According to the latest news sources, the gas circular debt has surged to a whopping amount of 350 billion rupees. While a few days ago, the special advisor to Prime Minister Nadeem Babar blamed the previous government for the gas crisis, he didn’t tell us anything about the present government’s reforms to address the menace of circular debt. Blaming the previous regimes for the current issues is the standard excuse in Pakistan to avoid accountability…
Posts published in “Pak Media comment”
Getting rid of bad governance, mismanagement and corruption would obviously be a huge service to our country. The question is: are we truly committed to this fight? What happens when stories of corruption and mismanagement start coming in but instead of dealing with them, the government resorts to targeting the messenger. As Shahzeb Khanzada has raised time and again on his show on Geo TV, many questions remain unanswered in a long and growing list…
by Sakib Sherani in Dawn, Dec 4, 2020The writer is a former member of the prime minister’s economic advisory council, and heads a macroeconomic consultancy based in Islamabad.THE present government has been roundly criticised for its handling of the economy ever since it took office over two years ago. In rich irony, the sharpest criticism has come from PML-N, which bequeathed the largest economic crisis in Pakistan’s history and left behind a trail of policy…
FOR 20 years, the US State Department has been annually documenting the efforts — or the lack thereof — of governments to check trafficking in persons (TIP) that has become a massive crime worldwide over the years. The major success it has achieved so far is in creating public awareness about this abominable issue. In some cases, it has managed to get governments to legislate on the matter in a bid to check the prevalence…
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has joined Pervez Musharraf as one of the few prominent Pakistani leaders to have ‘earned’ proclaimed offender status. Nawaz was labeled as such by an accountability court hearing the Toshakhana case after his unsurprising no-show. Nawaz, of course, is in the UK on ‘medical bail’. His lawyers argued before the Islamabad High Court that his health has not improved and produced doctor’s notes saying that he is not cleared to…
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.IN many ways, the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) jalsa in Multan was the most significant one among the public meetings held so far. It was held in an area of Punjab considered to be at some distance from the centre of power long dominated by the Sharifs of Lahore. Multan happens to be, lately, a somewhat disputed ‘capital’ of the South Punjab challenge to Takht-i-Lahore’s rule. The region…
The writer is a Nowshera based contributor.Is PDM heading towards a breakdown? A detailed and critical analysis of the sessions, meetings and rallies by the opposition parties’ leaders of the newly formed Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) leads to the conclusion that the alliance negated its core agenda adopted at the very outset of its launch, or adopted during their own terms of government. The creation of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the charges against Asif…
There has finally been a breakthrough on the Afghanistan peace front—the Afghan government and Taliban representatives have announced that they have reached a preliminary deal to press on with peace talks. This is the first written agreement in nineteen years of war—previous attempts have always been thwarted at the last minute, mostly because of the refusal of the Taliban representatives to accept any official seal of the Afghan government. It seems that the delay in…
Report in Daily Times, Dec 4th, 2020The European Union (EU) Commission has refused to lift the ban on Pakistani flights to operate in its territory due to a number of reservations that, it said, Pakistan has yet to address. The aviation department of Pakistan needs to make its pilot licensing authority more transparent, said the EU Commission, noting that issuance of licences to pilots has to be via a fool-proof protocol. The EU also objected…
report in The Daily Star, Dec 4, 2020Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said Bangladesh cannot forget and forgive atrocities committed by Pakistan in 1971, according to a press release of the Press Wing of the Prime Minister’s Office. “Incidents of 1971 cannot be forgotten or forgiven,” she said while Pakistan High Commissioner in Dhaka Imran Ahmed Siddiqui called on her at the Gono Bhaban. Referring to the volumes of the book titled “Secret Documents of…
Journalism; transgression of freedom: by Shahrukh Mehboob in Daily Times, Dec 4th, 2020
The writer is Legal Practitioner and columnist.Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of Pakistan says “I expect press for complete fearless.” regrettably, press in Pakistan has been unsuccessful to appreciate the goal of Quaid-e-Azam. Throughout the first, the decades after 1947 media space in Pakistan remained tightly regulated by the state. There were hardly any players in the broadcast sector. It was restricted to only government-managed television and radio operations. Pakistan Television (PTV) and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC),…