Let the games begin
ELECTIONS and the desired results (the musbat or positive kind) are absorbing all the oxygen in town. Every discussion in the capital (and its neighbouring areas) begins and ends with…
The Younger Games
WHAT do Madonna and Iffat Omar have in common, other than the obvious gender? They were both victims of one of the last taboos that rears its ugly head every…
Strategic games
IT is August 2021. Pakistani spymasters, pro-establishment ideologues and then prime minister Imran Khan unanimously celebrate the re-conquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban. The age-old pursuit of a ‘friendly government’…
Policy games we play
WHY do governments fail to do what they say they want to do? Any student of public policy will testify that policy is not what they say they will do…
Political sports
The Paris Olympics 2024 began as gentle rain fell over the venue. This was beyond the control of organizers and did nothing to spoil the opening ceremony. What does raise…
Fixing politics by non-political means
Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a September 2006 coup and subsequently convicted of corruption, is back in the country after years in exile. His party…
Unending political conflict
Imran Khan has claimed that unknown assassins were positioned at the Judicial Complex Islamabad on March 18, 2023 when he had to appear (finally) in court in the Toshakhana case…
Twists and turns of a political nightmare
The vote of no-confidence against former prime minister Imran Khan earlier in the year was a painful process. After many twists and turns, the vote of no-confidence was ultimately conducted…
A new political accord
Pakistan is now seventy-five. In these long years there were very few occasions when a genuine joy was felt by the whole nation. Few wins in cricket and field hockey…
Imran’s legal games
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” — Hamlet, William Shakespeare ONE of the two central pillars of democratic constitutionalism, namely, the peaceful transfer of power through a…
