Posts published in “Pak Media comment”

For a government which says it wants new investors to inject funds in the country, it is not doing itself any favours in the digital industry department. In fact, the government’s new move of framing the “Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules 2020 (RBUOC),” under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA), might do irreversible damage to the country’s digital sector unless steps are not taken. There are…

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA) is back to haunt social media users. Under its new Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules 2020 a set of measures has been put in place regarding the regulation of social media and internet service providers (ISPs). From encouraging a blanket block of content that criticises the government or public servants, to using ‘obscenity’ or ‘decency’ or ‘morality’ as a justification…

THE law of the jungle is alive and well in Pakistan’s lower courts. Additional District and Sessions Judge Dr Sajida Ahmed Chaudhry has penned a no-holds-barred letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed and the Lahore High Court chief justice dilating on the harassment that her fellow judges face at the hands of rowdy and boorish lawyers. “I am very much disappointed and discontented after spending about 21 years of judicial service, the golden…

The writer is an Islamabad based psycho-therapistA week ago, I came across a video that went viral on social media. It showed the employee of a well-known local bank harassing and inappropriately touching a woman inside the bank. It’s believed that the woman was also employed at the bank. As a woman I have experienced harassment myself. It ranges from being inappropriately touched to a man trying to pull me into a car in one…

by I.A. Rehman in Dawn, November 19th, 2020THE Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) decided to teach the French, via their embassy, a more fitting lesson than the one delivered by the government, and sought passage through Islamabad. The government chose to deny their request. They retaliated by starting a sit-in, and the residents of the capital city and all those who wished to visit it began to be punished. This punishment acquired a more serious form when…

Prime Minister Imran Khan wants to bring about electoral reforms so that elections of the Senate are not by secret ballot, but by show of hands, so as to obviate all allegations of MPAs, who are the voters in this case, selling their votes. He himself mentioned, in his televised address on Tuesday, that this would require opposition cooperation to amend the Constitution. As the allegation is mostly aimed at the KP Assembly, where his…

by Fahd Husain in Dawn, November 19th, 2020As Peshawar readies for the PDM jalsa this Sunday, there are fears that the window for a political solution to the present morass is beginning to gradually close. The opposition says the only option it has then: raise the temperature. The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) had crafted a plan at the multiparty conference and drawn up a list of its demands as well as a schedule of its…

By DR FARID A MALIK in Pakistan Today, Nov 19th, 2020.Governments have a duty to care for their citizens. There has to be a concept of motherhood. Unfortunately in the land of the pure this benevolence is totally missing. In the formative years, both the political leadership and the administrative machinery was caring and dutiful but it gradually faded away. A visit to any state institution is always a horrifying experience, as either the staff…

IS Pakistan close to salvaging its $6bn deal with the IMF, which remains suspended for the last eight months? The prime minister’s finance adviser, Hafeez Shaikh, thinks it is, as he revealed that an IMF mission will visit Pakistan in a few weeks to “give a formal structure” to the ongoing discussion on how to revive the stalled programme, and repeated that “good news about the country’s economy was pouring in from all four corners”.…

by Imran Jan in The Express Tribune, November 19th, 2020.The writer is a political analyst.During slavery in America, white slave owners had invented ways to entertain themselves. One was to have two black men fight each other to death. The victorious would earn something as petty as a cigarette pack or a beer bottle while the other would lose his life. It didn’t matter to the white spectator as to who emerged victorious. His life…