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Rule of law as ‘blackmail’

Literature on the justice system in Pakistan states that litigants often use delay as a strategy in their court cases to impose costs on the opposing parties. Basically, rule of…

Rule Of Law Or Men?

Rule of law or men?

Back in September 2016, I used this title to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision in the matter of Mustafa Impex, which for me affirmed that “rule of men is a…

Hope for rule of law

THE difference couldn’t have been starker. In his address to the Gujranwala rally, Nawaz Sharif spent the first few minutes asking his supporters how they were doing. Did they have…

Scofflaws at work

A polity that runs out of the ability to generate new ideas has no option but to rehash old and failed ones. We’ve seen the odd piece about the presidential…

Draft law of National Tax Tribunal – I

"...the raison d'être of establishing special tribunals has been to dispense better quality of justice where people, better trained in particular fields and disciplines could provide quality decisions and resolution…

Foreign firms wary as China launches investment law

Accustomed to unfulfilled promises from the Chinese government, foreign businesses are keeping a wary eye on a nascent law aimed at addressing their long-standing grievances about unfair treatment in the…

An Administrative Blackhole

An administrative blackhole

Karachi seems to be a hapless city, with no one owning it despite the fact that it feeds millions of people. Its problems are increasing day by day and no…

The Administrative Mindset

The administrative mindset

Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, the PTI government has set out to retool the civil service. In his address to senior bureaucrats on September 14, the prime minister…

Lawless lawyers

Lawyers were at it again. Taking the law into their own hands seems to have become an ongoing practice and their favourite pastime. Recently, they chose Faisalabad as the arena…

A Flawed Fiscal Policy

A flawed fiscal policy

The financial year 2018-19 began with an unprecedented move when an unelected finance minister presented the incumbent government’s sixth full-year budget in a five-year term. Other than the apparent scorn…