The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore The First Amendment to the Constitution of the US is unique in the world. Other than religious freedom as well as a bar on Congress from respecting an establishment of religion, this amendment provides for an unfettered right to freedom of speech and press. This is how it should be everywhere ideally but, unfortunately, we live in a less than ideal world. The advantages of having an…
Posts published in “Day: March 30, 2015”
We may be in the midst of a democratic transition in Pakistan, but political parties appear to be hell bent to act against their own interests. The PML-N-led National Assembly has passed a bill to hold party-less local bodies elections in Islamabad. Not only did the PML-N act against the agreement in the Charter of Democracy, it has negated the spirit of the constitutional requirement in the 18th Amendment to devolve governance to the lowest…
Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif stands out in contrast to his predecessor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani. Whereas the latter dragged his feet over clearing FATA, especially North Waziristan, of terrorists and their local and foreign affiliates, General Sharif has taken the bull by the horns. One of the triggers may have been the APS attack in Peshawar that led to the massacre of students and their teachers, but the COAS’s resolve to…
If one were to go by the claims put out regularly, it seems that Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched in June last year, is progressing successfully and is going in the right direction. However, in the absence of any independent corroboration of these claims or our own reports from ground zero, one finds it difficult to state with any degree of confidence how this war is poised currently. One is not in any way questioning the ISPR…
Of late, Mach central prison has been caught in the media glare. Notorious “hit-man” Saulat Mirza was brought to Mach in the month of February 2014 on security grounds and since then the jail has been thrust into the limelight. Mach Jail is one of the most dreaded prisons in the country. It is known by the honorific Kala Pani (black waters) because of its location in a deserted area surrounded by rough and dry…
KARACHI: Those convicted of murdering teenage boy Shahzeb Khan may be able to walk away from the gallows if the court accepts the compromise reached between the victim’s family and the convicts. So far, the court has declared that the much-criticised compromise is ‘genuine’. Karachi’s anti-terrorism court-III (ATC-III) confirmed that the agreement pardoning the four convicts, Shahrukj Jatoi, Nawab Siraj Talpur, Nawab Sajjad Talpur and Ghulam Murtaza Lashari, is authentic. In June 2013, the same…
by Javed Aziz Khan in The News, March 30, 2015 PESHAWAR: Unidentified attackers shot dead a senior army officer in Hayatabad when he came out of a mosque after offering the Zuhr prayer, officials said on Sunday.Lt Col Tahir Azeem, hailing from the Kaga Wala village on the outskirts of Peshawar, had come from Rawalpindi to attend the wedding of his sister in Hayatabad. “As he came out of the mosque in Hayatabad Phase-III after…
MARDAN – An extortionist blew up the house of a person for not paying the extortion money in the limits of Toru police station in the wee hours of Sunday. According to Toru police station, Wazir Khan, a resident of Sohbaht Kalliy, told the police that a person identified as Fatih Zaman, a resident of Daggar Buner, for the last several days had been calling him on his cell phone for extortion money. He told…
By Azam Khan in The Express ribune, March 30th, 2015 ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s safety is essentially riding on the government’s National Action Plan (NAP) – drafted in the aftermath of the December 16 attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School– but the authors of the much-vaunted counterterrorism strategy deem it unfeasible, a document put together in haste rather than after careful deliberation. Under the NAP, the government aims to crack down on terrorism across the country and…
A road to nowhere : by BABAR SATTAR in Dawn, March 30th, 2015
The writer is a lawyer. The PML-N and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) have finally agreed to form a judicial commission to probe the 2013 elections and determine three things: were they conducted impartially, fairly and justly in accordance with law; were they manipulated by systematic design; and were the results a fair reflection of public mandate. If there was ever a commission to be formed likely to do nothing other than drag the judiciary into…