Showing posts with label Daily Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Times. Show all posts

Blast from the past | And then he said I AM not NURTERED in Military Nursery

Imran tells party to back Musharraf


PESHAWAR: Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), said on Sunday that the PTI had no option but to support the presidential referendum to put an end to the massive corruption the nation has witnessed in the past.
"The reason why his party was in favour of the referendum was because it wanted to strengthen President Musharraf to enable him not to allow a revival of the Benazir-Nawaz periods which were fraught with corruption," said Mr Khan while addressing a party workers' provincial convention here.
The PTI chief said it was imperative that General Musharraf's reform agenda continues. "I have taken an initiative and have included my wife Jemima in the struggle," said the cricketer-turned-politician, asking PTI workers to follow his example.
Mr Khan said money leant by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to improve the welfare of the poor was being misused.
"The Raiwind and Surrey palaces were built with public money and now factories are being set up in Saudi Arabia."
Jemima Khan, while reading from a written speech in Urdu, pledged the PTI would not make any false promises. Mrs Khan won grand applause when she spoke a few sentences in Pushto. "I am learning Pushto and will speak to you next time in Pushto," said Jemima amid deafening applause.

Imran Khan’s greatest failure

Imran Khan’s greatest failure

 Pakistan has had both vicious and stupid rulers, but God save us from some combination of the two. With his homicidal statements, Imran Khan is proving to be just like the Taliban he apparently admires. At his latest rally in Bahawalpur on Friday, Khan threatened the government with a ‘million man’ march on the capital if his ‘demands’ are not met. Cashing in on the scandal caused by the Punjab police last week, he said that if the police mistreated or shot at his supporters in the march, he would “hang them with his own hands”. Accompanying this murderous threat, he listed four ‘demands’: why did Nawaz Sharif make a victory speech on the night of May 11, when election results were unconfirmed; who are the returning officers responsible to; what role did Najam Sethi play in election rigging, and last but not least, what role did former Supreme Court Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry play in manipulating the results of the elections. The latter two accusations (not demands) are in fact serious enough for the named parties to respond with defamation suits against Khan since he has not provided a shred of evidence to support his claims. 
The only word left to describe Mr Khan now is ‘a petulant child’, a sad comedown from the hopeful days of last May. Evidence of his mental instability is overwhelming. It is a criminal offence to threaten to hang people, even the police! It is absurd pointing to Nawaz Sharif’s speech as proof that rigging occurred. Furthermore, in what can only be described as scraping the bottom of the barrel, Imran is also blatantly dishonest about the contents of the speech in which Sharif said, “Results are still coming in, but this much is confirmed we are the single largest party so far.” Al Jazeera reported on the night of May 11 that the PML-N was leading in 119 of 272 National Assembly seats. If confronted with this, Imran will probably say that Al Jazeera was also part of the rigging conspiracy! The fact is that by the night of May 11, the trends were relatively clear and the PML-N did not announce a victory, but expected one. Imran conceded defeat himself and congratulated Nawaz Sharif by the night of May 12. If he was so convinced his party was robbed, why did he acknowledge the results of the election or form the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) (a question he avoids)? One could also ask Khan why on the night of May 11, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf workers from Rawalpindi were celebrating their victory in KP when they clashed with police and the incident was covered by the press. Following Imran’s logic, were his own workers part of a rigging plot? These holes in his argument more than imply that his current posture is driven by overweening ambition rather than principle.
The Khan rhetoric on display in Bahawalpur verged on the insane. Claiming that all opposition parties think the election was rigged, Khan has missed the fact that no other opposition party is with him. His threat to the police is criminal. It is not acceptable from the leader of a political party. However, Khan does not care what anyone thinks and he does not care about the country; he is convinced of his own rightness and willing to let the country suffer to prove it. He is too committed to this course of action now for any good sense to penetrate the egotism guiding his actions. The country is fighting a war, but one he does not believe in, and so he is willing to sacrifice its future to be proved right, and the devil take the facts or ground realities. Khan may take himself down, that is his right, but his current course could take innocent people down with him too, and that is unacceptable. Wake up Imran Khan, the country is in a tough situation and the need of the hour is clarity. Instead of spending on futile expensive rallies and stretching the resources of the state in protecting him and his supporters, Imran should work for the welfare of the people of KP who elected his party.  *

 

Education | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is the second worst performing province

ISLAMABAD: Punjab is surging ahead of the other provinces in education with its 14 districts ranking in the top 20 in education, according to a report released by Alif Ailaan and the Sustainable Development Institute on Thursday. The report provides a snapshot of the education situation in Pakistan’s 146 districts, and shows how widely education standards vary across the country. It provides a tool to track the performance of politicians, administrators and education providers, and measures the progress that the provinces and districts are making. Like last year, the report said that Sindh, Balochistan, and FATA occupy the bottom of the rankings with Sindh making its first appearance at number 40 with Karachi. “This demonstrates a lack of commitment to follow-up on promises made by the provincial government. A recent example of this is the pledge that nine political parties made three months ago to ensure quality education for all the 6.1 million out-of-school children in the province,” it maintained. According to reports, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is the second worst performing province despite the government’s commitment to improve the situation. This is owing to gender disparities as well as poor learning outcomes in the province. KP is followed by Balochistan which is at the bottom of the rankings. “The province has shown poor performance and is a matter of pressing concern, given that there are 1.76 million children out-of-school,” it said. In Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), the Poonch District has fallen from its top spot last year, and comes in the ninth position in 2014. AJK has shown an overall decline from second position last year to third position this year, the report said. Although there are success stories this year, with some districts improving their performances to rise in the rankings, the report shows that the overall quality and the availability of the facilities are still unsatisfactory. Chakwal, which ranks highest nationwide, has a net enrolment rate of just 83 percent, which is far from the promise of ensuring quality education for all. According to report, more than four out of six children in Chakwal who are enrolled dropout before reaching class eight.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/islamabad/23-May-2014/punjab-highest-in-ranking-for-education

Is PTI turning into a fascist party? — Yasser Latif Hamdani

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan - COMMENT : Is PTI turning into a fascist party? — Yasser Latif Hamdani

 They have used pictures from the Balochistan earthquake and Gaza as evidence for their claim that drones killed innocent civilians in the recent Hangu drone strike

When I voted for the PTI on May 11, 2013, I did so for very good reasons and none of them had anything to do with drones. That Imran Khan, the tallest figure in Pakistani politics, was contesting from NA 122 — my constituency — was just icing on the cake. I felt that the PTI had not only managed to bring the apoliticised urban middle class into the democratic process but had also managed to wean a significant portion of the right wing vote from traditional right wing parties. The hope underlying my decision was that the PTI would become a party of the centre right and, with time, would absorb other right wing parties and lead Pakistan towards a genuine two party system.

The results, however, returned PTI as the second largest party of the right. Having been placed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and in opposition at the centre, the PTI positioned itself to the right of the centre right PML-N, which had the overwhelming majority. The impact therefore has been precisely the opposite of what one had expected of the PTI’s rise. Instead of pulling the extreme right to centre right, the PTI has allowed itself to be pushed into the extreme right. To be fair, the first indication of this came when the party abandoned its principled stance on equality of citizenship by targeting an already demonized group, the Ahmadis, just before the elections. Next came the angst on display in Lalak Chowk in DHA, Lahore. The hitherto apoliticised urban middle class was upset that, despite having voted for Hamid Khan — the PTI candidate from NA 125 — the PML-N’s Khawaja Saad Rafique won the election. He did so because the overwhelming majority in NA 125 was not of DHA dwellers but of the slums around it. Saad Rafique had done his homework. Hamid Khan failed to do his. Yet PTI supporters were unable to reconcile themselves with the results; they wanted to know why, when they had braved the heat in May to vote for their favourite candidate, he was not elected. This is a dangerous attitude in a democratic process.

The PTI won fair and square in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It did so because its anti-corruption slogan and pro-development stance resonated with the people in that province, who were sick and tired of the previous government’s woeful performance. Admittedly the PTI’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been unable to overcome the multitude of problems confronting their province, and it is also not their fault. Instead of working hard at delivering on the many promises of their manifesto, the PTI has chosen the easy route; the unconstitutional politics of agitation. The agitation has been centered solely on the drone issue. I do not wish to go into the merits or demerits of drones but suffice it to say that the PTI’s rhetoric on the issue is composed largely of false statements and outright distortion of the facts. They have used pictures from the Balochistan earthquake and Gaza as evidence for their claim that drones killed innocent civilians in the recent Hangu drone strike. The Hangu drone strike killed Afghan Taliban leaders but the PTI’s information secretaries, not just in Pakistan but also in places as far off as New Jersey, continue to mislead the ordinary rank and file of PTI supporters with false evidence.

These ordinarily intelligent and amenable folk become rabidly fanatic when someone holds a point of view contradictory to their own. Their charge is always the same: anyone who disagrees with them is being funded by the US. Imran Khan must share the blame for this. He has openly accused everyone who criticises him on his policies of being a US agent. I do not say that there are absolutely no critics with ulterior motives but to accuse everyone of being an agent is just plain wrong. In a democratic society there can be and there should be many voices. Dissent is the central feature and the strongest attribute of an inclusive and democratic country.

In comparison, we must consider the main attributes of fascism. Obviously, fascism in the 21st century is not going to be the same as fascism in the 20th century. The paraphernalia of the Nazi regime and Italian fascists may be the most enduring historical symbols of fascism but they are irrelevant to the modern reality. The three core ideological components of fascism are said to be the rebirth myth, populist ultranationalism and the myth of decadence. Let us see how the PTI fares on these. The rebirth myth is self-evident in the ‘Naya Pakistan’ (new Pakistan) slogan. Drone agitation is a classic case of populist ultranationalism. Finally, every PTI worker believes that the system is completely decadent and must be brought down by radical politics outside the constitutional realm. The nature of the radical politics that PTI supports is also opposed to all forms of anti-conservative nationalism. These are the makings of a genuinely fascist party.

Let me state here that I believe Imran Khan to be a humanist. His work with Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust and Namal College indicates that he believes in positive and progressive change through education and provision of healthcare for all. His politics through the PTI in recent times, however, indicate otherwise. I hope Imran Khan can pause and reflect on where he is taking his political supporters and whether his political supporters in the end will overwhelm his humanist aspirations. Instead of committing PTI to an extreme agenda, would it not be worthwhile to focus on issues that have been entrusted to him? After all, foreign policy is not a provincial subject and the people of Pakistan have not given him a mandate on the federal level. Is it not prudent then to understand the limitations of the mandate that Imran Khan has received? Pakistan is bigger than any political party and the hour calls for statesmanship and not politics.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com

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