State of Pakistan

By Yousuf Nazar

I agree with Aitzaz Ahsan when he says a sovereign parliament can not be built on the debris of an independent judiciary but in the same token an independent judiciary can not be built with judges who violated article 6 of the constitution and Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry did precisely that when he took oath under the PCO in 2002. No institution, no individual, and no court in Pakistan has the authority to condone that. Let us get this straight: if one act of defiance is enough to wash one individual’s past sins, then both Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zaradari have washed their past sins like the sins of Iftikhar Chaudhry were washed away (as his supporters claim) by his act of defiance on March 9, 2007. We can not have double standards and weak constitutional arguments just when they suit us. Read more »

THE MARCH TO FOLLY ON THE AFGHAN BORDER

By Eric Margolis of Toronto Sun

The killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers by US air strikes last week showed that the American-led war in Afghanistan is relentlessly spreading into Pakistan, one of America’s oldest, most faithful allies.

Pakistan’s military branded the air attack `unprovoked and cowardly.’ However, the unstable government in Islamabad, led by the Pakistan People’s Party(PPP), which depends on large infusions of US aid, later softened its protests. This is in good part because the PPP leader, Asif Zardari, is being shielded from judicial corruption investigations through a quiet deal with President Pervez Musharraf and Washington to thwart reinstatement of Pakistan’s ousted supreme court justices. Read more »

 Participants: Justice (rtd) Tariq Mehmood, Ahmed Raza Qasuri, Haroon Rasheed (ISB Bar Chairman), Yousuf Nazar (Economic Expert).

From DAWN of June 9, 2008

By Yousuf Nazar

The PPP government apparently panicked and surrendered to the pressure of the brokers’ community by extending the capital gains tax exemption by not one but two years in an unusual move well before a week of the announcement of the federal budget. Besieged by the PML(N) and the lawyers, feeling the heat from the media, and faced with worsening economic indicators, the government decided to make peace with Karachi’s powerful brokers’ mafia. It was the first test of its political will to undertake difficult reforms – a test it failed. That it could not wait even for a week to make this announcement along with the budget speech shows its increasingly vulnerable political position. Even greater irony is that the whole case for the exemption of the so-called ‘capital gains’ is based on half truths and massive distortion of facts because it is patently false to claim that what goes on the stock exchanges here has anything to do with real investments or that imposition of tax on trading will adversely impact foreign investment.  Click here to read the complete article.

We are reproducing the following story of the New York Times published February 10, 2008. Pakistan and particularly its media seem to have forgotten Benazir Bhutto and there has been no progress in her murder investigation. Why?

Some Killings Don’t Get Solved  

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: February 10, 2008 

WHO killed Benazir Bhutto? How was it done? By bullet or bomb, or both? And who sent the killer — Islamic militants with links to Al Qaeda, rogue elements of the Pakistani Army, or political rivals in the election scheduled for Feb. 18? Read more »

Sabri Hotel feeds about 700 people every day

Gul Rehan, a labourer from Pakistan’s north-western district of Dir, says he has never depended on charity to cope with hunger and poverty before.

But now he is sitting in a line outside a restaurant in the southern industrial city, Karachi, waiting for free food.

Three times a day, men, women and children queue up outside dozens of Karachi hotels for meals which are paid for by philanthropists and charity donors.

Until the late 1990s, they used to be mainly beggars and heroin addicts. Read more »