report in The Express Tribune, Nov 12, 2020KARACHI: Apparently backtracking from his previous stance, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday maintained that the opposition parties at their all-parties conference in September had not “stopped anyone” from mentioning the names of individuals belonging to state institutions. Speaking to a private TV channel, the scion of the Bhutto dynasty played down speculations that his party was at odds with the PML-N, its ally in the opposition…
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report in The Express Tribune, Nov 12, 2020ISLAMABAD: The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) has removed Hafiz Hussain Ahmed as the party’s spokesperson and appointed Aslam Ghauri in his place as the head of the information department, sources said on Wednesday. The decision was taken by the Majlis-e-Shura, the party’s main decision-making body. The meeting was chaired by party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the sources said, adding that Fazl briefed the participants about the decisions taken by…
ELECTIONEERING in Gilgit-Baltistan is in full swing as the region prepares to go to the polls on Sunday. Nearly all of the country’s mainstream parties have hit the campaign trail hard, dispatching their top guns to the area in order to woo voters. The PPP’s Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the PML-N’s Maryam Nawaz as well as federal ministers Ali Amin Gandapur and Murad Saeed have all addressed rallies, while the prime minister himself was earlier in the…
by Baqir Sajjad Syed in Dawn, November 12th, 2020ISLAMABAD: Iran on Wednesday announced the opening of a border crossing point with Pakistan for facilitating trade, as the two countries agreed to deepen their bilateral cooperation. The announcement was made by Iranian Foreign Minister Dr Javad Zarif during his meetings in Islamabad. He was on a two-day visit to Pakistan, leading a senior delegation comprising political and economic experts. The Iranian foreign minister, who arrived on…
By Riaz Akbar in The Express Tribune blogs, Nov 12, 2020This is the first article in a two part series.Will Gilgit-Baltistan’s (G-B) general election on November 15, 2020 turn violent? An assessment is provided here to answer that question by deploying an array of electoral assessment frameworks developed by international organisations dedicated to the theory and practice of elections worldwide. Applying illegal force to influence the outcome of an election by contestants and saboteurs is…
Enthused by the large gatherings that welcomed him in Swat and Hafizabad Prime Minister Imran Khan has come to believe that his popularity in the country continues to increase. He has also concluded that complaints made by some of his own legislators and allies regarding the erosion of the government’s approval rate due to rising prices were inspired by the opposition’s propaganda. This is what some of the sycophants gathered around him were already telling…
The second wave of the pandemic could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan. The government was feeling good for having controlled the spread of the virus better than most countries in the world, and was poised to use that advantage to capture export markets and enhance foreign exchange inflows, but now there’s already talk of another lockdown that could well push the economy over the edge. And this rather quick journey from…
After nearly eight months in NAB custody, the editor-in-chief owner of the Jang-Geo Group, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, has been granted bail by a three-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The case in which he was detained goes back some 34 years and is related to the purchase of land in Lahore from a private individual who has now passed away. The matter, however, is not one entirely of land purchase, or the manner in…
Gutter politics, Gandapur’s statement reveals PTI mindset: Editorial in Pakistan Today, Nov 11, 2020
As all major national political parties continue campaigning for the upcoming Gilgit-Baltistan elections, the rhetoric coming out of the PTI camp, headed by Kashmir and Northern Areas Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, is simply deplorable. Speaking at a recent rally, he passed some extremely sexist and misogynistic remarks regarding PML(N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz, saying: “she is beautiful, but only because she has spent millions of taxpayer money on surgeries to look the way she does”.…
by Amjed Jaaved in Pakistan Today, Nov 11, 2020France is a cradle of modern human rights. How come its slogan `liberty, equality and fraternity’ allows it to drag out mosque-goers from inside the mosques? Or insult them in a myriad ways? France continues to publish and republish cartoons injuring sentiments of Muslim community. Some leaders have called for banning Muslim immigration to France. Long before Islamic jihad, terrorism was a familiar phenomenon. The anti-Muslim media…
Sindh IG report: edit in the News, Nov 12, 2020
The army chief has delivered on his promise to issue a report on the alleged abduction of the Sindh IG. This in itself is a welcome step. The report has ordered the removal from their current assignments of the ISI and Pakistan Rangers officials said to be involved in the ‘Karachi incident’; they are to be sent for further departmental proceedings and disposal at the GHQ. The ISPR report has termed the officers’ ‘overzealous’ action…