TAKING U-TURNS CAN BE DANGEROUS, MR PRIME MINISTER

Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

03335363248

         PM Imran Khan’s parrot-like rhetoric ‘No NRO’ or ‘Kisi Ko Nahi Choron Ga’ yesterday and today has somehow cemented the belief about him as being ‘intoxicated’. But what about hundreds of thousands of those ‘non-intoxicated’ audience who has been clapping on his daze statement of mind (statement). (English translation of an Urdu tweet by this scribe).   

The kind of political atmosphere that has developed since PTI’s rise to prominence, not just to power, is bad for just about everything and everybody for a variety of reasons. It does nobody any favours, least of all the government itself, when the prime minister speaks in a manner that he did while inaugurating a CPEC-related motorway project (Havelian-Mansehra Section of Hazara Motorway) on Monday and Mianwali on inaugurating several mega projects on Friday.

Since the moment was about projects and roads, and especially since the Chinese ambassador was reportedly in attendance, one expected to be spared the usual “No NRO” speech that the nation is treated to every time the prime minister makes an outing. Yet not only was there a lot of “No NRO,” he also chewed into the opposition a lot more than usual. And nobody was laughing, except senior government officials eager to please the prime minister perhaps, when Imran Khan mimicked Bilawal Bhutto’s Urdu accent. Such antics hardly harm the opposition, especially when everybody is so used to hearing the same remarks over and over again. If anything, Bilawal has been enjoying a wave of social media sympathy since immediately after Imran’s speech.

The PTI and its Prime Minister is disturbed at former PM Nawaz Sharif’s departure for treatment abroad after repeated assertions by Imran Khan not to give an NRO to anyone. The self-righteous PM put the responsibility on the court and blamed the judiciary for maintaining dual standards of justice, one for the powerful and the other for the powerless. He demanded that the judiciary restore public trust in itself.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, did well to set the record straight, saying the permission to Sharif to travel abroad was given by the PTI government itself rather than any court. The PM needs to make amends for his remarks. Later, he sounded skeptical about the veracity of medical reports on the health of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, saying he was shocked to see the way the former premier ran up the stairs of the air ambulance. “After seeing him going up the plane stairs, I once again went through the medical reports that suggested he has heart problem, his kidneys are also not functioning properly and that he is a diabetic,” Khan told a gathering in his hometown.

Khan gave undertakings to alliance partners which were difficult to fulfill. Now, each one is asking for its pound of flesh. The MQM wants the fulfilment of huge financial commitments besides taking it into confidence in policymaking. The PML-Q leadership sought a humane treatment for Mr Sharif. The Chaudhries also expressed reservations about the ruling party’s performance, maintaining that if the government failed to undertake course rectification, none would be willing to become Prime Minister within a few months. The GDA complained that the PM was ignoring Sindh. The allies are reminding Khan that he is running the country with a wafer thin majority.

Distresses in the case of the PTI are coming not as single spies but in battalions. The NAB has suddenly felt the need to ensure that accountability is not seen to be one-sided and that this requires looking into the cases of leaders who had been in power for the last 12 months. The ECP, which had allowed the PTI’s foreign assets case linger on for years, has decided to hear it on day-to-day basis.

This ought to have been clear to almost anybody yet, somehow, such facts continue to dodge the prime minister as well as his many special advisors. And three, and perhaps most importantly, such rhetoric no doubt further alienates the opposition, on top of the dozens of arrests and corruption cases of course, and you don’t have to be prime minister to understand just what kind of strain that can put on the process of legislation in Parliament. So ordinary people, whose interests governments are primarily meant to serve through effective legislation, become the biggest losers.

Only very recently, the government had to withdraw as many as 11 presidential ordinances, which it muscled through the House, when the opposition threatened a no-confidence motion against the deputy speaker. How does the government expect this particular, rare example of reconciliation in the national assembly to play out now? Already PTI’s performance is not much to write home about in areas that really matter. Foreign relations stand more or less where PML-N left them, especially the matter getting Uncle Sam to resume the free aid, and the less said about the economy the better. If, somewhat correctly, the finance and foreign ministries are hamstrung because of the rot they inherited, what is the excuse about failure to legislate?

The only way for the PTI to complete its tenure is to seek the opposition’s support. The mainstream opposition wants Mr Khan not because it likes him, but because it needs him to keep the system on rails. They want electoral reforms, NAB reforms and a third tenure for an elected government leading to a smooth transition of power. For this Imran Khan will have to tone down his rhetoric, treat opposition leaders decently and develop working relations with the opposition.

Eventually, surely, the government will realise that taking the opposition along is an essential requirement of representative government. But the longer it takes, the more it will paralyse the whole system. And, as always, the common man will continue to pay the price for a direction-less government trying to find its feet.

AZADI MARCH, AILING NAWAZ SHARIF, ANCHORPERSONS, THE WORD “DEAL” & IT’S TOR’S

The Pakistani media has started mongering about the “deal” between the confined former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the PTI government amid the sudden deterioration of health of Mian Nawaz Sharif. The top notched anchors on the next day summoned by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for this “secret revelation” and later few of them were imposed penalty and few managed to escape.

 

However, let’s suppose, if the prophecy of anchorpersons sooner or later proved to be right than what would be possible TOR’S of that ‘deal’ is the prompt question that would have been divulged from media persons through their ‘sources’.   

It seems the government has realised, however late, that some of its more eager ministers went perhaps a little too far in making fun, so to speak, of Nawaz Sharif’s illness. Special Assistant to Prime Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan, especially, could have avoided the usual crude jokes, alluding to the former prime minister’s diet, etc, as he was rushed to the hospital because of a dangerously low blood platelet count. Nobody’s cracking any jokes now as the Punjab health minister confirmed that Nawaz did, indeed, suffer a “minor heart attack” two days ago and he was suffering from a disease that causes internal bleeding and diminishes platelets.

And it was largely because of the government’s non-serious attitude that rumours quickly started doing the rounds; from talk of a deal to reports of an air ambulance, fuelled and ready at Lahore airport, waiting to take the ex-PM out of the country just so the government can escape the worst of the blame if something were to happen to Sharif. The manner in which Maryam Nawaz was first denied permission to see her father in hospital, then allowed only a brief visit, could also have been handled better. Eventually Prime Minister Imran Khan himself was forced to issue a statement wishing Nawaz a speedy recovery and allowing Maryam to meet him. But he’ll understand just why PML-N, especially Nawaz Sharif, is dismissing the apparent good-will as too little too late.

Needless to say that this particular episode came at an awkward time for the government; when all its attention was turned towards garrisoning the capital in anticipation of Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s imminent siege of Islamabad. Since PML-N is a big part of the agitation, that too on Nawaz Sharif’s personal insistence (even though Shahbaz was resistant), one can be sure that Nawaz’s deteriorating health and the government’s unimpressive way of dealing with it will come up, repeatedly, during the dharna.

 

Out on bail for the time being, should his health improve, Nawaz will once again cast a long shadow on the present phase of Pakistan’s politics. PTI’s case is not helped by the economic burden its policies have placed on the common man. With wages and jobs diminishing, prices constantly rising, and little chance of relief on the horizon, the job of a united opposition in terms of whipping up public sentiment against the government is made that much easier. Now there’ll be more meat, as they say, in additional allegations of political victimisation with Nawaz naturally paraded as the principal exhibit.

Even convicted and apparently out of the picture for a long time, Nawaz Sharif has managed to out maneuver the government in more ways than one. Surely those in the power need a better understanding of dealing with political prisoners, regardless of the nature of their conviction.

Courtesy DT

DIARY OF A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

Janoo is so depress, kay don’t even ask. He’s never been one of those ‘Kashmir hamara hai’ brigade like Mulloo’s husband Tony who’s always talked about it like it was a corner plot in Defence left to him by his Dada Jan. Janoo’s always said kay bhai Kashmiris have a right to decide for themselves and that they are owed a pebbly side. But I don’t think so even Janoo, who is Oxford pass as you know, imagined that BJP could behave like a qabza group and say bus it’s ours now. And for me, sub say worst, are those Indian goondas crowing kay now we can have our pick of fair fair Kashmiri girls. Could anything be more ghatiya, more chilling?

Vaisay, it’s not just Janoo who didn’t see it coming. Even our guvmunt didn’t. Or Pinky Pirni who aagay peechhay can see so much into the future. They’ve all gone into shock, like Aunty Pussy did when Jonker’s cheapster wife Miss Shumaila ran away with our family hairlooms. Only last month when Imran came back from his chukker to White House Mulloo called me up to crow on the phone like our maali’s rooster kay did I see how Imran went and conquered America? And Tony is saying kay Kashmir matter is also being sorted, Trump offered to meditate with India. So now I called her back and said, ‘If this had been Nawaz’s time and Moody had stolen Kashmir from under his nose, Imran would have been standing on a container, shouting himself horse about honour. The maulvis would’ve brought everything to a stan still. Where are the maulvis today, haan? Not ONE WORD out of them. And now that Imran’s PM himself, instead of showing eyes to Moody, what’s he doing to avenge Kashmir? He’s busy arresting Maryam Sharif and shutting up journalists! Wah bhai! What ghairat, what honour!’ She pretended she couldn’t hear me. ‘Line is very bad …’ Okay, I said, Janoo will call Tony then. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘Tony’s gone to his lands.’ ‘I hope not the ones that Dada Jan left him?’ I replied. 

TFT 

BYE BYE PAKISTAN

MAHTAB BASHIR
mahtabbashir@gmail.com
+92 333 5363248

Islamabad

There’s an old dictum goes on like “If a Muslim and a Non-Muslim (simultaneously) enters into a deep water- the one who knows how to swim will come out as a survivor”.

The dismal start of the WC2019 campaign against minnows Windies, winning the toss against India and Australia and opted to bat first knowing well our strength is bowling, the top and middle order continuous failure, our lingering chase against Kiwis and Afghanis (till the 5oth over) that put us below the New Zealanders in NRR and last but indeed not the least prior to our final encounter against Bangladesh the skipper boasting of “We will make 500+ against Bangalis to cement our place in top 4” - knowing the fact that Pakistan has not a single slogger but surprisingly, Asif Ali who was not part of the playing 11 - was few of recipes for own disaster.  

In the matters of cricket, the Murphy’s Law always comes handy that if something unpleasant is likely to happen, it does happen. Pakistanis were relying much on the dreamy 1992 World Cup parallels, which could not become a reality even though the Green Shirt ended the trophy chase at a high note against Bangladesh. But the game is over. Despite beating Bangladesh with 94 runs in its last match, and despite having 11 points on the table, the team Pakistan could not qualify for the semifinal, given the pesky format ruling the game. It was next to impossible to pile up a huge score and then bowl out the opponents at a low score. When Pakistan posted 315-9 in the Friday match, they were to bowl out Bangladesh for just eight.

 

The weird rules aside, Pakistan, however, began the tournament at a dismal note, partly due to poor performance (against West Indies), and partly due to gods of weather (in match against Sri Lanka). The team, once outsmarted by India and Australia, however, picked up the momentum and started striking back, much to the pleasure of the gallery. The whole Pakistan started seeing parallels with the fascinating 1992 World Cup. Pakistan beat South Africa, England and New Zealand with style and smartness but the other factors, like New Zealand and England match, did not stand by us.

The tournament offers both bitter and sweet lessons to the team management to reflect over. The team selection in the pre-tournament days had many question marks. Leaving out Muhammad Amir and Wahab Riaz and including out-of-form Hassan Ali and Shoaib Malik speak volumes of the selectors’ ability to pick the best. The first five games of the tournament put up a poor captaincy, poor team management and poor performance. Despite an unforgivable onslaught against the team on social media, the team did not lose composure and soon overcame the three factors. The captain, the team and the team management, all are worthy of congratulations.

 

Since 1992, every time the world cup ends, barring 1999, we start talking of team’s rebuilding. This time, we can say that we have got a team, a real team, but it needs to be refined, groomed and trained. Starting from the team selection, we have a plenty of choice in bowlers and batsmen. The abundance of choice will create tough competition among the players to outplay each other to grab a berth in the team. Moreover, the team should be given ample chances to exhibit their talent in the international cricket. Pakistan is thankfully out of terrorism blues, so the international community must be convinced to start playing cricket in Pakistan.* 

FAKE NEWS & WAR HYSTERIA

OVER the past few weeks, the war drums have been beaten at fever pitch in South Asia.

Fortunately, although the danger of conflict has not entirely subsided, tempers have cooled considerably in the region.

This may be a good time, then, to deconstruct the build-up, climax and climbdown of the latest saga that brought Pakistan and India to the brink of war.

While much has been said about the political, military and diplomatic dimensions of the crisis, greater attention needs to be paid to the coverage of the events by the media, specifically fake news and the “currents of misinformation”, as one New York Times columnist put it, that surrounded the episode.

Propaganda, in times of both war and peace, is not new, as states have employed the media to wage psychological warfare against their opponents.

From Goebbels’ slickly packaged lies about the ‘glory’ of the Third Reich to the regular exchanges of propaganda between the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War, the modern age is one that has seen misinformation deployed with aplomb.

However, in the age of social media and citizen journalism, fake news has become a powerful and extremely dangerous tool in the hands of state and non-state actors, where misinformation and outright lies are peddled shamelessly to mislead the public.

Lynch mobs have murdered people over WhatsApp rumours while conspiracy theorists and others of their ilk have found an open field for feeding people lies through social media.

In the context of the recent Pakistan-India stand-off, the media on both sides has indulged in peddling propaganda and airing fake news.

At the outset of the crisis, India claimed killing 300 militants in the Balakot strike; as independent observers later noted, Delhi was hardly truthful in its assertions.

Moreover, armchair ‘generals’ on prime-time talk shows egged on their respective establishments towards war; the Indian media was particularly vitriolic in its shrill anti-Pakistan pronouncements.

It is important, for the sake of peace and the prevalence of truth, for saner minds in South Asia to rationally analyse the media coverage of the recent stand-off.

It should not be forgotten that the basic duty of the media remains truth telling, not leading the dance of war.

There are plenty of journalistic and social forums in South Asia that can be used to discuss how to handle such situations in future, particularly how to counter fake news — and editors can take a leading role in this.

In a region of over one billion people, and with both states possessing nuclear weapons, the stakes are simply too high to let the hawks and armchair warriors of the media play cheerleader for war.

The goal is responsible and accurate reporting, while there should be zero tolerance for fake news and conspiracy theories being trotted out on TV screens and websites in sensitive times.

Courtesy: Dawn 

IAF PILOT ABHINANDAN RETURNS FROM PAKISTAN

*Pakistani PM (IK) outplays Indian PM (NM)

*Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman to send back home today (Friday, March 1, 2019) as a peace gesture from Pakistan

*PM Modi busy in political point scoring

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday announced that Pakistan will release captured Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, tomorrow (Friday) as a peace gesture.

Wing Commander Abhinandan was taken into custody on Wednesday after his MIG-21 was shot down by Pakistan Air Force for intruding into Pakistani air space on the Line of Control (LoC).

Addressing the joint session of parliament, Prime Minister Imran announced that his government had decided to return Abhinandan to India as a goodwill gesture and to show Pakistan’s commitment to peace.

“In our desire for peace, I announce that tomorrow, and as a first step to open negotiations, Pakistan will be releasing the Indian Air Force officer in our custody,” PM Imran said.

The gesture was greeted with near unanimous support in the parliament.

“Pakistan’s desire for de-escalation should not be confused as weakness,” PM Imran stressed, as he thanked the parliamentary opposition for the continued support amid rising tensions with India.

“The only purpose of our strike was to demonstrate our capability and will,” he said while addressing the House. “We did not want to inflict any casualty on India as we wanted to act in a responsible manner.”

PM Khan said he tried to call Indian PM Narendra Modi on the phone yesterday (Wednesday) because “escalation is not in our interests nor in India’s”.

“I reached out to New Delhi after assuming charge as prime minister. I wrote to Narendra Modi and suggested a meeting between the foreign ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. But we did not get a positive response.”

Imran said Islamabad realised that due to the upcoming elections in India, the Narendra Modi-led BJP [Bhartiya Janata party] government was not very keen on maintaining good ties with Pakistan.

“We decided to wait until after India’s general elections. We opened up Kartarpur Corridor as a positive gesture but we feared misadventures,” he said.

“Then the Pulwama attack happened. Within half an hour, India blamed Pakistan for the attack. We had Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman visiting Islamabad. Why would we sabotage an important conference? What could we gain from it?”

The prime minister said that he had publicly offered complete cooperation to India in investigating the Pulwama suicide attack. “But instead of sharing any intelligence, India opted for war-hysteria. I want to pay homage to Pakistan’s media for the responsible coverage. Our media did not engage in warmongering,” said Imran.

No country allows its sovereignty to be attacked. India shared the dossier today, after breaching international laws and attacking Pakistan, he added.

Imran said the Pakistani nation was inspired by heroes like Tipu Sultan and would never surrender to the enemy or compromise its dignity.

“As a dignified nation, we will fight till our last breath if forced to choose between freedom and slavery,” he said.

The prime minister also made a comparison between the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar who chose to surrender and Tipu Sultan, the Ruler of Maysore, who fought till his death.

“We’d heard about the two kings. But our hero is Tipu Sultan,” Imran Khan referred to the brave Ruler of Maysore, who used to say: ‘A lion’s life for a day is better than that of hundred years of a jackal.’

Addressing the joint sitting of both houses of parliament, National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif lauded the Pakistan Army and air force for thwarting India’s aggression.

“Pakistan is united and the entire nation speaks in one voice,” he said, adding that our armed forces will give blow to the enemy.

Shehbaz Sharif said this was an important turn in the history of the country adding that Pakistan retaliated well to counter the Indian aggression.

He said Kashmir was bleeding and the international bodies were silent.

He further said that Pakistan should not attend OIC meetings till the groups condemns atrocities in Kashmir.

Tensions between Pakistan and India escalated dramatically on February 14 when a young Kashmiri rammed an explosives-laden car into an Indian paramilitary convoy, killing at least 44 soldiers.

India was quick to blame Pakistan for the suicide bombing.

PM Imran offered every possible help in the investigation, but India turned down the offer and whipped up war hysteria.

On February 26, the Indian Air Force violated Pakistani airspace. The country’s top civil and military leadership declared the violation of airspace by Indian fighter jets “uncalled for aggression” and decided that the country would respond at a “time and place of its choosing”.

On February 27, Pakistan announced it had shot down two Indian fighter jets that attempted to violate its airspace and captured an Indian pilot. The military’s media wing later released a video of the pilot, who introduced himself as Wing Commander Abhinandan bearing service number 27981.

Pakistani military’s spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said in a press conference that the armed forces had responsibly retaliated to Indian incursion by striking a target few miles from an Indian military’s administrative unit to ensure there were no human life or collateral damage.

“We decided to not hit a military target or endanger human life. We did not want to retaliate at the cost of regional peace. We do not want escalation,” he told reporters.

A few hours later, Prime Minister Imran Khan took the nation into confidence over the armed forces’ response. As escalating tensions fuelled concerns of all-out war between nuclear-tipped Pakistan, Imran warned of catastrophic consequences should “better sense” not prevail.

The premier ended his speech with another peace talks offer and cooperation in Pulwama attack investigation to India.

A day earlier, the top political leadership of the country was given an in-camera briefing at the Parliament House.

Opposition parties expressed satisfaction over the briefing mainly conducted by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

An official handout issued by the National Assembly Secretariat said: “The forum unanimously expressed that they stand united against any aggression against Pakistan and will support the government and its institutions unconditionally.”

It said the participants also “expressed hope that those who want peace and stability will prevail as war is not an option but a failure of policy”.

WAR HYSTERIA FROM INDIA

Instead of heeding the counsel of rational voices in and outside the country, the Indian authorities have unfortunately preferred playing to the gallery in the post-Pulwama attack situation. When serving Indian military officers are cautioning that such high quantities of explosives could not have been transported from across the Line of Control (LoC), New Delhi really could have avoided needless jingoism and instead pay more attention to investigations. This is all the more important given Pakistan has unequivocally condemned the attack and expressed its desire to cooperate with the investigation.

 

With the Modi administration pointing fingers towards Pakistan without providing any evidence, the ratings-driven corporate media across the border has found an opportunity to stir war hysteria. Bollywood and Indian cricket celebrities have been quick to jump the bandwagon, with highly irresponsible statements which will only damage the cause of peace and further the designs of hate-mongers and hawks on both sides.

In this situation, the worst affected have been Kashmiri Muslims who are being harassed by Hindutva goons. There have been multiple reports about Kashmiris, particularly in the states of Uttarkhand and Haryana, are being forced to vacate rented properties and to leave towns where they live for education and employment. While New Delhi has issued a public safety alert in view of the situation, more would be needed on its part to ensure protection of Kashmiris living in India.

The authorities must realise that it is simply impossible for them to stir war hysteria, on the one hand, by accusing Pakistan without any evidence to the effect, and to keep the Hindutva brigade in check at the same time. The latter feeds on the anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan rhetoric, and the Modi administration has provided it with an open field by opting for shortsighted jingoism instead of a rational approach. The Modi administration as well as the state institutions in New Delhi know fully well that a war is desirable to neither side given the economic cost it will entail; both countries have a lot at stake in terms of their economic performance indicators.

 

In this situation, India’s shortsighted approach, merely directed at improving its chances in the upcoming election, is having disastrous consequences for the people on both sides. The authorities in New Delhi will be well advised to tone down on the jingoist rhetoric and control the Hindutva brigade and its attacks on innocent civilians.

Enough blood has been shed in Indian-occupied Kashmir, and it has only served vested interests away from the Valley. It’s about time all sides start pondering upon a peaceful resolution to the dispute. 

Courtesy Daily Times