DAVAO CITY, Philippines— Rodrigo Duterte, the newly elected Philippine president, is used to being treated with the utmost respect. In his previous job, as mayor of this once lawless southern city, his war on drug dealers left a trail of bullet-riddled corpses, targets of police operations as well as vigilante death squads. He roared through the streets on a motorcycle toting a high-caliber rifle. But on the afternoon of July 12, Mr. Duterte was irritated,…
Posts published in “Day: July 20, 2016”
Cruising along the famous avenues of Pakistan’s leading urban centres, you couldn’t miss those billboards with the picture of a smiling Raheel Sharif, accompanied by a short message in Urdu asking him to take over. The civil authorities had the posters removed while the government contemplated ways to counter this open call to flout the country’s constitution. Subsequent developments have the citizens wondering what was going on. The ISPR denied involvement. However, the puppet department…
This was a coup attempt by a section of the army – we don’t as yet know the strength of the units or formations involved – and some elements of the air force. And it was, from all the evidence, an exercise in haste, and singularly ill-planned at that, with no attempt to seize the leadership, which is the starting point of all successful coups… as we in Pakistan with our long history of coups…