Instead of taking the high road, using the opportunity to deal pragmatically with the “Panama Leaks” explaining how and why his family’s offshore companies and accounts thereof had come into existence, PM Mian Nawaz Sharif (MNS) seriously disappointed the nation by choosing to go the “fog of politics” route. Instead of exercising good sense he…
Dear Readers, Last year the “Swiss Leaks”, a veritable “Who’s who” of over 100000 clients globally holding 30000 accounts with HSBC in Geneva revealed massive tax avoidance. Now we have the Panama Papers, a massive leak of 11.5 million files from the database of a single offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca wherein Is shown how…
Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani was so upset at Musharraf leaving the country, he asked Parliament to amend the Constitution and undo Article 6 pertaining to treason “since it had not only failed to protect the Constitution but parliament and democracy as well”. Treason is defined as either “the betrayal of one’s own country by waging…
Explosives packed with ball bearings, nails, iron filings, etc. ripped through the families gathered in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore to celebrate Easter Sunday on March 27, taking more than 70 lives (including 29 children) and 300 injured, among them an unusually high number of women and children. Claiming responsibility for the horror, a splinter…
The quality of the lives of the “great silent majority” has deteriorated substantially even as a privileged few have become rich beyond compare. The disparity between the haves and have-nots has widened substantially, with the percentage of the nation’s poor rising from 23% to 40% the middle class has virtually been wiped out. Seething public…
Dear Readers, Today our lives seem incomplete without mass media. The media (and journalists) can revel in freedoms that seemed almost improbable a decade and a bit ago; the print sector continues to expand bolstered by digital technologies and new media platforms. The electronic media has advanced by leaps and bounds and enjoys unprecedented freedom…
Landing back in Karachi on Mar 3, 2016 all of a sudden after going off into self-imposed exile on Aug 14, 2013 (what he calls symbolically his own personal Independence Day from Altaf Hussain), former Mayor of Karachi Syed Mustafa Kamal explained in his post-arrival Press Conference (1) Why he left the country in the…
An economic force-multiplier encompassing road connectivity, energy, and infrastructure outlays, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) faces a host of internal and external security challenges. Annunciated by the Chinese President, “One Belt, One Road” OBOR concept connects China to markets in Asia, Europe and beyond. Projected at US$ 46 billion, US$ 36 billion for energy projects…
The glaring apathy of the developed world towards cases of well-known corruption taking refuge in their countries to secure ill-gotten gains is scandalous. Attending seminars and conferences focussed on countering corruption, one frequently listens to technocrats from the developed world pontificating about dealing with corruption in the third (and developing) world, this is an arrogant…
Corruption has been alive and well in Pakistan for over 6 decades. Soon after the Quaid died and with Liaquat Ali Khan subsequently assassinated in 1951, a small coterie of bureaucrats and their businessmen friends gave it momentum. Even then it remained within what one optimistically calls “limits”. Over the last decade or so, starting…
