Better democracy
PAKISTAN’S electoral history is a tale of evolving political consciousness, as evidenced by voter turnout oscillations. The dismally low 44 per cent turnout in 2008, a manifestation of public scepticism,…
Democracy Summit
TOWARDS the end of March, the US hosted the second Democracy Summit. The stated objective was to put democracy and human rights at the heart of the Biden administration’s foreign…
Aborting democracy
WE have failed to democratise since 1947 thanks mainly to the security establishment as well as all major political parties. True, we are no North Korea — small buds of…
Breakdown of democracy
PAKISTAN is experiencing a complete breakdown of democracy with a powerless civilian set-up at the centre, caretaker governments in Punjab and KP serving beyond their constitutional mandate, a divided judiciary…
Leaking democracy
THE recent spate of leaked audios of conversations among PML-N government leaders as well as PTI leaders is a matter of grave concern for the right to privacy, cybersecurity and civilian supremacy,…
Democracy and dystopia
IN Ireland, ordinary people are hoarding firewood, afraid that they will not be able to heat their homes in the upcoming winter owing to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. In Iran, protests against the…
Don’t disrupt democracy
SPECULATION and discussions regarding a technocratic government, with an extended tenure of two to three years to extricate the economy from its woes, are rife. The proposal is flawed on several grounds…
Authoritarianism & democracy
RECENTLY, Salahuddin Ahmed, a well-known legal eagle of Pakistan, tweeted about feeling gloomy. And he wasn’t referring to inflation or the floods. His concern was the state of democracy in…
Absent democracy
WHAT is democracy? The focus of democracy is the people, and its core idea is self-governance. So if the people were to govern themselves, would you imagine them making policies…
Democracy and prosperity at 75
THOUGH it was a few years ago, I still vividly remember an elderly acquaintance telling me about his perilous journey from East Punjab to Multan during partition. The gentleman was…
