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Posts published in “Pak Media comment”

Overseas job loss fears : edit in The Express Tribune, Nov 23rd, 2020.

Remittances from abroad are a major source of foreign exchange for our country. The full-year remittances — at $23.10 billion in FY20 — nearly equal the sum total of our exports proceeds and FDI inflows, hovering somewhere around $22 billion and $2.5 billion respectively. With the successive governments terribly failing to find foreign markets for local products, and attract foreign investors to the country, the inflows from the 9 million-strong expatriate community remains a very…

Another week another Ahmadi dead

by Yasser Latif Hamdani in Daily Times, Nov 23rd, 2020Another week another Ahmadi dead! The slow burn genocide of this community, which is by far the most patriotic community in Pakistan- a searing irony-, continues. This time it was a young doctor who had dedicated himself to the welfare of poor people at Nankana sb. He was a victim of a Kill-a-Kafir and earn Jannat mentality that is a complete negation of the basic principles…

Rising hatred: edit in The News, Nov 23, 2020

Yet another senseless killing, just one more in a long and frighteningly disturbing list of crimes perpetrated against religious minorities in this country. This time the murder occurred on Friday, when a 31-year-old doctor belonging to the Ahmadi community was shot dead after a teenage boy opened fire on him at his home in Punjab’s Nankana Sahib district; the deceased’s father and uncles were injured in the attack as well. This year has seen a…

Driving away from ‘Digital Pakistan’: :Edit in The Express Tribune, Nov 23, 2020.

What are we afraid of? Myopic is the only word that comes to mind when trying to describe the approach our government and institutions have adopted towards the Internet and social media, or any media in fact. With each step we appear hell-bent on moving back rather than forward. Our authorities appear to pay no heed to the costs our policies will extract from our future. The latest rules the government has framed to govern…

Mainstreaming non-state actors

by Masud Ahmad Khan in The Nation, Nov 23, 2020The writer is a retired BrigadierThe creation of Pakistan was based on the two-nation theory. Hindus and Muslims were not able to live together, therefore Jinnah’s vision was that Muslims should have an independent state. Pakistan is a nation which consists of different ethnicities, distinctive cultures, customs, traditions and languages. Quaid-e-Azam, while addressing the Quetta municipality, on January 15, 1948 said, “We are now all Pakistanis—not…

Peshawar rally: edit in Pakistan Today, Nov 23, 2020

The PTI government has accused the opposition alliance of hypocrisy and playing reckless politics with people’s safety because its components who criticised PM Imran Khan for not ordering a strict lockdown were now holding rallies ignoring that this would spread the coronavirus far and wide. While this may be true, the PTI displayed equal recklessness when its legislators and a minister addressed big rallies, where all SOPs were violated . Again it politically suited the…

Terror financing grey zone: by Syed Ishrat Husain in Daily Times, Nov 22, 2020

“The government of Pakistan has signalled its commitment to complete the rest of its action plan. But it is clear even though Pakistan has made progress; it needs to do more, Pakistan cannot stop now. It needs to continue to carry out reforms, in particular to implement targeted financial sanctions and prosecute and sanction those financing terrorism.” To date, Pakistan has made progress across all action plan items and has now largely addressed 21 of…

Draconian internet rules: by Usama Khilji in Dawn, Nov 22, 2020

The writer is director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.A SET of rules to censor content on the internet have been notified by the government and are likely to fundamentally alter the internet as we know it in Pakistan. Titled ‘Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules 2020’, these are meant to guide the implementation of Section 37 (unlawful online content) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes…

Politics, in opposition: Op- ed by Shehryar Warraich in TNS, Nov 22, 2020

The author is a staff member.The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is entering its second phase of protests and public gatherings. Its leaders have pledged once again to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government through a mass movement. They are tapping into growing public anxiety about economic crises, food inflation, and unemployment to pull massive crowds. More recently, unexpected results in the Gilgit-Baltistan election have fuelled ongoing political turbulence. The alliance of 11 opposition…

Islands in an ocean:op-ed by Dr Muhammad Ali Ehsan in The Express Tribune, Nov 22, 2020.

The writer is a member of the faculty of contemporary studies at NDU IslamabadEveryone and everything eventually gets tired and retires. The substitution fills in the shoes and the life goes on. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both created their political parties in the 60’s and the 80’s respectively. Significantly, our history remembers them both for their vision and the role they played in achievement of the goals they set. Benazir Bhutto was an…

Poll reforms, again: op-ed

by Ahmed Bilal Mehboob in Dawn, Nov 22, 2020The writer is president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency.PRIME MINISTER Imran Khan has once again expressed his intention to introduce three key electoral reforms. Two of them relate to the general elections and the third is about the Senate elections.Mr Khan has forcefully advocated ‘electronic voting’ and presented it as a solution to our perennial problem of non-acceptance of election results by the…