Renzi faces pressure to stay in office as Italy referendum defeat looms
When a handful of European leaders met Barack Obama in Berlin this month to say their goodbyes, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi informed the group that he may well lose…
Permanent change
Transitions are a potent time and engender both fear and hope. There is one on in the US at this moment. Political philosophies, though, have tended to be more deterministic…
What’s next for Nawaz Sharif?
Nawaz Sharif’s much-awaited speech in the National Assembly was as unconvincing as his two previous addresses to the nation. It was the same detail of family business and tale of…
Sabeen and Perween’s Pakistan
On this last Sunday of April, with the weekend heat wave lashing Karachi, I intend to deflect my thoughts from the after-shocks of the Panama Papers, leaked three weeks ago,…
An imperfect solution
Having called each other rats, sworn to rip apart stomachs to extract corruption money including loan write-offs, implied preference for selective accountability, declared the PM ghaddar, claimed wringing the necks…
Accountability moves
Behold Pakistan’s latest sporting craze: the game of accountability one-upmanship. One Sharif called for ‘across-the-board accountability’ and was reported to have removed a number of military officers on corruption charges;…
The judgement and after
It may be too early to write off the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) after the crushing blow dealt by the judicial commission report. Yet the prognosis is not promising. Despite the…
Criminalisation of politics
Politics and crime form almost a symbiotic relationship. Both are driven by the same impulse — the acquisition of money and power. Politics needs money to buy influence and crime…
The terror landscape
There are three clear divisions of the TTP collage. The first is TTP Central, based in North Waziristan and controlling operations from there. Mostly consisting of the Mehsud tribes and…
Salam, Abdus Salam
Four days from now, on January 29, much of Pakistan will forget – or refuse to remember – Dr Mohammad Abdus Salam on what would have been his 88th birthday.…
