Amid the congratulations
There is a lot of trumpeting and congratulations over the fact that dictatorship has been eliminated from Pakistan forever because of the newly revamped "treason" clause in the proposed 18th…
Zia’s decade of darkness
Lahore under terror siege Lahore under terror siege the unenviable position of the most invidious of Pakistan’s rulers, among democrats and dictators alike, is occupied by Ziaul Haq, the dictator-general…
Aid
At the outset this is not an article praising our Egyptian brothers for their tremendous feat of removing a 30-year-old dictatorship. Political analysts are more competent to comment on the…
NRO is dead, long live NRO
The highly controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance is dead since November 2009, but only legally and constitutionally. Politically, however, the NRO-which represented a power-sharing arrangement between a dictator and the country’s…
No clear path
There`s one thing the world is learning about Pakistan: this is a nation that likes binaries. Civil and military; Islam and secularism; dictatorships and democracies; China and the US; Sufi…
Importance of political economics
One has to make a distinction between political economics and the dictatorial economics in developing countries. The conceptual frame is entirely different and the consequences that flow out of it…
Confronting the bomb
In this age of market dictatorship, superficial bestsellers have trivialised the book world. However, every now and then one comes across a work that can not be reviewed in one…
People without power
It was during military dictator Zia ul Haq’s rule that our illustrious economist Dr Mahbubul Haq, who was then federal minister for finance and planning, was heard making this comment:…
Constitutional trap
The shadow of Zia still looms large over our political scene. Several parliaments and parliamentary committees have tried to exorcise this dictator’s ghost from the constitution but they never succeeded…
Side-effect
International Democracy Day is celebrated on 15 September. Marred by dictatorial rules, democratic order and national identity remain the two fundamentally unresolved questions for our state and society. In present…
