well-meaning as in many other numerous matters of national importance where the superior judiciary saved losses and prevented thefts of billions upon billions – the Honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan took suo motu notice of a complaint by Transparency International over the alleged misuse of secret funds by the information ministry, and stayed the disbursement of payments to any advertising agency or media house for advertisements printed and aired by the media till the next date of hearing and directed the deputy attorney general to provide particulars of any summary approved on or after March 10, 2013. It was a perfect case to intervene in as corruption and misuse of funds were rampant. But as the nitty-gritty of the whole operation was complicated, a large part of the national media began to suffer unintended d...