Archive for the 'Politics' Category

The KSE bounces back

03Jan08

…wow, what a surprise. So I guess we all really are as fickle and callous as I suggested in my last post. The good news from the article is: Pakistani stocks are cheap and still worth holding in spite of political uncertainty, Merrill Lynch & Co.’s chief Asian strategist Mark Matthews said in an interview yesterday. … The [...]

The Bhutto saga continues

01Jan08

…and now the backlash has begun. DM sent me this really interesting article called ‘The Prodigal Daughter’ (capitalisation mine, because apparently newspapers can’t afford the extra ink). Written by an Oxford contemporary, Vir Sanghvi, the first half is a really fascinating summary of Ms. Bhutto’s personality and her activities at Oxford. The PPP media machine has [...]

Insanity

18Nov07

There’s so much of it to pick from, but here’s a sampler: The IJT has expelled 17 members over the Imran Khan incident. Yay. But brace yourself now for the ‘operation’ that the IJT will launch to maintain its ‘hold on PU’. Na Islami, na Talib, siraf Jamia. Mr. Musharraf isn’t in right now. Choice quote: “Before [...]

BB speaks

16Nov07

Benazir Bhutto - Musharraf’s Electoral Farce (washingtonpost.com) Oh, how I loathe BB. Even ignoring the Musharraf-size ego (regarding arrested political activists: “the majority [are] from my PPP”), she shows once again she’s perfectly happy to throw everyone and everything under the wagon to get her way, for example by implying that Musharraf could easily lay his [...]

Cowasjee on Pakistan’s leaders

25May07

Ardeshir Cowasjee’s latest column in Dawn, ‘The maker and the shakers’ is a one-page summary of the presidents and prime ministers Pakistan has suffered since independence. Having heard Benazir Bhutto sing her father’s praises a few weeks ago here at the LSE, I was extremely interested to hear someone as blunt and (relatively) unaligned as [...]

Consolation from Chowk: The Gandhi Story

09May07

If I remember right, the idea behind Chowk is to encourage dialogue and understanding between the peoples of the subcontinent (read: Indians and Pakistanis), and underline our commonalities rather than our differences. (I would confirm that, but Chowk has a remarkably useless ‘About’ page.) Anyway, the article on Shaukat Aziz’s press conference yesterday put me in [...]

Press Conference of the Year

08May07

Shaukat Aziz’s latest is my nomination. Some highlights of Mr. Aziz’s comments: the Constitution allows for the option of imposing a state of national emergency ‘but its use depended on conditions and circumstances as laid down in the book’ [as reported by Dawn]. “the May 12 rally in Islamabad would be in support of the presidential reference [...]