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…
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…
Cooking a Pakistani chaos casserole
Today, in a journalistic coup that would make Woodward and Bernstein weep with envy, we bring you the coveted recipe that has kept a nation of 220 million perpetually teetering…
A menace to democracy
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom,” said William Pitt. “It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” Honourable exceptions past and present…
Is this a democracy in decline?
The US is in crisis – not one but many. In case you are wondering, Trump did not create these crises; they were already there. He merely exploited them to…
How democracy was derailed — Part – III
As we saw in the previous article in this series (April 28), between the Tamizuddin judgment and the advice rendered under Special Reference No 1, the federal court led by…
How democracy was derailed — Part – II
As discussed in the previous article in this series (published on April 21), the imposition of Section 92A and dismissal of the Bengal Assembly was a body blow to democracy.…
Democracy beyond elections
Elections are an integral part of democracy. But even a free and fair election is not the only factor that makes a country a liberal democracy. In an essay published…
Democracy vs economy
As Pakistan’s two and a half mainstream political parties [one half of a party remains excluded from politics] aspire for power in Islamabad, their failure to focus on the economy…
