The same old power policy
When ex-PM Yousuf Raza Gilani famously dubbed Nargis Sethi the ‘Condoleeza Rice of Pakistan’ he may have been on to something. Sethi is indeed a formidable administrator with an enviable…
Two parties, two realities
Life at the Karachi airport isn’t quite like the calm exchanges between parliamentarians belonging to the PPP and the PML-N. Down at the airport last week, Chief Minister Qaim Ali…
The PPP disconnect
A disconnect exists between the stance taken by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto and the rest of the party he heads, including his father, on the ongoing…
The siege within
On his return to London after signing the Munich agreement in September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain said to a cheering crowed: “I believe it is peace for our…
Nature of the state
Mama Qadeer’s long walk to Islamabad ended up at the UN. The decision of the marchers to go over the heads of Pakistani state managers and seek UN intervention in…
The naming obsession
When the prime minister recently visited the under-construction airport in Islamabad, some PPP stalwarts urged him to name it the New Benazir Bhutto International Airport. Former premier Yousuf Raza Gilani…
Benazir and successors
Six years ago on this day, Mian Nawaz Sharif stood in a shocked General Hospital in Rawalpindi consoling workers of a political party he had fought against all along, promising…
Treason… what treason?
November 3, 2007, the emergency measure proclaimed on that date, was an act more of necessity than anything else. Gen Musharraf was not gathering power unto himself, the normal rationale…
They just fade away
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani stepped down as chief of army staff on Friday. He passed on the baton, and, with it, the trammelling burden of responsibility, to his successor General…
The lies our leaders tell
Novelists and playwrights have vividly described the remorse that assails those who have done evil, they have portrayed the torment of a stricken conscience and the long nights of sleeplessness…
