Viewpoint
Whilst on Monday, President Asif Ali Zardari held a special signing ceremony, attended by leaders of all the parliamentary parties and chief ministers, to celebrate the passage of the 18th…
Rover’s Diary: Four steps to counter provincial disharmony
Thirty-six years have passed when a more or less consensus constitution was approved by the parliament in Pakistan. It was after twenty-six years of its inception that the nation achieved…
Sovereignty and taxation
The biggest cheer which the new budget and what constitutes the government’s economic policy has brought is that there will be no new taxes in the next fiscal year. One…
Waziristan: back to square one
The causes that led us to the present turmoil in Swat need to be considered. Was it the first time that Sufi Muhammad demanded implementation of Sharia laws in Malakand…
Calls for policy review
A Parliamentary committee, deliberating issues of national security, recently called for a review of the country’s foreign policy. It may be assumed that its members were thinking primarily of Pakistan’s…
Constitutional reforms – points to ponder
A major overhaul of 1973 constitution has been on the cards ever since the installation of the present dispensation. The government has formed a parliamentary constitutional reforms committee which is…
Obama & South Asia
The besetting sin of South Asian analyses is a total indifference to any interests save one’s own. Indian reactions to President Barack Obama’s speech in Mumbai on Nov 7 and…
Revisiting basic structure
Every few years the question of the basic structure of the constitution of Pakistan and the limitations of parliament’s power become issues of great public interest. In 2010, it was…
What point have we made?
The government’s capitulation on the NATO supply routes was expected even when it was playing its usual diversionary game through parliamentary gimmickry. It had neither the will nor the spine…
BD secularists in Islamic cloak
‘UNPRECEDENTED eleiction!’ The headline in the Bengali-language newspaper Jugantari aptly described Bangladesh’s parliamentary election.
