Politics of boycott
IT is again the season of boycotts. The PTI has decided to boycott the upcoming by-elections in all provinces except KP where it has its own provincial government. The party founder Imran…
Pandemonium in assembly
HARDLY a week had passed since the Punjab Assembly Speaker withdrew the suspension orders against 26 PTI-supported MPAs embroiled in rowdyism when another incident of physical assault on a treasury…
Our crypto delusion
On May 30, 2025, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) issued a statement that should have ignited a national debate. Instead, it was received with relief. In carefully measured prose,…
Fixing the budget oversight
Parliament’s constitutional ‘power of the purse’ is meant to anchor democratic control over public money, yet in Pakistan the reality rarely lives up to the principle. The constitution and the…
Pakistan ready for AI in governance?
In the digital age, the world is undergoing a significant shift. Artificial intelligence (AI), once the stuff of science fiction and confined to elite research labs, is now an active…
Unpacking governance dysfunction
Part - II Pakistan has just demonstrated a remarkable capacity to safeguard its sovereignty against a far larger adversary. Its resilient defence and swift response compelled a militarily and financially…
Unpacking governance dysfunction (Part – I)
Pakistan’s polycrisis – its economic volatility, political turbulence, social fragmentation, and institutional decay – has one common denominator: a breakdown of governance. Decades of elite capture, politicisation and policy drift…
Stories and guesswork
MANY years ago, I was asked the following question: is it true that when a country gets onto an IMF programme it is never able to exit and remains in…
Vacuous governance
ARE Pakistanis justified in regarding Islamabad as superfluous to their governance? Do they need a president? The present incumbent perches in a gilded cage, his wings clipped by the 18th…
Prime minister’s responsibility
ONCE again, in his characteristically blunt style, Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced that he would not engage in talks with Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif, because…
