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Author Topic: Pakistan election and related news
Michelle
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posted 16 February 2008 06:18 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I see the last Bhutto thread is long, and I thought it would be good to have a catch-all thread to discuss Pakistan's upcoming election and related news and politics from there.

Sorry to start it off with bad news.

quote:
A suicide bomber rammed a car laden with explosives into an election office in northwestern Pakistan Saturday, killing 27 people days before a crucial parliamentary vote, government officials said.

More than 90 people were wounded in Parachinar in a volatile and lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Most of the victims appeared to members of the opposition Pakistan People's Party, formerly headed by the slain Benazir Bhutto, said Mushtaq Hussain, an administrative official in the area.

He said a suicide bomber apparently "rammed his explosive-laden car into the election office.''

Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said 27 people were killed and more than 90 wounded when a suicide bomber drove into a crowd as they were preparing to eat.



From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 16 February 2008 11:12 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
According to Dawn's seat projector a 15% swing to the PPP would mean 138 seats of the 272 seats, a clear majority.

According to the poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) from January 19 to 29, 2008, the PML-Q came in third with only 14 per cent support -- after 50 per cent for the Pakistan Peoples Party and 22 per cent for the PML-Nawaz.

The PPP was ahead in every province:

quote:
the PPP led with 44 percent in the Punjab, with PML-N in second at 32 per cent and PML-Q a distant third with 19 percent; in Sindh, the PPP far outdistanced the field with 74 per cent; in NWFP, the PPP led with 37 percent, the PML-N came in second with 18 per cent, and the Awami National Party in third with 12 per cent; in Balochistan, the PPP garnered 44 per cent, with the PML-Q a distant second with 15 per cent.

When asked to choose their top candidates for prime minister, 56 per cent opted for PPP’s Makhdoom Amin Fahim, 15 per cent chose PML-N’s Javed Hashmi and 12 per cent supported PML-Q’s Pervaiz Elahi.



quote:
Another opinion poll released last weekend by Terror Free Tomorrow (TNT), a US-based organisation . . . found that the PPP would take 36.7 per cent of the vote, followed by Nawaz Sharif's party with 25.3 support. The pro-Musharraf PML would take just 12 per cent of the vote.

In the 2002 general election the PPP got 28.4% of the vote, Sharif's party 12.7%, and Musharraf's 26.6%.

A swing of 21% to the PPP and 9% to Sharif would mean, says Dawn, 158 seats for the PPP and 29 for Sharif, while a swing of 8% to the PPP and 12% to Sharif would mean 100 seats for the PPP and 47 to Sharif, likely a coalition government.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 17 February 2008 11:04 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The latest poll by Gallup put the PML-Q in third place with just 15 per cent of the votes, far behind the PPP (35 per cent) and PML-N (25 per cent). By Dawn's seat projector, a 7% swing to the PPP and a 12% swing to the PML-N could mean 95 seats for the PPP and 48 for Sharif, 143 out of 272, a comfortable majority, but no hope of a PPP outright majority, and not close to the 2/3 it takes to impeach Musharraf or undo his constitutional changes.

Still, national swings mean no more in Pakistan than they do in Canada. For example, that calculation gave the PPP only 34 of Sindh's 61 seats, yet some analysts can see the party winning between 40 and 50 of them. Check the district profiles if you're keen.

These don't include the 12 seats in the tribal areas, where candidates run without party label.

For those who are confused by reference to 342 seats, the other 70 are awarded in proportion to the seats won, not in proportion to the popular vote, so they don't change the outcome: 60 women are appointed (based on party standings in each of the four provinces) and 10 religious minorities (based on national party standings).

At their last meeting on February 12, Zardari and Sharif had agreed in principle to form a coalition government if they emerged as the largest groups in the polls in order to prevent the military from usurping power from elected representatives.

Sources close to Musharraf are confidant that PPP and PML-N cannot work together for a long time and they will start fighting with each other in a few months.

quote:
They are sure that PML-Q will get a majority in Punjab and in that case the president will allow the PPP and the PML-N to form a government at the Centre.

A trusted friend of Musharraf said, "PPP-PML-N coalition will not survive for more than six months; they will create a situation in which one of them will ultimately come to the President's house for fresh elections."


If the PPP and the PML-N together win a two-thirds majority required for removing the Constitutional amendments and paving the way for Musharraf's removal, the army may intervene, with the blessings of the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia, for ensuring that Musharraf's exit comes about in a manner which protects his honour and is not seen by the jihadis as a humiliation for him because of his co-operation with the US in the war against Al Qaeda.

quote:
General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, Pakistan's chief of the army staff, has sought to ensure that the elections be held on February 18, 2008, as scheduled by entering into an informal ceasefire agreement with the Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan headed by Baitullah Mehsud, its Amir, and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi headed by Mullah Fazlulla of the Swat Valley.

There has been a sharp drop in acts of terrorism involving these organisations since February 4.

Gen Kiyani has already withdrawn regular army troops from South Waziristan as demanded by Baitullah and has lifted the economic blocade imposed against the Mehsuds.

Maulana Ghazi is presently under detention along with some others, who were arrested by the army during the commando action in the Masjid from July 10 to 13, 2007.

Their unconditional release was another demand of Baitullah. There has been speculation that at least the Maulana, if not the others, might be released if the Tehrik-e-Taliban does not disrupt the elections. Both these organisations have publicly stated that they will not disrupt the polls.

Despite the drop in acts of terrorism as a result of this ceasefire, unidentified elements, presumably not belonging to the Tehrik and the TNSM, have kept up sporadic acts of terrorism.

There were two deadly attacks on election rallies of the secular Awami National Party in the North-West Frontier Province and North Waziristan, one ambush of an army convoy in North Waziristan in which a Major and two others were killed and attacks on the telecomminication towers in the Darra Adam Khel area of the NWFP.

There are many jihadi organisations in the NWFP, which are not part of the Tehrik or the TNSM. It should not, therefore, be a surprise that they have kept up their attacks, which are, however, on a reduced scale.



By the way, the provincial elections are also tomorrow. The Islamist MMA may lose power in the North West Frontier Province, which could change a great deal for the Pakistan Taliban.

[ 17 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 17 February 2008 10:49 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good heavens. Even in Bajaur, two of the 12 tribal seats where candidates do not run on official party labels, two unofficial PPP candidates beat the Islamist candidates. I would never have predicted that.

First results at about 10:30 p.m. Pakistan time, 12:30 noon EST.

The PPP and the Awami National Party (ANP) announced they had reached electoral adjustments in four constituencies on Thursday.

quote:
“Two electoral contestants from each side have retired in favour of the other party’s nominated candidates,” PPP provincial general secretary Nafees Siddiqui said at a press conference held at his residence. ANP provincial general secretary Amin Khattak, PPP provincial deputy information secretary Waqar Mehdi and PPP Karachi president Rashid Rabbani were present.

ANP Sindh president Shahi Syed said that Zarbali Syed (PS-89) and Khalid Jan (PS-112) have retired in favour of PPP’s Akhtar Jadoon (PS-89) and Najmi Alam (PS-112), respectively. Nafees Siddiqui said that Mufti Ferozuddin Hazarvi (PS-128) and Muniruddin Khattak (PS-93) retired in favour of the ANP’s Amanullah Mehsud (PS-128) and Amir Nawab (PS-93).



The Awami National Party are secular, somewhat left-wing, Pashtun nationalists. They are likely to win a good number of seats in the NWFP as the MMA collapses. If they join a coalition with the PPP they will strengthen the chances of a 2/3 majority.

Musharraf's party has seat adjustments with the Islamists. A losers' coalition.

Back in December Sharif and the PPP were trying to make arrangements in 25 constituencies, and they did so in two in Karachi but perhaps in no others. But last Tuesday Sharif implied there were more, and said:

quote:
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday that they would form a coalition government if their groups won the biggest share of votes in next week’s parliamentary elections.

That story is still linked from the PPP website.

But a more recent story says efforts by the PPP and Nawaz Sharif to forge a grand coalition have fallen through, says IBN in India, which apparently dates back to last Friday, contradicting what was said Tuesday.

quote:
Sharif indicated that there was no chance of seat adjustments with the PPP nor was there any hints if they had resolved their differences over reinstating the sacked judges.

The former Pakistan prime minister did not even indicate if they had taken forward the idea of a coalition government discussed earlier this week.



"Seat adjustments" are made well before the election, not at the last moment. This quote makes no sense.
quote:
Hooking up with the Nawaz League is the biggest gamble. Sharif was the PPP's enemy through the 1990s, and it was under his rule that Bhutto was hounded out of Pakistan and Zardari was jailed for years on corruption charges that were never proven.

It would mean risking everything on a confrontation with Musharraf, and begs the question: If Musharraf was out of the way, would Zardari or Sharif, a product of the Punjabi establishment, emerge the stronger? Punjabis usually win.



Interesting theory. But highly speculative.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 18 February 2008 10:49 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good heavens. Even in Bajaur, two of the 12 tribal seats where candidates do not run on official party labels, two unofficial PPP candidates beat the Islamist candidates. I would never have predicted that.

Initial reports showed mixed trends with Pakistan People's Party (PPP)and Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) doing well in Sindh and Punjab respectively.

quote:
Muttahida Quami Movement(MQM) was faring well in Karachi, early trends showed.

Sharif told an Indian TV channel that he was happy with the election trends.



In Rawalpindi, PPP and Nawaz supporters looked like coalition partners:
quote:
Slogans of Jiye Bhutto rent the air as boisterous supporters of both the PPP and PML (N) rode past Liaquat Bagh, where Benazir fell to a gun-bomb attack on December 27. A short distance away, young men astride open jeeps and motorcycles swathed in party flags converged at PML-Q leader Sheikh Rashid’s Lal Haveli that has stood like an invincible political fortress since the 1985 party-less polls under Gen Zia.

Giving each other the right to way, the Q League's rivals slowed down a bit to honk madly outside the imposing haveli named after its red façade. The PPP-PML cadres pincer movement against the pro-Musharraf League augurs well for Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif's pledge to work together to make Parliament sovereign in the country's affairs.


In Peshawar, capital of the NWFP, the universe is unfolding as it should. In Peshawar II, where in 2002 the Islamist MMA won while the PPP was second, today the PPP wins while the secular nationalist Awami National Party is second.

Same pattern in the NWFP's Nowshera district.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 18 February 2008 01:16 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
PML (Q) president Chaudhary Shujat Hussain is trailing by more than 10,000 votes in his Gujrat stronghold behind his PPP rival, Ahmed Mukhtar.
quote:
PML (Q) general secretary Mushahid Hussain admitted that the government had committed “mistakes,” citing the sacking of the Chief Justice and the restrictions on the media.


The Islamist leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, MP on and off since 1988, leader of the Official Opposition in the last House, loses his home district to the PPP candidate by a vote of 42,517 to 19,000.

Wow.

quote:
Fazl ur-Rahman is son of well known religious and political leader Maulana Mufti Mahmood, who was provincial Chief Minister of the NWFP. Due to mass public support and a large vote bank in the Dera Ismail Khan district, Maulana Mufti Mahmood was the lone leader in Pakistan who had defeated the then invincible Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970 general elections. Of the four general elections that Fazl ur-Rahman contested since 1988 from his national assembly constituency, NA-18, he won two with convincing margins. In the two he lost - in 1990 and 1997 - were, as his supporters put it, more because of the engineered results that entrusted heavy mandates to the Sharifs of Lahore on both the occasions. Fazl ur-Rahman remained in the camp of the political alliances and parties that were opposed to Nawaz Sharif's League.

So he's never lost to the PPP. Until today.

But he ran in two seats to be safe: his home district, plus Bannu, where he scraped in with a 1,339-vote margin over the PPP.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 18 February 2008 07:32 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With results for 125 out of 272 constituencies out, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) had 50 seats and slain former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party had grabbed 39, state-run PTV reported.
quote:
The PML-Q, Musharraf's main ally, was trailing with just 18 seats with an embarrassing defeat for party chief Chaudhry Shujat Hussein at the hands of PPP rival Choudhry Ahmed Mukhtar in the national assembly constituency in Punjab.

Smaller parties and independents took 18.

Elections to the four provincial assembles were also held simultaneously. As expected, Sharif's PML (N) was doing well in his native Punjab with the party grabbing 81 seats, against PPP's 46 and PML(Q) 39. Elections were held to 297 seats in the province.

Sindh was witnessing a close fight between PPP (35) and Altaf Hussein's MQM (26), a Musharraf ally. Polls were held for 130 sets in this home province of Bhutto.



First Past the Post has never served the PPP well. In 2002 they had the largest share of the popular vote but not of the seats. This year once again the PPP, which has wide support everywhere while other parties have support concentrated in their strongholds, may have an unfortunate habit of coming second in a lot of districts.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 18 February 2008 08:18 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
With 188 of 272 seats declared:
PML(N) 56
PPPP 53
PML(Q) 25
MQM 18
ANP 8
MMA 3
BNP(A) 1
Others 24

The PML(N), PPPP and ANP have 62.2% of those seats without counting any of the 24 "others," many of whom will be allied with the PML(N) or PPPP. Looks like the 2/3 majority to amend Musharraf's constitution is available. Sharif said he would use that to restore the judges Musharraf dumped, and trust them to rule that his election was unconstitutional -- as they were about to do when he dumped them.

Musharraf might be well advised to just retire quietly.

Note that, of the 84 not yet declared, 44 are in Sindh; way higher than its share of the seats. So the final results should put the PPP ahead of the PML(N), if that matters.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 19 February 2008 12:30 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
It would be good to have a catch-all thread to discuss Pakistan's upcoming election.

You would think so.

It's only the world's sixth most populous country. Now considering that China does not have contested national elections, and the American elections are usually more beauty contests then serious contests between opposing forces of different ideologies, then the world's top four with free real elections (and Pakistan's seems to have been free after all) are India, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan.

Also, the 2001 census said 237,920 Canadian immigrants were born in the USA, against 503,895 in southern Asia (including 314,685 in India, 79,315 in Pakistan, and 87,310 in Sri Lanka), comparable to the 606,000 born in the United Kingdom. Also 332,825 were born in mainland China, 315,455 in Italy, 235,620 in Hong Kong, 232,670 in the Philippines, 174,075 in Germany, 153,535 in Portugal, 148,405 in Viet Nam, 145,380 in Yugoslavia, 120,210 in Jamaica, 117,690 in the Netherlands, and 83,535 in Guyana.

Zardari wants to form a consensus government with Sharif, the ANP and "and all other democratic forces." And also Sharif will meet PPP co-chairman Zardari, Awami National Party (ANP) chief Afsandyar Wali Khan and all democratic forces to discuss government formation. A consensus already.

With all seats declared except one (NA-269, Khuzdar) the results are:

PPPP 88
PML(N) 66
PML(Q) 38
MQM 19
ANP 10
BNP(A) 1
MMA 5
Others 40
Polling postponed: 4
To come: 1

For a two-thirds majority to amend the constitution and/or impeach Musrraf, they need 182: PPPP 88, PML(N) 66, ANP 10, and 18 of the remaining 70 other than PML(Q). We know some of the "others: 40" are in fact unofficial PPP. I bet they'll round up the necessary 18.

Notice that in the Punjab provincial assembly, which Sharif expected to control, the PPP has won 77 seats to his 102, with 105 seats for others: he will have to share power there. However, in Sindh the PPP has a clear majority of 66 out of the 125 declared.

At least 75 women in the National Assembly: 60 reserved, and at least 15 from general seats, making 22% women.

Look at this map: of Karachi's 20 seats, the Muttahida Quami Movement won 17, picking up three new seats in Karachi (as well as one new one in Hyderabad.) Their best ever near-sweep of Karachi, I think. They obviously didn't win on Musharraf's non-existent coattails. As you can see from their website in English and Urdu, they are Urdu-speakers in a Sindhi-speaking province, the descendents of the Urdu-speaking Muslim refugees from India who settled in Pakistan after independence in 1947. (Urdu is mostly Hindi written in Persian script, sort of like Croatian being Serbian written in the roman letters used by their Catholic teachers, and pretending to be a separate language.) And as well as Sindhi-speakers we have others who moved to the big city including Pashtun- (Pushto-) speakers, Kashmiris, Punjabis, etc. Just google "linguistic riots" and Karachi.

[ 20 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 20 February 2008 03:49 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One of the pleasures of watching South Asian elections is that, just as they have surpassed their teachers' skill at cricket, they have mastered both the parliamentary system and First Past The Post.

Progressive observers in Canada keep wishing "wouldn't it be lovely if the NDP could get the Bloc to split, and its progressive members cross to the NDP?"

Watch how the PPP will deal with the MQM in coming weeks.

They are already saying they want to be inclusive, but . . . . A grand coalition with all democratic forces would be lovely, but we will have no dealings with those who worked with Musharraf.

They are signalling to the MQM backbench "we love you, but not your leadership. The door is open to you, but not to your leaders. Which of you would like to be in cabinet? or be a junior minister with independent charge of a section of a ministry? or simply a junior minister? or a parliamentary secretary?"

Next step: some of the MQM caucus form the "Democratic MQM," splitting from those tainted by working with Musharraf, qualifying them to work for democracy with the PPP, and get jobs for the boys.

You heard it first here.

[ 20 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 20 February 2008 07:58 AM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
You would think so.
It's only the world's sixth most populous country. Now considering that China does not have contested national elections, and the American elections are usually more beauty contests then serious contests between opposing forces of different ideologies, then the world's top four with free real elections (and Pakistan's seems to have been free after all) are India, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan.

But its strange that you didnt include Russia on that list, since its equal to Pakistan in population.
Or are you saying Indonesia has free elections and Russia doesnt? Sure theres some problems but regardless..
Western prejudice that Russians are incapable of democracy (or that they never had it) is still common. Just saying;

quote:
By the way, the provincial elections are also tomorrow. The Islamist MMA may lose power in the North West Frontier Province, which could change a great deal for the Pakistan Taliban.

Looks like they already lost power in the province. Some great news for sure.


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 20 February 2008 08:41 AM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In other Pakistan news:

While you were asleep - US air strike on Pakistan, CIA authorized

Obama doesnt have to worry about being the first to order this - its already been done.


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
KenS
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posted 20 February 2008 09:16 AM      Profile for KenS     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So that CIA hit was 29 January. A month after Bhutto is killed, and under 3 weeks before Mussaraf is into elections where he is already into trouble.

I think it's a measure of how much the US had already made it clear to Mussharaf that they weren't going to prop him up any more.

There may also be a dotted line betwenn that thumbs down and the fact the elections were not rigged, as universally expected.

Vote rigging takes a lot of people being involved. Its possible that Mussaharaf's inner circle decided on their own it wasn't worth it... that if they concede fefeat now they will live, probably keep their wealth, etc.

But all or part of the decision not to continue grasping power may not have been their choice- the army may have enough degrees of independence to have drawn the line at vote rigging. And behind that decision may well have been the US.

Mussharaf saying he isn't going to relinquish power is just a bargaining ploy. He know's he's history.

[ 20 February 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]


From: Minasville, NS | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 20 February 2008 06:07 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When the Election Commission allocates the 60 seats reserved for women and the 10 seats reserved for religious minorities among the various parties in proportion to the number of seats each party won "the total number of general seats won by a political party shall include the independent returned candidate or candidates who may duly join such political party within three days of the publications in the official Gazette of the names of the returned candidates."

The independent NA members don't count otherwise, towards the calculation of the reserved seats. So if there are 226 or 234 party NA members who generate 70 more, that's 0.3 reserved members for each general member. In those three days, independent members are worth a great deal to the parties they join.

The mainstream political parties are feverishly engaged in hunting for independents with two objectives. First, they want to increase their general seats and second, to obtain maximum share in the reserved quota for women and minorities.

Thirteen independent candidates were elected from the Punjab seats of the National Assembly, 8 from the tribal areas, 3 from Balochistan, 2 from Sindh, and 1 from the NWFP, making 27 (although one site says 28).

quote:
they are enjoying a good bargaining position, which may improve in case of "differences" between two major parties, the PPP and the PML-N, emerge in the talks that would start from today.

The Awami National Party (ANP) that has been Nawaz Sharif's ally in 1997 assemblies could help the two parties to ensure two-third majority in the National Assembly as most of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) traditionally join the government-making party.

Most of the independents from the Punjab have an inclination towards Nawaz Sharif.

The PPP and PML-N are already set to secure 25 and 16 seats of women and minorities in the National Assembly that would take their number to nearly 113 and 84 respectively, taking their combined total along with the ANP to the figure of 211 against two-third requirement of 228 in the 342-member House.



Every independent who joins brings them 1.3 closer to that 228.
quote:
Originally posted by BetterRed:
its strange that you didnt include Russia on that list, since its equal to Pakistan in population.
Or are you saying Indonesia has free elections and Russia doesnt?


Actually I think Russia is eighth or ninth, after Bangladesh and perhaps after Nigeria.

Population clocks: Pakistan (today 162,567,500)
Russia (currently 141,940,249)

But Russia's most recent elections were rather doubtful. Still, it does seem a strong majority wanted Putin, which raises a question: what do you call elections in Bavaria, Alberta, Egypt, and other one-party states with a multi-party system? Skewed, lopsided, but still free?

[ 20 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
josh
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posted 21 February 2008 09:49 AM      Profile for josh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

Pakistan's two main opposition parties have agreed to form a coalition government after they won the most seats in Monday's general election.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he had agreed "a common agenda" with the party of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

He had been in talks with Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, the new leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

. . . .

"We will work together to form the government in the centre and in the provinces," Mr Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N), said at a joint news conference with Mr Zardari.

He said the two parties had agreed that the country's chief justice, sacked by President Musharraf in November, should be immediately reinstated.

Mr Zardari said there was "a lot of ground to cover" between the two parties, but "in principle, we have agreed to stay together".

Doubts remain about who will emerge as a possible prime minister.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7257525.stm


From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 21 February 2008 10:04 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wonder to what extent last Summer's U.S. blustering over Pakistan "not doing enough" against Afghan warriors and needing to be bombed with no regard for local politicians' decisions played a large part in Mr. Musharraf's defeat despite all the money poured in his coffers by the West. (Does anyone have a link to some writing about this?)
Take heed, MM. Harper and Dion: U.S. hubris is destroying its "allies" faster and faster. (Yeah, I'm an optimist.)

[ 21 February 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]


From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 21 February 2008 10:15 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by josh:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7257525.stm

quote:
The party backing President Musharraf, the PML-Q, and its coalition partners have now lost their majority in parliament and Mr Zardari said none of them would be invited into the new governing coalition.

The MQM, no. Some MQM members . . .?

The PPP will most likely elect senior party member, Amin Fahim, as Prime Minister.

quote:
Sources have told CNN-IBN that Zardari has no choice but to accept Amin Fahim for the post of the prime minister as Zardari himself cannot accept the post for he has been out of the country for many years.

Sources have also said that the Charter of Democracy signed between Nawaz Sharif and former Pakistan prime minister, Benazir Bhutto — who was assassinated on December 27, 2007 — are expected to be implemented in letter and spirit.

Meanwhile, Zardari has said that the new government's first decision will to be to request the United Nations to help Pakistan probe the killing of Benazir Bhutto.

Nawaz said that the two parties had in principle agreed to restore the Constitution of 1973 again in Pakistan.

"Restoration of the Judges will be done through Parliament," Zardari was quoted as saying by news agencies.

No decision has yet been taken on the impeachment of President Musharraf as well.



Aitzaz Ahsan, the PPP veteran who leads the lawyers’ movement against Musharraf, was categorical in a TV interview that neither he nor Zardari were in the race.
quote:
There is nevertheless a body of opinion that with his understanding of the legal-constitutional issues, Ahsan will be a more independent player in the power triumvirate than Fahim.

Whoever the next PM may be, he will be propped up the way Sonia Gandhi pushed Manmohan Singh’s candidature in 2004. Recognizing the sub-continental parallel, PPP spokesperson Sherry Rehman had introduced Zardari as “Mr Sonia Gandhi” when he became the party’s co-chairman after Benazir’s assassination.

But the comparison ends here. Unlike Sonia’s undisputed position in the Congress, Zardari lacks the unqualified support of PPP cadres.



Sherry Rehman, however, was the top name on the PPP list for the women's seats from Sindh. Keep your eye on her.

Zardari's first meeting on Thursday was with the leader of a small ethnic Pashtun secular grouping, the Awami National Party (ANP).

quote:
"We have decided to work together for the interest of Pakistan, democracy and supremacy of democratic institutions, and rule of law in the country," Zardari said after the meeting.

ANP leader Asfandyar Wali Khan said he and Zardari had agreed "in principle to go together for supremacy of democracy" but said there were some issues which still needed to be resolved.


[ 21 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 23 February 2008 07:53 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Indian army chief says he is not worried about infiltration into Kashmir:
quote:
General Kapoor said that during the recent turmoil and turbulence in Pakistan he was not worried that the Pakistan Army would carry out adventurous action against India to divert attention from troubles at home. “With the kind of commitment the Pakistan Army has on its western borders as well as within the country, the possibility of this kind of adventurism would not be very high,” he said.

Kapoor, to a query, had said: “Let me give you a comparison between 2006 and 2007. In 2006 the infiltration was approximately 343 as per our count. In 2007 it was 311. So there is a marginal decline so far as infiltration numbers are concerned. But as far as the attempts or bids (are concerned) they were slightly higher in 2007.”

The Foreign Office said: “We have always maintained that Pakistan has never been involved in the crossings at the LoC (Line of Control). Pakistan’s position continues to be that we support the people of Kashmir politically, morally and diplomatically, and this will continue even in the future."


The last six decades of India-Pakistan relations have proved the “step-by-step” approach to be a dismal failure. Whereas what is needed is a quantum jump:
quote:
there really has been no change in India’s Kashmir position in these 44 years, despite two wars, a two-decade old uprising in the Valley and the ensuing death and destruction that the people of Kashmir have suffered at the hands of the Indian army and radical insurgents.

Mirwaiz said India and Pakistan cannot resolve Kashmir unless they involve Kashmiris living on both sides of the Ceasefire Line. The “composite dialogue” between the two is welcome, he added, but where is it going? Past efforts, he stated, had failed because it was only two parties talking to each other. The Kashmiris had been kept away from the head table.

I would say they were also kept well out of the kitchen as well.

“The expectations of the Kashmiris have not been met. Four hundred and fifty thousand Indian troops remain deployed in Kashmir, over and above local state forces and police. Black laws that give unlimited power to the security forces remain in force. The security personnel move with impunity across the state. Thousands are in jail without trial. None of these issues has been addressed by India,” Mirwaiz said.

The Hurriyet had begun this process hoping India will understand that it is time to move forward, but things had remained more or less where they had always been. He had praise for Pervez Musharraf, who he said had declared that anything that is acceptable to the Kashmiris is acceptable to Pakistan. His offer had remained unrequited.

Much enthusiasm was generated in the Valley and wherever there are Kashmiris when the first bus left Srinagar for Muzaffarabad. But after two years, all the two countries have to show for this “breakthrough” is one bus a week from side A to side B. Thousands remain waiting to get on that bus and at this rate, they will continue to wait indefinitely. The bureaucracy and the procedural difficulties involved in securing a berth are enormous and although there has been much talk of making it simpler to go from one side to the other, there has been no change on the ground, just words.

There are thousands of divided families, Mirwaiz said, longing to go across and meet blood relations they have not seen for decades. He lives in Srinagar and being the dignified, sober, reasonable young leader he has proved to be, his word is to be taken seriously. If anything, he tends to understate things, such being his temperament.

I would add that the last six decades of India-Pakistan relations have proved the “step-by-step” approach to be a dismal failure. Whereas what is needed is a quantum jump, what New Delhi and Islamabad have opted for is a slow belly crawl. At the rate at which they are going, it will take a hundred years to get to where they say they want to be.



Rats leaving sinking ship?
quote:
The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q)’s winning and defeated members for the National Assembly met at the PML House to assess and analyse the reasons and causes of the party’s drubbing in the general election.

Only 23 out of 38 party MNAs-elect attended the meeting, which gave credence to reports that some of them were in contact with the PPP and PML-N.

Several stalwarts, including the ticket holders, blamed the leadership for the party’s defeat, insiders said.

The sources said that the defeated ticket holders put the blame for defeat on the Lal Masjid operation, imposition of emergency which led to sacking of judges, atta crisis and electricity and gas loadshedding.

Former minister from Sindh Ghaus Bakhsh Mehr was highly critical of the way party was run in the last five years and stressed changes in its organisation to make it formidable political force.



Young anti-Islamist MNA from heart of tribal area wants negotiations:
quote:
25-year-old Muhammad Kamran Khan, who won the NA-40 seat in North Waziristan and defeated ex-MP Maulana Nek Zaman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, called his victory “a change”, adding that by voting for him, tribal youth had rejected “mullahs and elders”.

He cautioned against hastening to defeat militancy in the Tribal Areas. He said that the issue of militancy could be resolved through negotiations.

“Use of force is no solution. Did it [use of force] help in Iraq or Afghanistan or [Indian-held] Kashmir? No. So, why should we experiment it in tribal areas. Let negotiations help us solve the problem in tribal areas."

The newly-elected parliamentarian termed clashes between military and tribal militants colossal for the country as well as the region. “It is unfortunate ... but the fact of the matter is both sides are suffering and it is [a] collective loss to the country, no doubt about this.”

He said: “The tribal people are feeling [a] sense of deprivation because we [have been] kept underdeveloped for long time. We have a genuine complaint.” He said that in the 21st century, there were areas yet with no electricity, schools or health facilities.

“Militancy will go away when there is education and jobs. Militancy will go away with a change in the [governance] system. So, one should not think of a change overnight and that too without any development.”

He termed the $750 million US grant as “too small [an] amount” to win the hearts and minds of tribal people in the war on terror.

“This amount is too small. We need billions [of dollars] to develop our area against militancy,”
“We will cooperate to use the money judicially,” he said brushing aside perceptions that tribal people were reluctant to develop their areas if the money was coming from the US. “Our people know the world has gone too far [in development] and we also want to move forward.”



Musharraf stands behind Brig. Ejaz Shah:
quote:
President Musharraf has granted extension to the controversial Director General of the Intelligence Bureau Brig (retd) Ejaz Hussain Shah, who had been named by Ms Benazir Bhutto as one of those who had plotted her assassination upon her return to Pakistan.

Brig Shah has been given extension till further orders by the presidency three days after the general elections, despite the fact that the Bhutto-led party had demanded his dismissal from the government service on charges of his alleged involvement in Bhutto murder and his allegedly heading the special rigging cell of the PM-L-Q in Punjab.

During his lengthy stint in the ISI, Brig Ejaz had been handling the militant operations of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad in Jammu & Kashmir.

In her October 16 letter to President Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto had alleged that Brig Shah and two other former ISI officials, were planning her assassination upon her return home with the help of his jehadi agents.

While in the ISDI, Shah had been the handler of Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, already convicted for the abduction and subsequent assassination of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Ejaz Shah engineered the electoral rise of the Chaudhries of Gujrat who now lead the king’s party, the PML-Q that has already been defeated in the elections.


[ 23 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 25 February 2008 04:42 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"The parliamentary parties of the PPP, PML-N, ANP and independents, which comprise nearly two-thirds of the National Assembly, will meet in Islamabad on February 27 to demand the convening of parliament and transfer of power immediately," Sharif said.

PML-Q claims all but three MNAs-elect of the party had attended the caucus meeting.

quote:
Sources said former chief minister of Punjab Mian Manzoor Wattoo, who had attended the meeting on Saturday, did not turn up on Sunday. Mr Wattoo is reported to be working on forming his own group to negotiate with the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

A PML-Q leader said Mr Wattoo had contested the election as an independent candidate and he would be invited to the parliamentary group’s meeting only if he joined the party.

A number of participants said efforts should be made for power-sharing in a coalition government.



Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain says his party will not like to join any coalition if the mandate given to it was accepted by way of ‘charity’.
quote:
Hussain expressed surprise over statements made by some PPP leaders against any coalition arrangement with the MQM.

Three independent MNAs support Zardari, as Zardari House remained the centre of political activities on Sunday.
quote:
Humair Hayat Rokhari, elected in the NA-72 constituency of the National Assembly, Humayun Aziz Kurd, elected in the NA-267 National Assembly constituency, and Jawad Hussain, elected in the NA-39 constituency, assured Zardari of their support.

Rokhari was no surprise. Humayun Aziz Kurd from Balochistan had previously been a PML-Q supporter although elected as an independent. Jawad Hussain is a new independent from Orakzai, one of the tribal areas.

[ 25 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 26 February 2008 10:19 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The PML-Q fears major defections as many of the winning candidates it backed have been making contacts with other parties due to their differences with the Chaudhry brothers and could form a “forward bloc”.

Media reports said at least 15 newly elected PML-Q MPs had already formed a “forward bloc” while more were weighing legal options to defect and join one of the two winning parties - the PPP and the PML-N.

quote:
Former premier Nawaz Sharif has invited the PML-Q members minus Chaudhry cousins to return to their ‘parent party’.

A prominent PML-Q leader and former speaker Hamid Nasir Chathha and a former provincial Chief Minister Manzoor Wattoo, met PPP co-chairperson Asif Zardari last evening. Both were allied to the PPP in the 1990s against Nawaz Sharif. Chathha lost the National Assembly election but had won a provincial seat.


A senior PPP leader said on Monday that members of the PML-Q forward bloc could be accommodated in the government.

PPP leaders claim that three newly elected National Assembly members from Q-league have expressed their willingness to join the forward bloc.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 28 February 2008 04:16 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
New 25-year-old North Waziristan MNA Muhammad Kamran Khan may not be what he seemed:
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:
Young anti-Islamist MNA from heart of tribal area wants negotiations:

However, this article says The Taliban in North Waziristan organised a huge rally in support of the winning candidate and fired shots in the air when Kamran Khan was declared the winner.

The MMA was the Islamist alliance, officially in the North West Frontier Province, unofficially in the Tribal Areas too. It fell apart when one party, JI, maintained a boycott position against Musharraf and the recent elections as all parties threatened last November, while JUI-F decided (like the PPP and PML-N) to take part. This left the JI and pro-Taliban groups in the Tribal Areas urging refusal to deal with the Pakistan government -- always a popular stance in the Tribal Areas which never wanted to be in either India or, after 1949, Pakistan, feeling more like Afghanistan. Not that there has ever been much national sentiment in Afghanistan, which is a pastiche of warring tribes, much as the Tribal Areas are.

This split and semi-boycott resulted in the MMA losing most of its seats to the PPP or NAP, or in the Tribal Areas, to PPP-affiliated "independent" candidates. In the Tribal Areas only one MMA MNA, in South Waziristan, was re-elected.

But in South Asia there's always an exception to every rule, and North Waziristan seems to have been one:

quote:
The Taliban in North Waziristan tribal agency facilitated the Feb 18 polling, where the tribespeople, unlike the rest of the tribal regions, evinced a keen interest in exercising their right to vote.

Almost a day earlier, in the militants-dominated North Waziristan Agency, the government had struck another peace deal with militants with the hope of restoring peace to the militancy-stricken tribal region.

In the peace deal, the government and tribal militants, who prefer to be called Taliban, had pledged to work together in future for maintenance of peace and resolving disputes.
The militants, on Dec 17, 2007, had announced a unilateral ceasefire and then extended it almost five times when the government reciprocated accordingly.

A senior militant commander on condition of anonymity said that the peace truce was signed in the grand 'jirga' where the militant commanders, tribal elders as well as government officials were present. He said that it was almost the same agreement which had been signed on Sep 5, 2006, between them and the government.

The government had almost made up its mind to reschedule polls in the adjacent North Waziristan after postponing the election on NA-42 in South Waziristan due to the mass migration of the Mahsud tribespeople to distant Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and other parts of the country as a result of clashes between security forces and Baitullah Mahsud-led militants.

Later, the government announced to conduct elections in North Waziristan but declared all the polling stations there the 'most sensitive' ones and suggested extraordinary security measures for holding free and fair polls.
Keeping in view the security concerns in the region, the government sought the help of the militants in conducting the election in a peaceful manner.

A senior government official said that the task was given to the Taliban after the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) and Khasadar force or tribal police personnel expressed their reluctance to provide security to the polling staff deputed in the remote and the most sensitive areas.

Tribespeople from parts of North Waziristan told TNS that not a single security personnel was sighted in almost all the 10 subdivisions of the volatile tribal region, including Miramshah, Mirali, Shawal, Data Khel, Ghulam Khan, Spinwam, Shawa, Dosali, Razmak and Garyum in the election day. Residents in Miramshah, North Waziristan's regional headquarters, said that militants were the ones who conducted the polls and provided security to the voters.

People felt it was primarily that reason, the presence of Taliban, which encouraged the already terrified tribesmen to come out of their homes and cast their votes.

"It seemed more like jubilation here. The people enthusiastically participated in elections and there were no signs of fear as the well-armed militants were deployed everywhere in and outside the polling stations," said Mohammad Salimullah, a tribesman while talking to the TNS by telephone from Miramshah.

The residents said that they felt a threat from the militants before the elections, but when learnt that they themselves were part of the game then everyone came to the polling station.

"It was the day of the militants and they proved themselves more capable than those who were supposed to do the job," said Haji Gul Halim, a resident of Dande Darpakhel town, near Miramshah.

During the polling, witnesses said, heavily armed militants were seen patrolling the streets and thoroughly searching voters before entering the polling stations.

"In some of the polling stations, militants, even briefly detained people for allegedly violating the Taliban's code of conduct which they had set for the election," said Mohammad Rahman in Mirali town, the second biggest town of the agency.

He, however, added that the Taliban were later seen releasing the detainees and giving them advice to help the people elected a sincere and pious representative. Interestingly, when the polls finished, militants informed the local political authorities that their job was finished and that they should collect the ballot boxes.

"The ballot boxes were then taken in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) to Miramshah and the name of the successful candidate was announced," said a government official, but wished not to be named.

16 candidates were contesting the election for the lone National Assembly seat of North Waziristan Agency (NA-40). Except for a few, like PML-Q's Ajmal Khan, who served as federal minister in the past, and an independent candidate Abdul Qayyum, the majority of the contestants belonged to Maulana Fazlur Rahman's Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), but only Maulana Nek Zaman, a former pro-MMA MNA from North Waziristan, was JUI-F nominee on NA-40.

The remaining candidates, including Aurangzeb, Haji Kamran Khan, Fazal Subhan, Mufti Sadeequllah and Nisar Ali were JUI-F dissidents and decided to contest when the party refused their nomination for the election.

Some of them are considered to be very close to the militants, including Abdullah Shah, who belongs to a banned outfit Al-Rashid Trust, Haji Kamran Khan and a few others. Now some of the losing candidates have started raising questions over this unique trend of involving militants to hold elections.

They have accused the government of allowing militants to help elect their blue-eyed candidate, Haji Kamran Khan in the polls.

They said that the militants organised a huge rally in support of the winning candidate and fired shots in the air when Kamran Khan was declared the winner.
(Courtesy The News)

My Comment: This report of cooperation between Taliban and the Government of Pakistan in Waziristan suggests that if there is enough will for peaceful co-existance, peace might not be so elusive an ideal, after all. Indeed, it suggests that while US and Taliban may remain irreconcilable, the same may not be true for Pakistan and Taliban. In the interests of the people, both parties can, and should, arrive at some reconciliation. Pakistani state, on the other hand, would do well to learn from history and keep itself out of that difficult region; above all, it would do well to spill less blood, there and everywhere else.

Posted by Umer Gilani.



But elsewhere in the Tribal Areas, the PPP came out on top, unlike 2002 where most of the MNAs were MMA-affiliated Islamists (with the odd exceptions like the Khyber and Lower Kurram). Here's the current line-up:
NA-36 (Mohmand): Bilal Rehman pledged to PPP Feb. 27.
NA-37 (Upper Kurram, a Shia district) - election postponed.
NA-38 (Lower Kurram): Munir Khan Orakzai (re-elected), pledged to PPP Feb. 27.
NA-39 (Orakzai): Jawad Hussain assured Zardari of his support Feb. 24.
NA-40 (North Waziristan): Mohammad Kamran Khan, above.
NA-41 (South Waziristan I): Maulana Abdul Malik Wazir (was MMA, re-elected as JUI-F)
NA-42 (South Waziristan II) - election postponed.
NA-43 (Bajaur I): Shaukat Ullaha Khan pledged to PPP Feb. 27.
NA-44 (Bajaur II): Syed Akhonzada Chittan said to be PPP but not there Feb. 27.
NA-45 (Khyber I): Noor Ul Haq Qadri (re-elected) pledged to PPP Feb. 27.
NA-46 (Khyber II): M. Saeed Afridi (Hamidullah Khan Afridi) pledged to PPP Feb. 27.
NA-47 (6 Frontier regions): Zafar Baig Bhatani pledged to PPP Feb. 27.

[ 28 February 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 01 March 2008 12:36 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Awami National Party proceeds with coalition government with the PPP in the North West Frontier Province.
quote:
ANP provincial chief Afrasiab Khattak said the PPP central leadership had assured support for the renaming of the province, provincial autonomy and matters concerning Fata.

Renaming of NWFP as ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ backed.

NWFP should be renamed as Afghania province since most of the people living in the province are not Pashtoons but Afghans.

quote:
The PkMAP leader Mahmood Khan Achakzai said they had no objection to renaming NWFP as Afghania, Pashtoonkhwa or Pakhtunistan.

Watch the explosion on the implications of such names.

When the people of Afghanistan came to know about the agreement of Durand Line between Ameer Abdul-Rehman Khan and the British, they turned down the said pact and strongly opposed it.

quote:
those Pakhtoons/Afghans living this side of Durand Line started a war against the occupied forces until they left the sub-Continent in 1947.

The people of Afghanistan have a strong disliking for that so-called agreement of the Durand Line. When Wazirs and Masood and other Pakhtoon tribes sensed that their national identity was at stake by imperialist forces and were divided, they were greatly perturbed and immediately sent a representative to Pakhtia where he visited Sardar Gul Ahmad Khan the Governor of Pakhtia to let them know about the signing of the agreement between Abdul-Rehman Khan and the British.

The representative told the Governor that his people were not ready to recognize their division, and would keep continued their war against it and would never surrender. Sardar Gul Ahmad Khan expressed his ignorance about such an agreement and assured the representative that no such pact was ever signed. But when Pakhtoon/Afghan tribes sensed it they took up arms and initiated the armed struggle to foil the conspiracies, which led to their division.

The Durand Line had not only divided one nation but its worst impacts had suffered houses and same tribes, as it had segregated one body into many parts. When Ameer realized that his decision was not accepted to his people and were opposed to it tooth and nail, he then started helping them with weapons and pelf. Ameer called famous Pakhtoon freedom fighter mullah Pawinda Waziri and mulla Najmuddin and many more tribal chiefs to Kabul and he showed his reverence and respect to them all. Ameer Abdul Rehman Khan was a wise man.

He knew well that he was unable to defend his all areas and the entire Afghanistan could be suffered if he was reluctant to sit with the British and hand over them some areas of his country Afghanistan for administrative purpose. The region where Pakhtoons are living today which was and is still called with an infamous nameless name (NWFP) was occupied by the British in the year of 1849. When the English forces were badly routed in Kabul by Afghans under the courageous and bold leadership of wazir Muhammad Akbar Khan.

Sensing gravity of the situations and defeat after defeat, the British rulers of India opted to come to negotiating table with Afghans, weaken their combined force and save themselves from the further ignobility and disgrace. Henry Mortimer Durand the then foreign secretary of British India went to Kabul where he visited Ameer Abdul Rehman Khan and got him signed the pact.

The real aim of the pact was to hamper the onward advent of Russians to the warm waters of sub-continent and divide Pakhtoon nation to decrease its might so that they could not stand as a threat to their interests and challenge their authority in this important region.

Just after the departure of the English from the sub-continent the parliament of Afghanistan announced revoking their all agreements with the British Government of India. So there seems no validity of the Durand line, which has segregated Pakhtoons/Afghans for the last several decades.

The demarcation of the line is nowhere is clear and the world should realize that the pact has never been signed with Pakistan.

Pakistan establishment is bent upon to perpetuate the artificial division of the Pakhtoon on the pretext of terrorists and containment of the Taliban. If one looks he can very easily find out that the real fault does not lie on the Durand line it lies in Islamabad.

The Pakistani establishments and the Governments have never been sincere with Afghanistan, and the foreign office of Pakistan is not ready to stop its policy of interference in Afghanistan. The world should open its eyes and to see as to who are standing behind the Taliban and terrorists who are frequently crossing over to Afghanistan and destroy the peace there?

But no Government in Afghanistan could dare to bargain on heads of the Pakhtoons living this side of the Durand line and accept it as a permanent border between two countries as it is an important question concerning more than 7 crore Pakhtoons living both sides of Durand line and in the different parts of the world. Until this artificial division of one nation is finished the world in general and Asia in particular will not be able to see a prosperous dawn.


[ 01 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 02 March 2008 04:55 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Independent MP-elects must decide on joining political parties by March 4.
quote:
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has asked the Independent MP-elects to join political parties by March 4, as the ECP will issue the notification of MP-elects on reserved seats.

The notification of Independent MP-elects has been issued and they can join any political party within three days, said the Secretary Election Commission.

After the inclusion of Independent MP-elects in political parties, the ECP will announce the share of reserved seats of various political parties as per bagged seats formula.



On Friday the MMA were partners with PML-Q; on Saturday with PPP. Stay tuned.

[ 02 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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posted 07 March 2008 06:18 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The PMLN continues to nudge the PPP into a confrontation with the presidency. By not accepting cabinet positions it wants to impress upon the PPP that the political situation remains fluid until Mr Musharraf is taken out.

Senior leaders from PPP and PML-N met on Friday night: PML-N central leader Ch Nisar Ali Khan, PML-N leader Kh Asif, PPP Secretary General Raja Pervez Ashraf, Leader of Opposition in Senate Mian Raza Rabbani, PPP Central Information Secretary Sherry Rehman and PPP legal advisor Farooq H Naik.

quote:
though the leadership of both parties came close to each other on vital issues, they could not reach a complete harmony and would likely to have another session on Saturday (today) prior to the crucial meeting of Nawaz and Zardari on Sunday when the modalities of the coalition government would be finalised.
The sources further disclosed that the PML-N leadership has shown flexibility in its stand and agreed to become the part of the cabinet if the matter of judiciary would be resolved through an executive order instead of taking the matter to the Parliament.

The coalition has 2/3 majority, in final standings in the Pakistan National Assembly for 331 seats of the 342-member house.

Coalition:
PPPP 120 NA seats
PML-N 90 seats
ANP 13
Independents 6

Of the 12 independents from FATA, six led by Hameedullah Jan Afridi have assured PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari of their support -- originally seven, don't know what happened to one of them -- but by law those six cannot join a party caucus. This way, the proposed three-party coalition plus those six MNAs-elect achieved the two-thirds majority in the assembly -- by a margin of 1, 229 when 228 is needed. However, ten seats remain possible additions. And the BNP(A)'s 1 could come on board if the PPP and the BNP(A) form a coalition government in Balochistan.

Opposition:
PML-Q 51
MQM 25
MMA 6
PML-F 5
PPP-S 1
NPP 1
BNP(A) 1?
FATA 6
Other Independents 6

(Of the original 20 or so independents from outside FATA, only 6 remain independent; 4 of them were close to the PML-Q.)

Out of the remaining 11 seats, three have been postponed, seven are subject to litigation, while the contest ended in a draw for one seat reserved for women from the NWFP. A draw between PML-Q and MMA will be held for that seat.

In women's seats from Sindh, the PPPP has given the representation to Sherry Rehman, Nafisa Shah, Fauzia Wahab, Shagufta Jumani, Farahnaz Ispahani, Rubina Qaimkhani, and Mehreen Razzaq Bhutto.

PPPP has decided to include three newly elected female MNAs in the federal cabinet: Samina Khalid Ghurki, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan and Sherri Rahman.

Samina Khalid Ghurki won re-election, the only woman to win a general National Assembly seat from Lahore (Punjab). Her husband is Khalid Ghurki, Nazim of Wagha Town in Lahore (on the border with Indian Punjab), and long-time President of the PPP's Lahore chapter. In the 2002 general election, he could not contest because of the bar on non-graduates. In his place, his wife ran and won.

Dr. Fardos Ashiq Awan won a general seat in Punjab's Sialkot, defeating the incumbent Speaker of the National Assembly (a PML-Q man.) She herself had been elected on a PML-Q ticket to a reserved seat for women in 2002 and was even made a parliamentary secretary. However, in 2007 she resigned from the post and joined the PPP.

PPP Central Information Secretary Sherry Rehman said the PPP would work to help women find their clear identity. “After the government has been formed, we will take up the issue of women’s empowerment in the assembly. Our party will seek the proper implementation of existing laws. We will also make plans how to deal with all discriminatory laws.”

[ 08 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 08 March 2008 04:49 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Crunch meeting Sunday: Both the leaders will address a joint press conference at 4pm. That's 6:00 AM EST Sunday.
quote:
Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) will hold today (Sunday) crunch negotiations in Murree aimed at the formation of governments.

Nawaz Sharif will hold an important meeting with PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari to mull over modalities for induction in the government, restoration of judges, constitutional amendments aimed at curtailing president’s powers and formation of coalition government in Punjab as well as the hammering out the future strategy.

Nawaz Sharif would be accompanied with Ishaq Dar, Javed Hashmi, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Khawja Asif and Ahsan Iqbal; whereas, Asif Ali Zardari will have to his side Raza Rabbani (PPP Deputy Secretary General, from Sindh), Sherry Rehman (PPP Information Secretary, from Sindh), Khurshid Shah (a former minister in Benazir's government from Sindh who has been given the task of formation of a government of Balochistan), Shah Mahmud Qureshi (PPP Punjab President) and other leaders at the meeting.



All of these PPP leaders were said to be desitined for Cabinet, along with seven others.

PPP offers PML-N five ministries:

quote:
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has offered its coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) five ministries in the federal cabinet, it was learnt Saturday. The ministries offered to PML-N under formal power sharing formula include defence, communications, privatization and investment, women development and ports and shipping, PPP sources said. “The ministry of water and power would be given to Asfandyar Wali-led Awami National Party (ANP),” these sources said, adding Jamiatulema-Islam (F) would be offered ministry of religious affairs, in case it joins the coalition government. Currently, senior leaders from both the PPP and JUI (F) are engaged in finalizing the modalities of coalition “with focus on Balochistan where Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) has secured considerable seats and is in position of bargaining,” PPP sources said. They said name of Senator Anwar Baig is also being considered for the federal cabinet and he might get foreign ministry in case Makhdoom Amin Fahim is nominated for the office of prime minister. “Similarly, Aijaz Jakhrani and Nawab Wasan - both from Sindh province, are also strong candidates to be ministers.” “The deputy speaker of the National Assembly would be a woman candidate from PPP,” they added.

Asif Ali Zaardari and Nawaz Sharif whose PPP and PML-N emerged on top in Pakistan's parliamentary election will meet Sunday to finalize a power-sharing deal, a party spokesman said. Sadiqul Farooq, a spokesman for Sharif's party, told The Associated Press the two leaders “ will meet to give a final shape to matters about formation of the coalition government.” “There is a progress in our talks,” he said but gave no further details.



The PML-N has agreed to receive portfolios in the Centre on the PPP’s insistence. The PML-Functional (PML-F) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) were among the 274 MPAs-elect who attended a dinner of the governing coalition. (Apparently they were seeking cabinet seats, but may not get them. The PML-F were allies of Musharraf. The MMA were quite opposed to Benazir Bhutto.)

[ 08 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 09 March 2008 06:23 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
“Together for a Democratic Pakistan”:
quote:
The following is the text of the Declaration announced after the meeting between the PML-N Leader Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party Asif Ali Zardari. The declaration was read by the PML-N head Muhammad Nawaz Sharif on the occasion.

The declaration says that “ The coalition partners PPP and PML-N undertake to form coalition “Together for a Democratic Pakistan” for translating the mandate given by people of Pakistan to the democratic forces on February 18, 2008 into action.

In today’s summit meeting between the coalition leaders of PPP and PML-N it was decided that the restoration of the deposed judges as it was on 2nd of November, 2007 shall be brought about through a Parliamentary resolution to be passed in the National Assembly within thirty days of the formation of the federal government.

It was further agreed that the nominee of the PPP for the office of the Prime Minister shall be fully supported by all coalition partners. It was suggested by PML-N that the Prime Minister’s candidate should be one who can deliver on the joint agenda of the coalition.

It was further agreed that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of National Assembly shall be from the PPP while the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Punjab Assembly shall be from the PML-N.

It was also agreed that PML-N shall be part of the federal cabinet while the PPP shall be part of the Punjab government.

The leadership was of the firm opinion that the coalition partners are ready to form the governments and the National and Provincial assemblies should be convened immediately”.



Note on PPP's labour wing, the Peoples Labour Bureau.

Last May Day in Lahore Comrade Amin Bhatti, a leader of the People's Labour Bureau and the organiser of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign Punjab chaired the function.

quote:
There were three main activities on May Day. In the morning a rally was organised by the official union workers confederation. The second main activity was a protest demonstration organised by PTUDC for the release of Hameed Khan and other comrades. The third main function was a seminar on the "Pakistan workers and the present crisis". This was organised by the labour wing of the PPP (People's Labour Bureau) and coordinated with the PTUDC. In reality this was the official and main May Day function of the PPP. The main national leaders of the PPP and its allied parties attended it. A message of Benazir Bhutto from London was read out at the function.

Now there are between 10 and 15 comrades on the PPP ticket who will advance a left programme in these elections and possibly win them. The PTUDC supported three candidates in this year's election:
Manzoor Ahmad, president of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign and PPP Member of the National Assembly from NA-139 (Kasur-II) lost his seat this year to a PML-N candidate.

Ali Wazir is a candidate in Waziristan NA-41 where voting has been postponed.

Riaz Lund was the PPP candidate in Karachi-XIX NA-257 where he lost to the MQM.

quote:
In the Pakistani general election of 2002, Comrade Manzoor Ahmed, standing in constituency NA-139, won one of the National Assembly seats for the district of Kasur. Kasur is a town ravaged by its many tanneries. Chemicals from the tanneries have seeped into the groundwater. Poor people who cannot afford bottled water suffer from all kinds of unusual diseases and deformities.

He confounded the expectations of all the political analysts of Pakistan, defeating three of the wealthiest people of Pakistan, despite them having spent billions of rupees in their election campaigns. The vote for fundamentalists was neglible. The basic reason for this victory was that Comrade Manzoor fought his campaign on a revolutionary class basis, vowing to wage an irreconcilable struggle till socialist revolution. Since his victory, Manzoor has worked tirelessly to use his parliamentary platform to fight for the interests of workers, peasants, and all other poor people. This has earned him a solid base for re-election in the upcoming election.

As a revolutionary socialist in a bourgeois parliament he came under enormous pressure from all sides. First the rulers tried to buy Comrade Manzoor by offering him a position as a minister. Then they offered him a huge sum of cash. But Manzoor stood firm. He continued to struggle inside and outside parliament for the rights of the working masses - against poverty, unemployment, price hikes, privatization and the exploitative capitalist system. He fought every battle with revolutionary honesty and courage.

Workers and trade unionists in Pakistan and around the world know him as president of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign and due to his tireless participation in workers’ strikes and his role in organizing labour conferences in order to pull together and unite the fragmented trade union movement. He is also known because Hugo Chavez invited him to Venezuela and because of his efforts to bring the working people of India and Pakistan together.

No MP in the history of the Pakistani parliament has presented so many motions and bills on working class issues.


Abdul Qadir Shaheen was a PPP member of the Punjab Assembly in 1988 - 90, and is president of the Peoples Labour Bureau Punjab.

The Peoples Labour Bureau Pakistan (PLBP) of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) expected a huge turnout of the working or labour class in the rally to be staged last October 18 to receive PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

quote:
Habibuddin Junaidi, the PLBP central coordinator, said that they would hold meetings at the district, divisional and provincial levels throughout Ramadan to motivate the maximum number of workers to attend. “There are reasons why I can say with certainty that the working class will outnumber others in the Oct 18 rally as the reforms introduced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto raised their status,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of people were given employment during the two tenures of Benazir Bhutto in the late 1980s and mid-1990s.

Even employees sacked during the martial law regime of General Zia-ul-Haq were reinstated.”

Junaidi also mentioned the PPP government’s privatisation policy which he said had been in the interests of employees and there was no down sizing in Benazir Bhutto’s government, but since it was dismissed an estimated 800,000 employees have been laid off.


[ 09 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 09 March 2008 07:31 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Apart from expressing a sentiment, we have not been informed how any “resolution” will restore the judiciary short of a constitutional amendment in a joint sitting of parliament in which the numbers are not yet weighted in favour of the PPP-PMLN. So does the coalition have a two-thirds majority, needed to amend the constitution?

Yes. Zardari said MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman would be part of the federal cabinet and “we will have formal power-sharing with his party.”

Zardari and Sharif have agreed and displayed it in Bhurban that democracy was actually the best revenge. Thus Bhurban will go down in history as a venue, which forced a dictator out of office, with determination and commitment, not by force or a gun.

The PPP and PML-N have decided that after the restoration of judges the new ruling coalition would "request" Musharraf to step down respectfully. Initially Nawaz Sharif wanted to arrest and try Musharraf in a court of law under treason charges but Asif Ali Zardari convinced him not to humiliate the enemy and provide him a "safe passage". Zardari agreed that if Musharraf does not agree to step down then the new ruling coalition may go for his impeachment.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 11 March 2008 12:43 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Rift in PPP as Zardari eyes PM's post:
quote:
According to PPP sources, Zardari has decided to become the candidate for the PM's post, after quietly pitching the top four leaders against each other.

Fahim, 68, who led the PPP for seven years while Benazir was in exile, rejected news report that he was pulling out of the race. Confirming that he was still a "candidate for the PM's slot", the MP from Sindh hinted that the behind-the-scene political developments in the party were intensifying by the day

In fact, shortly after Bhutto's assassination in December last year, Zardari had declared that Fahim would be the party's prime ministerial candidate. However, he changed his mind soon after and talked about a PM from Punjab and senior PPP leaders Yousaf Raza Gillani, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar were tipped to be in the race.

One more reason Zardari might opt for a leader from Punjab, according to a source, is to neutralise the dramatic rise of the PPP leader and supreme court bar association president Aitzaz Ahsan on the national scene. Ahsan, who has openly endorsed Fahim for the top job, is himself seen and backed by many for the post, though he has denied that he is in the running.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 14 March 2008 09:42 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Zardari may nominate sister as interim PM:
quote:
PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari may nominate his sister, Dr. Azra Fazal Pecheho, as the interim premier, according to a BBC Radio report on Friday.

Quoting close aides of Zardari, the BBC said that as he had not been elected to the National Assembly, Zardari could not become premier himself. They said he might nominate his sister as temporary prime minister instead.



Azra Fazal Pecheho won easily in NA-213 (Nawabshah-I).

In 2002 Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho secured 75237 votes in the same seat and defeated the PML-Q candidate Syed Zahid Hussain Shah who got 28824 votes while the MQM candidate Ghulam Hyder Rahu bagged 20877 votes.

quote:
It was a greatest victory of a female in the country against male candidate with a great difference of 46413 votes. There were total 12 candidates in the field in 2002.

Now, in election 2008, Dr Azra Fazal of PPP and Syed Zahid Hussain Shah of PML-F are once again contesting against each other from same seat. There are 13 candidates in election run this year. The MQM candidate Muhammad Mureed Brohi has been withdrawn in favour of Syed Zahid Hussain Shah under mutual seat adjustment policy among PML-Q, MQM, PML-F and NPP.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 19 March 2008 07:52 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Pakistan elects first-ever female Speaker, with 21 votes more than a two-thirds majority.

The 51-year-old Dr Mirza was elected an MNA for the third consecutive term from a general seat in Badin, Sindh Province, southeast of Hyderabad. Dr. Fahmida Mirza was re-elected in NA-225 with 76% of the vote against Musharraf's candidate (a female PML-Q Senator) and a gaggle of independents.

quote:
She is an agriculturist and businesswoman by profession, although she is a medical graduate from the Liaquat Medical College, Jamshoro.

Sources told Dawn that there was great resentment within the PPP over Mr Zardari’s decision to nominate Dr Mirza. A PPP MNA from Sindh said the decision could be “disastrous” for the party because it appeared that Mr Zardari was interested in accommodating his friends.

Dr Mirza is the wife of Zulfiqar Mirza, MPA-elect from Sindh and a close friend of Mr Zardari. The sources said Mr Mirza was also expected to get a good position in the Sindh cabinet.

The decision to nominate Dr Mirza as speaker could further diminish the chances of Makhdoom Amin Fahim to become prime minister as it is largely believed that after giving the two main parliamentary offices to Sindh and the NWFP, the leader of the house must be from Punjab.



She was elected with 249 votes although the governing coalition has only 233 or 231 MNAs, while the opposition candidate got only 70 votes although it has 84 MNAs.
quote:
The number of votes polled in her favour is amazing as she secured 18 more votes than the declared strength of members favouring the incoming government.

The two would-be opposition parties have 78 MNAs - 53 from the PML-Q and 25 from the MQM - in the NA. These parties also claim support of PML-Functional and PPP-Sherpao, who have five and one MNA respectively.



So at least 14 MNAs from the opposition are getting ready to join the new government. Rats leaving Musharraf's sinking ship.

(I see four MNAs missed the vote, and there were five spoiled ballots.)

[ 23 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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posted 20 March 2008 08:15 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fahim pulls off his own meeting:
quote:
About 240 parliamentarians, including 10 independent MPs from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, attended the meeting.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim has asked parties set to form a coalition government in Pakistan to jointly choose a Prime Minister instead of leaving the choice to an individual.

Amid intensified fighting in the Pakistan People's Party over premiership, party vice-president Fahim, who was once touted as frontrunner, made the observation while presiding over a meeting of the joint parliamentary group of the PPP, PML-N, Awami National Party and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam at the Parliament House in Islamabad yesterday.

Fahim said the leadership of the parties in the new alliance should jointly name a candidate for premiership instead of leaving the choice to an individual.

Senior PPP leader Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, pitted against Fahim in the race for premiership, objected to Fahim presiding over the meeting in the absence of Zardari.

Nearly a month after the general election, the PPP is yet to announce its prime ministerial candidate.



When Makhdoom Amin Fahim stood up to greet Dr. Fahmida Mirza after she took oath as the Speaker, members started thumping desks for quite sometime.
quote:
Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani remained centre of attraction throughout the session as newly-elected members of the National Assembly especially from allied parties were seen chatting with him.

Party leaders believed that the main contenders for the office now were Yousuf Raza Gillani and Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
quote:
Zardari has called his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the party, from the UK to announce the name of candidate for the post of prime minister.

The co-chairman took the decision to call him two days ago when he came to know that his son was planning to spend the Easter vacation in Dubai with his sisters, he said.

When asked if the decision had been taken because senior PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim was likely to avoid directly criticising the party chairman in view of his young age, Mr Babar said an announcement by him would definitely have a great importance.



The speech of the day was that of Javed Hashmi.
quote:
He recalled the events leading to his imprisonment under charges of “high treason” and the “role” played by the then custodian of the house for not issuing his (Hashmi’s) production order to enable him to attend the proceedings of the National Assembly.

While the message (in Hashmi’s speech) to Dr Fehmida and his colleagues was to establish the supremacy of parliament and unite for a cause, he also shook the conscience of the “democrats” to stand united against the “undemocratic” forces which, he said, had reduced the previous assembly to a rubber-stamp.

“We have to ensure that now the decisions will not be made in the White House and the GHQ,” Hashmi told his colleagues.

Interestingly, although all the speakers referred to the undemocratic steps and decisions taken during the last five years, none of them mentioned the name of President Musharraf.

After all, he is a “duly” elected head of state, thus he is part of parliament. And they wanted parliament to be supreme. The one issue that could create tensions between them relates to the restoration of the judges. How that will pan out remains to be seen.



Sherry Rehman expected to become information minister:
quote:
The PPP has decided that its central information secretary would be given the portfolio of information and broadcasting.

Sherry Rehman was at first considered for the slot of foreign minister but the PPP leadership later concluded that she should lead media managers to effectively project the working of the new government.

Besides being the party’s central information secretary, she headed PPP’s Policy Planning Committee responsible for coordinating and preparing drafts on diverse subjects. The committee had also drafted PPP election manifesto on the basis of guidelines given by the leadership.

Before joining PPP, Sherry Rehman served as editor of Herald, a leading English magazine of international repute, for nearly a decade.

The sources said Asif Ahmad Ali, who served as foreign minister under the late former prime minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, was likely to get the same portfolio.

According to the sources PPP’s Naveed Qamar, a former investment and privatization minister, was expected to become finance minister in the coalition government.

The sources said PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had informed PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif about the choice of prime minister and the name would be announced by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in a couple of days.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has arrived in Pakistan on the request of the party and he would soon chair a high level PPP meeting in Islamabad ahead of the announcement.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 22 March 2008 08:33 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In half an hour we find out who Zardari has chosen as Pakistan's Prime Minister.

Or interim PM until Zardari can run in a by-election.

But is Zardari qualified?

quote:
President Musharraf introduced a law in 2002 that made it compulsory for parliamentary candidates to hold a degree in order to qualify for electoral office.

Zardari is a graduate from London, said PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar. “He (Mr Zardari) is a graduate from the London School of Economics and Business Studies. You can check it on our party’s website,” said Mr Babar, responding to a question from Daily Times regarding an article in the New York Times which shed some doubt over Mr Zardari’s B Ed degree.

A report published in the New York Times by Jane Perlez on Tuesday says, “In the early 1970s, Mr Zardari went to London.” It says that while there, he “attended the London School of Business Studies and received a Bachelor of Education degree. His official biography says he attended a commercial college called Pedinton School. But a search of tertiary educational institutions in London showed no such school, and associates said he did not finish his studies.”

However, the article also states that when asked about his degree, Mr Zardari said, “I do have a degree. That is not an issue.” According to Perlez, “He said he attended the London School of Business Studies ‘much before I was married. I think it’s a B Ed degree. I haven’t really looked at it,’ he said.”



He's looking now.

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posted 22 March 2008 09:55 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yousuf Raza Gillani will be the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, the PPP announced, ending the month-long suspense marked by bitter tussle for the top post.

His political pedigree dates back to his great grandfather’s brother, the first Gillani to be elected to Indian Legislative Council in 1921.

quote:
The election of Gillani, who spent four years in prison over allegations that he abused his authority as a Speaker, is a certainty given the majority the incoming PPP-PML(N) coalition has in Parliament.

But the candidature of the man, who defeated former premier Nawaz Sharif in 1988, is likely to further expose the serious differences within slain premier Benazir Bhutto's party since veteran politician Makhdoom Amin Fahim, another close Bhutto aide, was the initial frontrunner.

Plans for Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son who flew in from Britain, to unveil the name at a press conference were earlier dropped.

Party officials said Bilawal was feeling unwell, but some observers speculate that his absence may have been a tack to spare him from answering questions about reported PPP infighting over the premiership.
quote:
The President's political ally, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), said it had decided to withraw its candidate as a "gesture of goodwill."

"We have decided to extend unconditional support to the PPP nominee, Farooq Sattar, the candidate of the Karachi-based MQM said.

MQM has made a unilateral decision to try to wiggle in to the ruling coalition, welcome or not. The left in Sindh keeps calling the MQM fascists. We'll see.

[ 22 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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posted 22 March 2008 07:02 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
While the new Pakistan government decides what to do about Musharraf, hampered by not having a two-thirds majority in the upper house, the most news may come from the new government of the North West Frontier Province, led by the left-wing secular Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party and the PPP.

One of its first acts will be to rename the province Pukhtunkhwa, and then bring the tribal areas into it. This will remind everyone that Pushtuns are one nation artificially divided by the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The ANP has 46 MLAs and the PPP has 30, out of the total 121. The outgoing MMA (Islamist conservative) government is now the opposition, with only 14 seats. Musharraf's allies have 13. Nawaz Sharif's party has 9, and there are 9 independents.

The ANP has nominated Haider Hoti as its candidate for the office of chief minister in the incoming government, and he has announced talks with the Taliban. He is the nephew of the party’s central chief Asfandyar Wali Khan as well as Begum Nasim Wali Khan, the former ANP provincial chief and widow of Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan the founder of the NAP-ANP produced a party that represented the psyche and the spirit of the Pushtun nationality.

The ANP's leading members are descendants of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the so-called “frontier Gandhi” who opposed British rule.

quote:
The Americans hope their ties with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, will lead to more cross-border co-operation. But their links to Afghanistan and to India's Congress party make some Pakistanis suspicious of them.

The party wants to change the province's colonial-era name to Pukhtunkhwa. The party will face stiff resistance to its plan to revoke a colonial-era parliamentary act that banned political parties from the tribal areas and left the field open to the mullahs. The mullahs' former chief minister, Akram Durrani, says that the ANP lacks sufficient clout in the tribal areas and restive southern districts of NWFP to secure a peace.

Though the Americans have backed it, the ANP has been ambivalent about the global “war on terror” and has criticised Pakistan's involvement. “The Taliban is a reality and has assumed the shape of a party and we have to talk with them,” says Mr Hoti. Such pledges may revive previous American worries about local peace deals with militants.



Abolition of the Durand Line would promote unity and bring about prosperity to the Pukhtuns living across the 112-year old frontier line drawn by force and dividing a nation into many parts.
quote:
Awami National Party former provincial chief Begum Nasim Wali Khan, National Awami Party Pakistan secretary-general Abdul Latif Afridi and others spoke on the occasion.

The nationalist leaders were of the view that the Durand Line should be abolished as it was against the interests of the Pukhtuns. They underlined the need for bringing all the Pukhtuns, wherever they live, under one banner and one geographical unit.

Begum Nasim Wali Khan said it was an artificial line, drawn by the then English rulers of the subcontinent, to extend their divide-and-rule policy down to the Afghans territory. But, she recalled, the Pukhtuns had resisted it and refused to accept the English rule in their area.

Mr Afridi said the Durand Line had divided houses, families and tribes of the Pukhtuns living across both parts of the dividing line. He said it was inhuman and immoral to deprive a nation of its basic rights. Pukhtuns, he added, had never accepted this colonial decision and waged a number of battles against it.



quote:
A Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman responded positively to the peace overtures of the nationalist party.

“Hoti’s offer of talks with us is a sensible move. The move will help improve the law and order situation in the NWFP and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),” he added.

He suggested the next government do away with the “pro-US policies” of President Pervez Musharraf.

However, he said that the Taliban would not give up weapons “as long as the Americans and their allies are in Afghanistan”.


[ 22 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 23 March 2008 07:11 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Does the PPP Labour Bureau have any influence? Since Left Parties made the mistake (as they now acknowledge) of boycotting the election, only the PPP Labour wing and the Awami National Party represent any parliamentary left.

Dec. 28: Benazir Bhutto killed, her security car was badly damaged and People's Labour Bureau (PLB) President Abdul Qadir Shaheen was injured in the car.

January 7: People’s Labour Bureau in-charge Abdul Qadir Shaheen, who is also the Punjab PPP additional secretary-general, addressed a meeting of the bureau held to pay a tribute to Benazir Bhutto. So did Labour Bureau information-secretary Saleem Mughal.

Feb. 17: Car Drivers Union took out a mass rally in favour of PPP candidates, Jam Tamachi Unar and Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah.

Mar. 4: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has formed a committee to assist the employees of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) to address their problems.

quote:
A ten-member PTCL Employees Union delegation called on PPP leaders at Zardari house here Tuesday evening and briefed them about the problems faced by workers of their organisation.

Talking to media after the meeting, the PTCL delegation head Malik Maqbool said that Pakistan People’s Party has formed a committee in chairmanship of Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed to assist the PTCL employees for resolution of their issues. Meanwhile, the Party leaders assured them to give them priority after PPP comes into power.

“We apprised PPP leadership of our grievances including post-privatization policies of downsizing in name of right-sizing,” Malik Maqbool said.



March 6: Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed (mentioned nine posts up, President of the PTUDC) was added to the party’s central executive committee (CEC), although he lost his battle for re-election in Kasur constituency. He is an active member of the labour wing of the PPP and was also appointed chairman of a newly formed committee to liaison with various employee unions.

March 15: Earlier on March 12, over 1,600 workers of the mill took over the factory and occupied all the administration departments. However, the workers gave up control of the mill at 5pm when local member of (provincial) parliament from the Pakistan People’s Party Jam Tamachi assured them that their demands would be met within the next 48 hours.

quote:
On Friday, the trade union leaders were approaching local PPP leaders and newly-elected parliamentarians to look into the matter sympathetically and save the growers and the families of workers. They said they would not withdraw their demands and continue their struggle to get sacked employees reinstated and facilities restored.

Aziz Abbasi, a union leader, said the workers had been deprived of their right of bonus by the mill management for the last eight years. After President Pervez Musharraf took power on October 12, 1999 the mill management restricted the workers from establishing a trade union and better wages. But after the general elections, the workers took initiative, trying to convey their demands to the management to seek justice and restoration of facilities they were entitled to according to labour laws, Labour Party Pakistan General Secretary for Sindh Younus Rahoo told The News.

Mahnatkash Labour Union of Al-Noor Sugar Mill was recently registered after eight years of restrictions on union activity. During that period, most of the concessions provided for workers were taken back.

According to trade union activists, hundreds of trucks and tractor trolleys carrying 200,000 maunds of sugarcane have been waiting outside the main gate of the mill due to the dispute and delaying tactics adopted by the mill management. If the crisis continued, it would affect hundreds of sugarcane growers and 1,600 families of workers, they complained.

Trade union leaders said they had taken a stay order from the National Industrial Relation Commission (NIRC) and a copy of that had been given to the mill’s GM, but despite that operations were stopped.



quote:
March 17: LAHORE: Pakistan People's Party central leader Nahid Khan Monday said the PPP would fulfill all its promises pledged with the workers pertaining to inclusion of reserved seats for workers in the senate and assemblies.

Talking to office-bearers of different organisations linked with the Peoples Labour Bureau, she said, "PPP would scrap all anti-labour laws and lift ban on trade unions."

She said the promises made with the workers by Benazir Bhutto regarding inclusion of reserved seats for workers in the Senate and national and provincial assemblies would also be met. Central In-charge Peoples Labour Bureau, Abdul Qadir Shaheen, Information Secretary Muhammad Saleem Mughal, General Secretary Punjab Syed Khalid Bukhari and President Lahore Malik Ehtshamul Hassan among score others were present on the occasion. In her speech, she said the country could never progress without proper industrial development for which resolution of the labourers' problems and repealing of anti-labour laws 'is essential.' She assured the representatives of rickshaw, taxi union that the party in question would never put a ban on two-stroke rickshaws.



An analysis of MNAs by declared assets shows:
quote:
Ms Naheed Khan a PPPP member elected on women’s quota, has been consistent in being one of the poorest MNAs during the past four years. She was the poorest MNA during 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 with net liabilities of Rs7.6 million, Rs9.48 million and Rs11.36 million.

In Punjab Ms Naheed Khan, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed and Khurram Munawar Munj are the three poorest.


[ 23 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 24 March 2008 04:53 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Tears streaked down young Bilawal's cheeks as an equally emotional prime minister-elect Yousuf Raza Gilani reached over the railing of the visitors' gallery and clutched his hand; his lips quivering; his own eyes brimming with tears.
quote:
The grasp lingered. Neither spoke a word. But the choking silence said it all. There could not have been a more poignant remembrance of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.

It was one of those amazing moments in life that stay with you forever, a sight that left even some of the hardened cynics of the press corps with uncomfortable lumps in throats. Oh what a day! Never before, and possibly never again, will the National Assembly witness such an unrestrained outpouring of emotions. In the overflowing galleries, passions flowed equally unabated. The PPP had waited for 12 long years for this day, the PML-N nine. For one it was redemption, for the other pure vengeance against its nemesis President Musharraf. So, when the newly-elected Leader of the House walked towards the hastily-erected podium to deliver his maiden speech, it was as if emotional flood gates were suddenly flung open.

People cheered, jeered, danced, laughed, and even cried. You could see the emotional conflict however. Everyone wanted to celebrate the victory but the missing Benazir Bhutto was all too evident to ignore. She had dealt them the right hand, but was not around to claim the winnings.

There was both adulation, and hatred. If the House had earlier reverberated with the slogans of "Zinda Hai BB Zinda Hai," it seemed that the walls would cave in with the subsequent thunderous echo of "Go Musharraf Go."

One of the first orders of the prime-minister elect in his acceptance speech was the immediate 'release' of all the deposed judges of the superior court 'confined' in their homes. Once again, the House and the galleries burst into a rapturous round of applause and desk thumping, which seemed to go on forever. Again, it was difficult to distinguish whether the people were celebrating the rise of judiciary more or the approaching finale of the man on the hill, with the release of the deposed judges surely proving a major thorn in his aching side.

While emotions ran wild inside the House, the cafeteria talk remained focused on the complexion of the cabinet to be. Everyone had guesses but no precise information, as the final details were expected to be inked between the coalition partners by late night.

But for once let's not talk statistics like Yousuf Raza Gilani trouncing his opposing candidate by getting 264 votes against his measly 42. Let's not talk about the PML-N getting 15 ministries of choice amongst others. Let's just savour this one day of pure emotional outpouring. It isn't everyday that one feels so much alive, and hopeful of the change.



ANP leader fires up the House after Gillani's election, demands release from military detention of former Balochistan chief minister Sardar Akhtar Mengal:
quote:
ANP leader Asfandyar Wali in his first fiery speech delivered in the National Assembly on Monday filled the otherwise massive gap created by the absence of the mighty Mehmud Khan Achakzai, when he instantly took the cause of the release of the forgotten Akhtar Mengal who is paying the price of defiance.

Asfandyar also pleaded the case of the innocent Pashtuns who were being killed in the war on terror and he greatly wondered that how the Pashtuns could be termed terrorists and fundamentalists when they had given votes to the liberal and secular parties in the recent elections. "For God's sake, my Pashtuns need the pens, not the guns. Give them school uniforms not suicide jackets," he pleaded with folded hands.

His extraordinary speech, desperately pleading the case of the Pashtuns and Baloch in his traditional humble but a determined voice, reminded everybody about the widely respected nationalist leader Mehmud Khan Achakzai. In the past, on such occasions, this was Achakzai, who used to stir the press gallery and the parliamentarians alike with his unusual attacks on the establishment and its secret operatives.

Asfandyar kept on arguing the case of Pashtuns and many kept on whispering in the press gallery that finally parliament had found the replacement of the mighty Achakzai at least till the time the respectable Pashtun leader returns to parliament to educate the new political leaders and media persons in the press gallery with his exciting speeches which were always heard in pin-drop silence in the last assembly.


Gillani's supporters have an interesting wish-list:
quote:
The PML-N's senior leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan made it clear that the defence budget, in no way, would be allowed to be slashed, adding that the nuclear programme should be furthered. He called for better relations with the neighbours, particularly India, but insisted all the ways leading to the Pak-India friendship be passed through Kashmir. "The Kashmir issue should be resolved in line with the aspirations of the Kashmiris," he said.

Awami National Party (ANP) President Asfandyar Wali hailed Gilani's order for freeing of the judges and wished such order should be passed for all the political prisoners, including Akhtar Mengal. "They are behind bars, but declined to bow before anyone." The nationalist leader called for a dialogue with the extremist elements, tribal elders and nationalists, saying if talks could be held with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then why not with those who belonged to this land.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman called for a resolution of the Afghan problem in order to establish peace in Pakistan and questioned the US right to declare anyone a terrorist. He also blamed what he called Gen Musharraf's unilateral policy of declaring religious-minded people as terrorists.


[ 24 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 25 March 2008 05:33 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Transliterating from Urdu to English drives Google nuts, and doesn't make things easy for researchers either.

In Pakistan, Dawn spells it Gilani.

The Election Commission of Pakistan says Gillani.

Agence France Press spells it Gilani.

BBC likes Gillani.

Al Jazeera says Gilani.

Xinhua prefers Gillani.

Wikipedia mostly says Gilani, but the title says Gillani.

The New York Times says Gillani.

Associated Press of Pakistan calls him Gilani. But then again, Gillani will do too.

Press Trust of India says Gilani. Except when they prefer Gillani.

Downing Street can't make up its mind.

The government of Pakistan spells it Gillani. But what do they know.

[ 25 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 25 March 2008 06:24 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A delegation of some senior leaders of PPP led by Syed Khursheed Shah, Syed Naveed Qamar, Sherry Rahman, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, MPAs Amir Dogar, Ahmed Hussain Dehar and MNA Nabeel Gabol called on Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani at the Prime Minister House on Tuesday afternoon and congratulated him on assuming the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan:
quote:
Gilani said the government would consult all the political parties in the ruling coalition for making an effective strategy for providing immediate relief to the people.

They also exchanged views on the overall political situation in the country with reference to the prime minister's commitment to announce 100 days' policy programme shortly, for the benefit of the people.



Punjab People’s Labour Bureau’s office-bearers Abdul Qadir Shaheen, Muhammad Saleem Mughal and Dr. Zia Ullah Bangash termed Gillani’s election as PM, a historic success of the allied parties, asserting that it would ensure country’s security, development and prosperity and welfare of the masses.

The Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA), the new name given to the four parties alliance. Snappier than “Together for a Democratic Pakistan.” (For all I know, just a snappier translation?)

Twenty-member Federal Cabinet including ten ministers from PPP, seven from Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), two from Awami National Party (ANP) and one from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) would take oath in first phase, sources said.

quote:
The PPP will enjoy 12 ministries at Centre, the PML-N eight or nine.

Do I hear 14?

[ 25 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 25 March 2008 09:01 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A who's who of the PPP left:
quote:
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Wednesday organised a seminar to mark the 5th death anniversary of Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed at the Lahore Press Club.

Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed was one of the founders of socialism in Pakistan.

Dr Ziaullah Bangash said that it was not possible for the PPP to enter into any deal with a dictator as the party had been fighting against dictators. He said the PPP was an ideological party.

Dr Mehdi Hassan said only slogans could not give freedom. He said he was happy that both Bhutto and Sheikh Rasheed had died. Had they were alive, they would have died of shame, he said.

He said he was unable to understand that why every time leadership deceived workers and got power. He said Benazir did not ask her party workers in 1988 before sitting with the supporters of Gen Zia.

MNA Chaudhry Manzoor said generals, feudal, mafias and hoarders were on a rampage to loot the people, but nobody was stopping them.

Altaf Qureshi said had Bhutto alive he should tell how to tackle the dictatorship and without unity PPP can’t face dictator. He said where were people and lawyers when Nawaz was deported as the orders of the SC was violated.



Sheikh Rashid started his career as a lawyer but soon his socialist leanings led him to establish the Azad Pakistan Party.
quote:
The organization was a broadly progressive programme and he was appointed its first secretary-general. In 1967 he joined hands with the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the formation of the Pakistan Peoples Party. He was a founding member of the party's central executive committee and later a member of the first ever PPP cabinet, initially as Health Minister and then Chairman of the Land Reforms Commission.

Sheikh Mohammad Rashid, Baba-e-Socialism (father of socialism), dies in 2002:
quote:
Sheikh Mohammad Rashid, who has died aged 87, symbolised the socialist conscience of the Zulifkar Ali Bhutto-led Pakistan People's party and was its vice chairman for over three decades.

Born in the Punjab province, he was swept up in anti-colonial agitation as a foot soldier of the independence-leading Muslim League party in the 1940s. Soon after independence, however, he grew disillusioned with the landlord-dominated league, whose political ethos clashed with his radical and pro-peasant politics, and in 1950 he left the party.

During the next two decades, Rashid immersed himself in organising peasant interests. His finest hour came when he joined the Pakistan People's party, founded by the then rising politician Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, in 1967. Its socialist programme attracted popular support and soon Sheikh Rashid came to be seen as a genuine representative of leftist current within the party. As senior vice chairman, he became a symbol of workers and peasant interests.

In the 1970 elections, he was returned to parliament on the PPP platform. From 1971 to 1977, he served as federal agricultural and health minister in Bhutto's administration. Acknowledging Rashid's radical credentials, Bhutto appointed him chairman of the federal land reforms commission. Unfortunately, organised landed interests prevented Rashid's proposals for land reform which, if implemented, would have made Pakistan a very different place.

In 1977 the Bhutto government was overthrown by General Zia-ul-haq. Repression of PPP workers followed and Rashid spent the next decade in exile in Britain. He made frequent visits to Bulgaria for health checks, having maintained close relations with that country's ruling party since his peasant activism days.

After the death of Zia in a mysterious air crash in 1988, democracy was restored to Pakistan and Sheikh Rashid returned to a vastly changed country. He unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary seat in the 1988 elections. Poor health and advancing age were contributory factors in his failure in an election that was manipulated by intelligence agencies.

Sheikh Rashid did not play much part in two short-lived administrations of Bhutto's daughter Benazir in 1988 and 1993, although he was kept on in a largely ceremonial role as senior vice chairman of the party and was seen to act as a bridge between the workers and an increasingly remote feudal-style leadership.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 26 March 2008 05:14 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm puzzled. In the 2001 census 74,015 people in Canada showed their ethnic orgin as Pakistan. In my experience a great many of them are progressive people. Do none of them read babble? Does no one have anything to say about the displacement of a military-coup government with a democratic alliance led by a party that still calls itself social-democratic?

Pakistan has 56% of the population of the USA, and is a hot spot for present and future conflicts with global implications, but gets far less attention.


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remind
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posted 26 March 2008 05:59 AM      Profile for remind     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks for all that information Wilf, it certainly helped me this am, after watching CBC National News last evening.

Pakistan was being covered on their series "A Hungry Planet", and it was showing how the poor and middle classes are now struggling equally to try and feed themselves, while the 'rich' do not care.
Steve Puddicombe files his story from Pakistan, a country where internal problems hinder the delivery of food to the poor.


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martin dufresne
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posted 26 March 2008 06:13 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wrote to CBC to protest the superficial 2-minute interview alloted to Ms. Sisulu, Deputy Exec Director of the World Food Program who had fascinating things to say, after we were treated to a lengthy inerview with Western wheat farmers gloating about windfall profits from the shortage in cereals worldwide!
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remind
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posted 26 March 2008 06:20 AM      Profile for remind     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I didn't see that part Martin, I only watched the segment on Pakistan, then I switched channels at commercial break.
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posted 27 March 2008 04:42 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In occupied Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyet Conference has expressed confidence that the new government in Pakistan will prove productive in making the peace process to resolve the Kashmir dispute result-oriented and meaningful.

Cutting across party affiliations, both pro and anti-India organizations in Kashmir have welcomed the election of Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani as new Pakistani Prime Minister.

quote:
The pro-India National Conference and pro-independence, the Hurriyat Conference have welcomed the election of Gilani as the new prime minister of Pakistan which controls a portion of Kashmir.

The moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference congratulated Gilani on his swearing in as prime minister, lauding efforts to promote democracy and strengthen democratic institutions. The Hurriyat said that stability in Pakistan was imperative for the resolution of the Kashmir issue.

Hailing Gilani's appointment, the patron of the National Conference, Farooq Abdullah hoped that Gilani's tenure would strengthen the roots of democracy in Pakistan and together with improving relations between it and India, speed up the process for resolving the Kashmir issue on a permanent basis.

In his message of congratulations, NC president, Omar Abdullah, has expressed his pleasure at Gilani's election, saying that his tenure held hopes of improving ties between India and Pakistan. He hoped that Gilani would make every effort to resolve the Kashmir issue amicably, and in view of Kashmiri aspirations, speed up the peace process with India.

Welcoming the formation of a new Government in Pakistan, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), coalition partner in the state government, said the stabilization of the democratic and political institutions in that country has rejuvenated the hope for a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue. "With the political situation evolving positively in Pakistan, I see hope in the air and promise in the environment for the people of Jammu & Kashmir," top party leader, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said. Former Chief Minister, expressed the hope that the new Government would ardently pursue the peace process with India to permanently end the six decades of hostilities, violence and economic deprivation in the region.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 27 March 2008 10:49 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
“The first phase of cabinet will comprise 23 ministers and the PPP will get 10 ministries,” the sources said, adding that the PML-N would get eight and the ANP three ministries. The JUI-F and the Fata group will get one each.
quote:
PPP information secretary Sherry Rahman said: “Surely, the cabinet will be announced in phases and we estimate the preliminary announcement of up to 22 ministers.”

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Wilf Day
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posted 28 March 2008 03:47 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Rethinking Afghanistan:
quote:
The (Pakistani) public’s opposition to the war was rife from the outset, and did not emerge as a by-product of Pakistan’s collapsing security situation. The decision to submit to Neo-con ambitions came from a dictator unaccountable to his nation, but in need of international legitimation. Regardless of their disagreement with the Taliban, Pakistanis found no joy in watching daisy cutters rain upon a Muslim neighbour, especially one ravaged by two decades of conflict through superpower invasion and civil war. Moreover, they attributed responsibility for the latter to policy failures by the US and Pakistan.

Tragically, Pakistanis find themselves at the sharp end of a war they had always opposed, which has spilled over the border and rages in their homeland in the form of an armed insurgency.

Pakistanis connect Musharraf’s military-security package to the radicalisation of the border Pushtuns. With linguistic and ethnic cross-border ties, Pushtuns were doubly aggrieved at Musharraf’s support for Bush, but once at the mercy of the general’s firepower, they hit back without mercy at the emblems of his power. Making common cause with their kinsmen across the border, they came to see Musharraf as the local face of global power. Hence the rise of the ‘Local Taliban’, and as in Afghanistan, some speculate that they may form part of a nexus that includes al Qa’ida.

The public’s call to review current policy is echoed by many defence and foreign policy analysts, retired generals and ambassadors, academics, journalists, lawyers, and newly elected parliamentarians. Although no single blueprint for salvation has emerged, there is agreement that a bold multi-pronged political initiative by a government with national legitimacy may prove effective, especially as a precursor to a wider regional settlement on Afghanistan. Proponents of political dialogue often cite Britain’s success with the IRA as an example.

Rice’s intervention complements the Bush administration’s assiduous efforts to prevent Musharraf’s ouster. Whereas Washington sees him as ‘indispensable’ to the pursuit of the war, Pakistanis see his departure or at minimum his bowing to parliament as indispensable to Pakistan’s stability. Graced by plummeting ratings in the twilight of his presidency, Bush is determined that the inconvenience of an electoral verdict must not be allowed to displace his protégé. The chorus of US officials in DC and the frenetic diplomatic forays in Islamabad into post-election coalition building have managed to rile even pro-western liberals in Pakistan. In a recent newspaper article, former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger corroborates these attempts saying, “Any attempt to manipulate the political process that we have urged is likely to backfire. A wise policy must recognise that the internal structure of Pakistani politics is essentially out of the control of American decision-making.”

But ‘wise policies’ are unlikely to emerge as the legacy of Bush’s imperial despotism.
Bloodshed and chaos are. As such breaking with Musharraf’s legacy on Afghanistan presents a formidable challenge for the new government.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 28 March 2008 07:45 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Who will be Minister of Labour?

The portfolio of the Ministry of Labour should be given to such person who can effectively take steps in accordance with manifesto of International Labour Organization (ILO).

quote:
National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) Employees Union on Friday hoped that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and PPP Co-Chairperson Asif Ali Zardari would take concrete measures to ensure protection of the rights and development and prosperity of workers.

President, NBP Employees Union, Islamabad, Chaudhry Mehmood Akhtar while talking to a delegation of workers said the labour class is being victimized for the last several decades and proposed to take provincial ministers and members of Senate and National Assembly from them.

He further said that price hike, unemployment and uncertainty are gifts of IRO 2002 and 27 B which the labour class has no strength to sustain it.



A workshop on the issue of the private sector’s persistent non-compliance with labour, environment, safety and health and other social standards was organised by the Punjab Resource Management Programme (PRMP).
quote:
Advisor on Bonded Labour, Federal Ministry of Labour, Dr Syed Tauqir Shah, expressed concern over the situation of child labor, gender issues, bonded labor, working conditions, education of workers’ children, and issues of women’s workplace in the country, and said this negative situation is in direct conflict with the internationally ratified conventions and protocols.

He pointed out that the Potohar region has a large number of stone crushers, marble factories, brick kilns and construction sites where health, environment and working standards are not in line with the internationally recognized practices.

However, he said that realizing the prevalent grave situation, the government of Pakistan, in close collaboration with ILO and other institutes, is taking valuable initiatives to diminish child labor in the country, and to ensure a healthy working environment for the working women.

Last year Pakistan had to bear a loss of Rs2 billion worth annual exports, when the Nike Inc USA cancelled its soccer balls export contract with Saga Sports Sialkot due to non-compliance of labour and safety standards. If such cases continue to happen, it would render heavy damage to Pakistan’s overall exports, he remarked.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 28 March 2008 08:16 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sources say Khursheed Shah to be Minister of Labour, one of 24 ministers. Or 25 or 26.

And also here.

And also here, sometimes spelled Khurshid.

One of the senior PPP leaders (a Central Executive Committee member), he had been tipped as a possible Deputy Prime Minister, Defence Minister, External Affairs Minister, Parliamentary Affairs Minister, or Minister of Water and Power. In the last parliament he had been PPP Chief Whip. He had been one of Benazir Bhutto's Ministers in her last government, and deputy leader of the opposition during the last Sharif government. So this recognizes Labour as a key ministry.

Khursheed Ahmed Shah was re-elected last month from Sukkur (in the far north of Sindh) with 73% of the vote against 27% for Musharraf's man. He had previously been elected from Sukkur three times. Sukkur district has well over a million people divided into two ridings, and in based on Sukkur city, third largest city in Sindh with almost half a million people. Unlike most of Sindh, it is majority Shia.

[ 28 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 29 March 2008 08:54 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ban on unions lifted:
quote:
Two newspapers employees unions welcomed the abolition of controversial Industrial Relations Ordinance, IRO-2002, lifting of ban on trade unions and student unions.

The two organizations said the abolition of the amended PEMRA Ordinance, 2007, was the result of the 77-days struggle of the newspaper employees, during which journalists were jailed, injured but continued their struggle.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and All Pakistan Newspapers Employees Confederation (APNEC), Saturday welcomed the commitment for the early implementation of the Wage Award.



This has to be the first time any parliament has unanimously voted confidence in a new government even before the cabinet has been appointed.

Gilani announces concurrent list will be abolished and the provinces given their rights. A familiar topic to Canadians: in concurrent jurisdiction fields, federal law overrides provincial, so this is a major move to decentralize Pakistan.

Most Canadians aren't aware of regional issues in Pakistan, but they too are familiar. Punjab is the largest province and has the capital. Sindh is next, with a cosmopolitan city plagued by language issues. Gillani was an astute choice for PM because he is from southern Punjab on the border with Sindh -- picture a PM from a city like Cornwall and suppose Cornwall residents speak a language that's a hybrid of English and French. Picture Quebec in the days just before Levesque founded the PQ -- everyone wants more autonomy, and everyone is nervous of the possibility of a separatist movement taking off. Now add a Montreal that has become the nationalists' worst nightmare, a city dominated by immigrants that elects mostly English-speaking MPs from a local immigrants' rights party. (Note to nit-pickers: yes, it's an imperfect comparison. To be more accurate, you'd have to imagine Ontario being Spanish-speaking, and Montreal being flooded with English-speaking American Catholic refugees and their descendents after a campaign there in the late 1940s for Catholics to move to a Catholic country. And instead of us being smart enough to have our national capital on the Quebec border, imagine us being utopian enough to build a new national capital up around Parry Sound.)

And then, as well as the two main provinces in the Indus Valley (compare the St. Lawrence Valley) Pakistan has the other two provinces in the highlands and western mountains. First, the Pushtuns' anonymously named North West Frontier province. Mrs Bushra Gohar of Awami National Party after felicitating the PM over unanimous vote of confidence said that NWFP has been a nameless province for last 60 years and it was high time to give it a proper name. Second, Balochistan, a small province with only 6% of the country's people, including a lot of Pushtuns in the north, but Iran also has a Balochistan with another 4 million people and southern Afghanistan has one too. The Balochs emigrated from northern Iran (1,500 years ago?), related to the Kurds. Balochi Talpurs took control of Upper Sindh in 1783, and the Northern Sindh city of Sukkur is only 200 miles from Balochistan's capital Quetta. Upper Sindh continued as a Princely State under the Talpurs until 1947.

Gillani announced measures to combat price hike, unemployment and poverty:

quote:

To provide employment to the fresh graduates, Prime Minister announced the setting up of Literacy and Health Commission. It will also ensure employment to one person in a household.

The Prime Minister said that every year one million housing units will be constructed in the country. He also announced the launch of 5-marla housing scheme in rural areas for the poor besides provision of houses on 80 square meters and flats in the cities for the general public.

He said all retiring government servants will be given flats or houses and the provinces have also been directed to launch similar schemes for the retired persons.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said to make country self-sufficient in the production of edible oil, for which the government spends one billion dollars annually on its import, cultivation of sunflower will be encouraged.

To keep the environment clean, he said the government will encourage CNG-run buses.

To discourage VIP culture in the country, he said special counters at the airport will be abolished.

Vowing to carry forward the mission of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, he said her programme of Lady Health Workers will be further expanded in rural areas.

He stressed the need for resolution of Kashmir issue through dialogue and said the sacrifices of the Kashmiris will not go waste. He said the issue will be resolved under the UN resolutions and Kashmiris aspirations.

setting up of new power plants . .

fixing minimum wage of Rs 6000 for the labourers . .

a special package for tribal areas to give them employment and to remove their backwardness and other social evils.


[ 29 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
jrootham
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posted 29 March 2008 09:55 AM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Pakistan with a social democratic government? How are the powers that be going to respond to THAT?
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Wilf Day
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posted 29 March 2008 07:28 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jrootham:
Pakistan with a social democratic government?

Here's a thoughtful comment from a year ago:
quote:
The fact is that we do need politics to transform the present social groupings into a society and to turn the existing state into a viable progressive state, but it is not that easy.

We became a nation due to the partition of India, and inherited from the British a state (governing system), but without a society.

Partition led to massive killings of minorities in both Pakistan and India, and that subsequently led to huge migrations. Almost all Hindus and Sikhs left West Pakistan and a good percentage of Indian Muslims mostly from East Punjab and the UP migrated to Pakistan. Migration did not affect the Indian society . . but it finished the pre-partition society in the Western part of Pakistan, and we failed to evolve a new one.

Within months we became a terribly divided people with no political bond and without a society.

And the politicians that we had were labelled as the Indian and Russian agents or anti-Pakistan.

The result was that in spite of economic growth, poverty increased and the wealth got concentrated in the hands of a couple of dozens of families, who using other means robbed the common man of whatever he had even before the industrialisation. The end results of General Ayub’s industrialisation drive were that there were not many domestic purchasers left, and the economy had to face constant recession.

What emerged was a stronger than before ethnicity, which was reinforced further by General Ziaul Haq and continues to have its hold over our social scenario. The cool reaction of the Punjabis, the Mohajirs and the Sindhis to the killings of the Baloch and their leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti is enough evidence of the hold of ethnicity over our minds and souls.

After 9/11 there was lot of wealth around and country saw a bit of prosperity due to aid, grants, remittances and borrowings from open markets, and also due to the growth in services sectors. The external loans too were either readjusted or waived off. But again the prosperity entered the homes of those who were already rich; or who were close to the high-ups, be they gentlemen from the army or the supporters from ethnic and other social groups. During the seven and a half years of present regime ordinary Pakistanis stood completely ignored.

Never before were the things as bad for the common folks as they are today. Never before were the people as hopeless as they are today. Yet, the human beings are the political creatures. Their urge for change cannot be suppressed. They cannot be silenced for long. Political path must be paved. A fragmented populace must be re-arranged and shaped into a society. The state must end tribalism and feudalism and turn to massive industrialisation and social sector development. Who will do it and from where will the capital come. The capital will come first from reducing the spending on defence and administration by at least fifty percent; afterwards the foreign investment too will follow. Not all forms of government can do it. Sixty years of exploitation has left nothing with the people, hence a social democratic government is the only choice. The question of all questions is from where the social democrats will come. If the MLs, the PPPs, the MQM and the MMA, the IJI, the Lashkars, the Jaish, the Sipah and the Taliban can emerge from nowhere, why cannot a social democratic party come from somewhere? It will be worthwhile to mention here that in spite of the effects of the migration and the efforts of the Generals, the bureaucrats, the feudals, the filthy rich, the Arabs and the Americans to eliminate it, the progressive political legacy that the British had left behind remained alive, not at any organisational level, but at the level of individuals certainly. It proves its existence time and again, despite hundreds of hurdles: The peoples’ support to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and to the chief justice are old and fresh examples.

Had our friends the Americans not supported General Ayub and his creation, the convention Muslim League, and instead guided us to have a functional democracy, their help in industrialisation would have done positive things to this country. What the Americans did was their prerogative, Pakistan is not their country. It is we the common Pakistanis and the special Pakistanis — the people in uniform and the 1.5% rich — who have to be good to ourselves, otherwise what to talk of state, society and social groupings, we may lose our worth as individuals also.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 30 March 2008 09:50 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jrootham:
How are the powers that be going to respond to THAT?

The Americans may be even more upset about the two Pashtuns in the cabinet, and the Marxist lineage of their party.

The Founder, "Bacha Khan" (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) (1890 - 1988) was the second and last son of Bahram (Behram) Khan who was then known as the Mashar Khan (the great Khan or the Khan of Khans). Behram Khan was chief of a Mohammadzai tribe at Utmanzai near Peshawar. He had inherited the spirit of freedom: his father Saifullah Khan had supported the people of Buner in defending their soil against British expansionist designs, having taken active part in the battle of Sukawa. The Mohamedzai (Mohammadzai) clan included Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, and were based in Kandahar. When the Durand line was drawn in 1894-5 his tribe were in British India. Leaders of Pashtuns on both sides of the border did not recognize the Durand Line then, and do not now.

While his older brother was learning medicine in England, Bacha Khan had refused a commission in the Guides – an elite Corps raised by the British - opened a school in Utmanzai, and engaged in spreading education and creating awareness to the great annoyance of the Peshawar administration. Between 1915 and 1918 he visited every one of the 500 settled districts of the Frontier. It was in this frenzied activity that he had come to be known as the Badshah Khan (King of Chiefs). He was arrested in 1921 under the Frontier Crimes Regulations for spreading nationalistic ideas among the Pathans. He was kept in solitary confinement, with his hands and feet tied. After his release in 1924 he came to be known as Fakhr-e-Afghan. During the 1920s he founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God"), commonly known as the "Red Shirts" (Surkh Posh). The organization recruited over 100,000 members and became legendary in opposing (and dying at the hands of) the British-controlled police and army. Through strikes, political organisation and non-violent opposition, the Khudai Khidmatgar were able to achieve some success and came to dominate the politics of the NWFP. In 1932, the Khudai Khidmatgar movement changed its tactics and involved women in the movement. His brother, Dr. Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (known as Dr. Khan Sahib), led the political wing of the movement, and was the Chief Minister of the province from 1936 until 1947 when his government was dismissed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League.

Ghaffar Khan became known as the `Frontier Gandhi'. He forged a close, spiritual, and uninhibited friendship with Mahatma Gandhi, the pioneer of non-violent mass civil disobedience in India. The two had a deep admiration towards each other and worked together closely till 1947.

The Khudai Khidmatgar agitated and worked cohesively with the Indian National Congress. On several occasions when the Congress seemed to disagree with Gandhi on policy, Ghaffar Khan remained his staunchest ally. In 1931 the Congress offered him the presidency of the party, but he refused saying, "I am a simple soldier and Khudai Khidmatgar, and I only want to serve." But he remained a member of the Congress Working Committee for a long time.

Ghaffar Khan was a champion of women's rights and nonviolence. He became a hero in a society dominated by violence; notwithstanding his liberal views, his unswerving faith and obvious bravery led to immense respect. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in his non-violent methods or in the compatibility of Islam and nonviolence. He viewed his struggle as a jihad with only the enemy holding swords.

Ghaffar Khan strongly opposed the partition of India. Some Pashtuns desired independence from both India and the newly created state of Pakistan following the departure of the British. Bacha Khan and his followers felt a sense of betrayal by both Pakistan and India. Bacha Khan's last words to Gandhi and his erstwhile allies in the Congress party were: "You have thrown us to the wolves." In February 1948, Khan took the oath of allegiance to the new nation of Pakistan. Shortly afterwards he addressed the Pakistan constituent assembly and announced his support for Pakistan, while at the same time his Khudai Khidmatgar movement pledged allegiance to Pakistan and severed all links to the Congress Party.

In early 1956, he merged his group with leftist and Nationalist parties from other provinces forming the National Awami Party. In the 1950s and 1960s his Khudai Khidmatgar movement was perceived as pro communist. Re-arrested in 1956 for his opposition to the One Unit scheme (uniting the provinces in what is now Pakistan) he remained in prison till 1959. He went into exile in Kabul in 1964, where he became close to the Parcham faction of Peoples Democratic Party. He continued to demand autonomous status for Pukhtunistan (NWFP), but not a separate and independent state. In 1972 Bacha Khan returned to Peshawar. He visited the Soviet Union in 1980 for medical treatment, returning to Peshawar in 1982, and died in 1988. He was buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan as per his wishes -- despite the Durand Line.

Bacha Khan's son Khan Abdul Wali Khan (1917 – 2006) followed in his footsteps. With his father in jail, Khan took over leading his fathers supporters. He agitated for Pashtun autonomy within a Pakistani Federal system, which placed him at odds with government authorities. Imprisoned without charge in 1948, he was freed in 1953.

In 1967 the National Awami Party formally split into Wali Khan and Bhashani (pro-Mao) factions. This split corresponded with the Sino-Russian split, with Wali Khan taking the Soviet side. In the 1970 provincial elections, his National Awami Party won in NWFP and won a near majority in Baluchistan. In 1971 Pakistan's armed forces were defeated in East Pakistan and the new state of Bangladesh was created. During the martial law crackdown against East Pakistan, the National Awami Party under Wali Khan was one of a handful of parties that protested the military operation. The military government, in retaliation against the protests, banned the party and launched mass arrests of party activists.

In 1986, Wali Khan and other former National Awami Party members formed the Awami National Party (ANP). Khan was elected its first President. The ANP contested the 1988 national elections in alliance with former rivals the Pakistan Peoples' Party of Benazir Bhutto. His opposition to the US-backed Afghan jihad and support for Afghan communist President Mohammad Najibullah damaged his standing amongst many conservative Pashtuns.

Ajmal Khattak was elected as the President of the Awami National Party in 1990 when Khan Wali Khan stepped down from the post. His political philosophy has been greatly influenced by Marxist ideology. In an interview, he described his concept of various ideologies as: “Khushal Khan Khattak (a renowned Puchtun fighter of the 1600s who became known as the "Afghan Warrior Poet") is in my blood, Marxism in my mind while Islam is in my heart.” About the language, his idea is clear and unambiguous: “Language is the great identity marker. Marxism and Leninism could not take away my Islam and Pakhtoonwali from me. I have lived and will die with these virtues close to my heart and soul.” He had fled in 1973 into self imposed exile to Afghanistan and stayed there for 16 long years. During his years in Kabul, Ajmal Khattak was a close confidant of Badshah Khan, and also enjoyed excellent relations with leaders of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, including President Nur Muhammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Dr. Mohammad Najibullah.

Wali Khan's son Asfandyar Wali Khan joined the opposition to Ayub Khan as a student activist. In 1975, he was imprisoned by the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and convicted as part of the Hyderabad tribunal for 15 years. Released in 1978, he stayed away from electoral politics till 1990.

He served as leader of the Pakhtun Student Federation prior to being elected to the provincial Assembly in the 1990 election, while in the 1993 election he was elected to Pakistan's National Assembly, re-elected in the 1997 election. In 1999, he was elected party president.

The ANP remained a nationalist Pashtun party that pushes for provincial autonomy and social justice. It was one of the very few political forces in Pakistan that was openly critical of how the Afghan resistance against the former Soviet Union in the 1980s was labeled as a jihad and sponsored from Pakistan (with the help of U.S. and Saudi money). Framing the conflict in religious terms meant increased influence of Islamic parties and decreased relevance of secular parties like the ANP. The ANP remained critical of Pakistan's pro-Taliban policies in the pre-9/11 phase. Their warnings, however, fell on deaf ears.

In 2006 he argued that the Pakistani government, instead of introducing new political or economic reforms in the tribal areas, has turned the region into a battlefield by using it as "a sanctuary for their guests." He narrated a humorous Pashto proverb that can be roughly translated as: "I don't need any charity, but please chain your dog."

Words cannot express the current euphoric mood in the Pukhtunkhwa:

quote:
Asfandyar Wali Khan succinctly remarked: "The verdict of Pukhtunkhwa is that we prefer school uniforms rather than suicide jackets." The resurgent leader, who led the energised ANP with progressive, educated, mostly middle class leadership and cadre, deserves full credit for this landslide victory after decades of hopelessness in the aftermath of the Cold War.

On one side were the resurgent Islamists gloating over the victory of religion against the liberal, secular forces – on the other hand the junta consolidated its heavy hand of despotism, deftly facilitating the MMA's victory in 2002 elections, while reinforcing terrorist elements into the tribal as well as the settled areas of the province.

"Pashtuns are not terrorists but peace loving, progressive people and against violence. In Swabi and some districts women not only voted but celebrated with traditional music!"

Their election manifesto spells provincial autonomy, economic reform, renaming of the province, gender empowerment, as well as redefining the 'war against terrorism' as their political agenda.



In 1990 ANP candidate Ghulam Ahmed Bilour defeated Benazir Bhutto in a Peshawar assembly contest she had been favored to win, garnering 51,188 votes to 38,695 for Bhutto. Now he will be in her widower's cabinet as Minister of Local Bodies and Rural Development.

Bilour said dancing and singing had broken out as election results came in. "We Pushtuns love religion but we are not puritanical." He added a mullah had asked him to stop the dancing. "I replied, 'We are Muslims and Pushtuns but we are not mullahs'."

Nawabzada Khawaja Muhammad Khan Hoti (Toti Khan) won in NA-9 (Mardan-I) with 39% in a four-way race with the PPP, MMA and PML-Q. He was elected to the provincial assembly twice as a PPP candidate, in 1988 and 1993. He was also elevated to the office of provincial education minister in 1993. Hoti later left the PPP as a result of differences within the party, and formed his own PPP-Hoti Group before joining the ANP. Now he'll be in the Pakistan cabinet too, as Minister of Social Welfare and Special Education.

But it's Asfandyar Wali Khan who will sit on the Coalition Leadership Committee with the other three leaders.

And his nephew Amir Haider Khan Hoti (the grandson of two legendary freedom fighters and politicians, late Khan Abdul Wali Khan and late Khan Amir Mohammad Khan, commonly known as Khan Lala) will be Chief Minister of the NWFP (soon to be Pakhtunistan), also from Mardan.

Footnote: Hamidullah Jan Afridi (Hameed Khan Afridi), an independent from FATA, will be the Federal Minister for Population Welfare. Actually he pledged his support to the PPP back on Feb. 27.

It was a burqa-less house:

quote:
None of the women members wore that veil mainly because of the virtual rout of a divided MMA alliance of religious parties in the election.

The previous National Assembly had 12 MMA and one PPP burqa-clad members. The only MMA woman member elected this time was to a reserved seat for non-Muslim minority communities from Balochistan province. Asia Nasir is a Christian who doesn’t wear a veil, and neither of the other parties has a burqa-wearing member. Only one woman member in the house, whose affiliation was not immediately known, covered her lips and chin with her traditional chador.


[ 30 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 31 March 2008 12:11 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
First meeting of new cabinet today approves necessary amendments to implement raising the minimum wage. A good sign.
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Wilf Day
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posted 01 April 2008 07:29 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
NWFP Assembly, on first day of session, unanimously condemns CIA chief’s statement that the US could attack Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in FATA.

Of 24 federal cabinet ministers, five Kashmiris and five Pushtuns.

In an interview to Indian weekly Aalmi Sahara, Zardari said it was wrong to think that he had deviated from the stance taken by party founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his late spouse Benazir Bhutto on the Kashmir issue.

The Governor’s House building in Peshawar echoed with pro-Bacha Khan slogans for the first time in history.

quote:
The nationalist party has always advocated close ties with India and Afghanistan, and often dubbed “unpatriotic” by the establishment and opponents.

Begum Nasim Wali (widow of Abdul Wali Khan the grandfather of the NWFP's new chief minister) said the scenes must have pained “some people”, especially old Muslim Leaguers. The Muslim League and the ANP (formerly National Awami Party) were political rivals in the province before the 1970s, and the PML never hid its anger at the party’s close ties with Kabul and New Delhi.



The revival of trade and student unions was a desirable act and its placement in the first 100 days will help strengthen the democratic forces.
quote:
Trade unions had received a serious setback with rampant use of contract labour and negative amendments to various laws, especially the Industrial Relations Ordinance relating to the workers in industries and different services. The worst sufferers have been the workers in the informal sector while the formal sector workers became ineffective in so for as collective bargaining of terms and conditions of their services was concerned.

It was so because a majority of workers in the formal sector were recruited on contract basis and that too by proxy recruitment agencies, many of whom appear to exist on paper and were run by the touts of one or the other undertaking that used the same to deprive its employees/workers of their rights and legal benefits. That was the most scandalous ploy allowed by the ousted regime to help the barons of industry and trade.

Here one would take note of the fact that the first lot of two dozen ministers included the name of a senior PPP leader who was to hold the labour portfolio. It means that due concern was shown for the labour. The first and foremost task of his ministry should be to revive the tripartite structure where representatives of managements, workers and the government used to sort out various issues concerning all stakeholders. It will help bring about the required change in the industrial climate at a time when the country needed exportable surplus production in a competitive world market. It was wrong to expect unsatisfied, less paid and overworked labour to deliver.

In his last ruinous year as prime minister, Mr. Shaukat Aziz used the annual budget to include a mischievous provision that amended the law to exploit the workers for longer hours. One of the actions that the apex court took when it functioned under Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry related to knocking down the attempt made by the regime’s former prime minister to sell the most precious public enterprise for pittance.


The first test of the supremacy of Parliament will be when it debates and reviews Pakistan’s policy against terrorism according to the wishes of the people that it represents and not the dictates that it had been receiving in the past.

quote:
I would like to underscore the major contributions by Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter for the empowerment of the people. Mr Bhutto-by his populist politics and establishment of the PPP—unshackled the chained masses, gave them a strong voice and self-respect hitherto denied to them by the establishment. His gifts to the toiling masses has endeared him with the successive generations of the poor. His vote bank has remained in tact despite the worst possible oppression, persecution and prosecution of his followers.

His daughter picked up the pieces from where he left in 1979. . . she preferred to establish supreme power of the vote against the barrel of the gun. Indeed, her father gave voice to the mute majority, gave them self-respect and by walking to the gallows, head high, instilled in them the attitude of never to bowing to a usurper.


[ 01 April 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 02 April 2008 05:11 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've always read that the reason the Pakistani armed forces encouraged the Taliban, particularly the ISI (Inter-Services Agency), was Kashmir.

From the beginning the ISI was, of course, interested in that huge piece of unfinished business.

quote:
In 1988, Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq initiated Operation Tupac, which was designation of a three part action plan for the liberation of Kashmir, initiated after the failure of Operation Gibraltar. By May 1996, at least six major militant organizations, and several smaller ones, operated in Kashmir. Their forces are variously estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 armed men and were mostly of Pakistani Punjabis and Pashtuns. They were roughly divided between those who support independence and those who support accession to Pakistan. The ISI is believed to have played a key role in masterminding the Kargil War. During 1998-1999 the ISI was contributing greatly to the Taliban.


Training camps and organizations for jihad in Kashmir could be labelled training camps for jihad in Afghanistan. There is an alphabet soup of such groups.

But I've now realized there was a second motivation: Pashtuns are prominently represented in the Pakistan military. And there are about 26 million Pashtuns in Pakistan, compared with only about 13 million in Afghanistan.

Back before 1947 many Pashtuns wanted to withdraw from India (which then included Pakistan) and rejoin Afghanistan. But then many (most?) Pashtuns in Pakistan became loyal to it. So once Pakistan became independent, it would be Afghanistan that began to look like the anomaly. Couldn't it become part of Pakistan? In any event, Pakistan would have every right to consider Afghanistan part of its sphere of influence, not only on geographic grounds but, for Pashtuns, on ethno-cultural grounds as well.

[ 02 April 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 02 April 2008 05:38 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Wilf Day: But I've now realized there was a second motivation: Pashtuns are prominently represented in the Pakistan military. And there are about 26 million Pashtuns in Pakistan, compared with only about 13 million in Afghanistan.

This is a general characteristic of several of the ethnic groups that make up Afghanistan. In each case, a larger, sometimes much larger, population exists outside Afghanistan on its border or close by. I can hardly think of better prima facie evidence of the colonial origin of Afghanistan or of the harmfulness of such carving up of possessions by the "great powers".


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Wilf Day
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posted 02 April 2008 05:57 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by N.Beltov:
the colonial origin of Afghanistan . . .

Not the usual one.
quote:
Ahmad Shah Durrani created the Durrani Empire in 1747, with its capital at Kandahar. Subsequently, the capital was shifted to Kabul and most of its territories ceded to former neighbouring countries.

Russia nibbled at the north. The British, having failed to conquer it, took a big chunk off the southeast as a consolation prize. What was left was a buffer zone between the great powers. But it was never conquered.

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N.Beltov
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posted 02 April 2008 06:14 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, it's currently being occupied by a number of countries, including our own, no?

Anyway, my point was that the example of a Pashtun population on both sides of the Durand line is mimicked by Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek populations in Afghanistan as well.


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Wilf Day
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posted 02 April 2008 07:47 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Well, it's currently being occupied by a number of countries, including our own, no?

"Occupied" is a bit strong. More importantly, from the posts above you will note that the new governing party in the land of the majority of Pushtuns, the Awami National Party ("Awami" means "people's") was led by people who opposed the USA/ISI-supported Taliban insurrection against the Afghan government of that time. This is not just a two-sided issue; I see at least four sides. Currently the ANP folks support talking to the "Taliban" (most of whom are just tribal insurgents, not really Taliban), even though they have just defeated the MMA mullahs who were the Taliban's best friends; but that doesn't mean they see Karzai as a puppet.

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martin dufresne
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posted 02 April 2008 07:54 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
"Occupied" is a bit strong.
Not when you are the occupied population.

From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 02 April 2008 07:27 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Mahatma Gandhi's grandson to speak in New York at first Bacha Khan Peace Conference
quote:
on April 12. The theme of the conference is ‘Philosophy of Non-Violence and Global Challenges’ and it will explore the possibility of promoting peace by following Bacha Khan’s philosophy of non-violence.

According to a press release issued by ANP America on Wednesday, Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, who also wrote Bacha Khan’s biography, would be the keynote speaker at the conference. Asfandyar Wali Khan, ANP president, Afrasiab Khattak, party NWFP president, and Dr Fazle Rahim Marwat will also address the conference from Pakistan via telephone. Prominent scholar, poet and researcher Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak, Abdul Wahid Mashwani, a prominent Afghan scholar and one-time companion of Bacha Khan, Dr Munir Khan and Dr Saleem Afridi of the Bacha Khan Education Foundation, USA, will also attend the one-day peace conference.



No privatization:
quote:
Sherry Rehman said that PPP-led coalition government would not undertake anti-people privatization because it was a duly elected government and people had reposed their trust in it, therefore the PPP wouldn’t imagine ditching the masses.

“A shortage of electricity and wheat flour are two major problems directly affecting the people. The inability and lack of interest of the former government gave birth to these problems. They did not purchase a single megawatt of electricity in their tenure,” she alleged.


Sherry Rahman.

Delhi’s Kashmir policy continues to yield continuing Kashmiri alienation vis-a-vis Delhi.

quote:
Results of surveys ranging from the 2007 Hindustan Times to the 2006 New York Times and the NDTV-Dawn, all indicate 70% pro-Azadi sentiment. Yet Delhi has still not seen reason to break the status quo dictated by the political and security apparatus, which sustains, if not heightens, this sentiment.

With the new government in place, the refrain from Delhi and Srinagar’s electoral forces that they hope the new government would keep the dialogue process moving on Kashmir is misplaced; as is the concern that the new political leadership may derail the dialogue process. There is also concern even within Pakistan that the new government may put Kashmir on the backburner or in deep freeze, or give unilateral concessions to India. None of this is at all likely.

The debate within Pakistan on how to move forward on Kashmir revolves around three approaches. One is the future-oriented approach. This approach advocates that since at present Pakistanis and Kashmiris are not in a strong position to negotiate a settlement of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir according to the UN resolutions, the settlement question must be put off for a better time. For now, some in Islamabad and in Srinagar argue that it should be put on the backburner, while others, in both the capitals, argue that while settlement can come later, the Kashmiri struggle and Islamabad’s pressure, in all its dimensions, must continue against New Delhi.

The second approach on Kashmir, advocated by sections in Islamabad and in Srinagar, calls for engaging with New Delhi on finding a solution to the Kashmir. This approach seeks a solution and hence an end to the Kashmir dispute allowing improved Pakistan-India relations.

The third approach is one that is a combination of the two approaches. It is one that believes Kashmir issue is a living dispute, and one that will neither go into freeze or on the backburner. Equally, it is not one that can be solved through an instant or defined solution. Instead, the problem involving the Kashmiri people requires initiation of a process, which must focus on steps that begin to improve the political, physical and economic conditions of the Kashmiris, and ones that involved Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC. This approach sees the process as a continuing solution process. The yardstick of how correct and credible is such a solution process is the degree to which it is accepted by the majority of Kashmiris across the LOC.

There is continuity in Pakistan’s policy on Kashmir as it began with the Nawaz Sharif-Vajpayee initiative in February 1998. It is a policy that adheres to the third approach. And there is no doubt that the new government in Islamabad will move forward with the third approach, as it will use its diplomatic and political capital to improve the human rights situation in the Valley, increase cross-LOC movement and cooperation and end Delhi’s policy of militarisation, or as Farooq Abdullah said in 2007, of turning J&K into a military garrison.

The confidence building measures (CBMs) agreed upon by Islamabad and Delhi, aimed at increasing cross-LOC movement, which were intended to ease the social and emotional pressures on divided Kashmiri families have drawn almost a blank.



Now what?
quote:
Two parties always at loggerheads are now on one platform, united by the aphorism “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

But is a hatred of the president enough to keep things in momentum?

The elections were based entirely on the premise that the tried and tested who had failed has changed. And of course there was some evidence to that effect when the parties threw personal ego out the window to cooperate magnanimously. But maybe they have fooled themselves into believing that getting rid of Musharraf is the endgame. They are going to be judged far more strictly.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 03 April 2008 03:44 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A new era of brotherhood and love in Sindh as the "joint struggle for the prosperity and stability of Pakistan and Sindh" now includes everyone but Musharraf.
quote:
Addressing a press conference after a meeting between MQM and PPP at MQM headquarters both the leaders said they forgive each other and begin a new era.

Both the leaders said that anti-Pakistan elements had tried in the past to pitch MQM and PPP.

Altaf Hussain said none of lot of blood has been shed and there will be no more fight between these two parties.

Altaf Hussain said he wanted to eliminate the difference between urban and rural Sindh.

Asif Ali Zardari said that after this reconciliation between PPP and MQM nobody will be able to create differences between these two parties.

He said he has come to launch a new era of brotherhood and love, and dump hatred.

Asif said that he has also forgiven the enemies and even those who pitched MQM against PPP.

He said that if anti-Pakistan elements can break Pakistan we know the art of binding it.

Asif Zardari said that he does not want to take revenge and instead wanted to change the system.

Holding the hand of Dr. Farooq Sattar in his hand Asif Zardari said that this is the beginning of friendship and understanding.

He said that he knows the art of making friends and this friendship will last. He said that this friendship will be for Pakistan, for Bilawal, for Hafsa (Altaf’s daughter), so that nobody can make them fight against each other.



Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

PML-N will have no objection as it is prerogative of the PPP to make allies.

quote:
PML-N welcomes the reconciliatory efforts of PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari as it strongly believes that supremacy of the parliament cannot be achieved without joint efforts of all political forces, PML-N leader Javed Hashmi said Wednesday.

Commenting on PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to MQM head office in Karachi he said political forces must sit together for the restoration of judiciary and strengthening of democracy.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 04 April 2008 03:34 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Twenty-nine years ago today Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the victim of a judicial assassination by a military dictator.

Sherry Rehman:

quote:
Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became immortal the day he refused to ask for a pardon from his tormentor. Bibi Shaheed, as she is affectionately known now, walked straight into the fires of a death foretold, refusing to be separated from the source of her power, the people of Pakistan.

Mr Bhutto left behind his inimitable mark on Pakistan's history for several reasons. Unlike most political leaders who ride home to political victory through a normal transition, Mr Bhutto took over the reins of a shattered and humiliated nation. His first actions as prime minister of a truncated country were to rebuild a shattered post-war economy, and to establish, for the first time, the writ of a popularly elected government in a land that had seen no public figure that could unite the nation since Quaid-e-Azam Mohmmad Ali Jinnah. Not only did the country need to be brought back on its feet after the loss of East Pakistan, there was the clear and present danger of 5,000 square miles of territory under enemy occupation, which was overshadowed by the bleeding wound of Pakistani 90,000 soldiers in Indian jails.

But foreign policy challenges that may seem insurmountable to another politician were like part of the course for the former foreign minister. All Pakistani baby boomers remember Mr Bhutto tearing up pieces of what was supposed to be the Polish Resolution on Kashmir and storming out of the United Nations after angrily affirming his country's position on Kashmir, leaving an indelible image of a fiercely independent nation in the public mind. He gave the vexed Pakistan-India environment the Simla Treaty, while his daughter laid the foundations in 1989 for the composite dialogue which leads the peace process in South Asia today.

Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government worked like a veritable powerhouse on a clear manifesto for social empowerment and redistributive justice. Mr Bhutto gave workers their first right to unionise, while Benazir Bhutto's government gave them their enhanced right to pensions and bonuses. His government revolutionised the relationship of the citizen with the state, while the daughter worked tirelessly to bring Pakistan out of the shadow of a cold war dictatorship into a democracy that was rated among the first ten emerging markets of the world.

Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is as the man who shaped an entire generation of political discourse in the image of a modern, nationalist and self-confident Pakistan. He lent his voice to the dispossessed and the poor.

Upon his death, Mr Bhutto remarkable daughter abandoned any sense of a life she might have had to plunge headlong, as was her way until the end, into taking up where her father had left off. Instead of a life of comfort that her class allowed her to live, she embraced the rigours of exile and imprisonment without looking back, to lead the Pakistan People's Party through its darkest hours of trauma and dispossession. When she returned to Pakistan in 1986 to a triumphal march of democracy after years spent in General Zia's exile, she was quite literally the princess of hearts and minds. When she returned from yet another exile in 2007, to a reception unprecedented in Pakistan's history, she became the uncrowned queen of people's hearts.

If anything has held this country together through the dark times it has been through since 1971, it has been the Pakistan People's Party and the consensus constitution of 1973 that Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave to Pakistan.

It is the Bhutto ethos that will hopefully give our government the integrity, commitment and the courage to overcome the onerous challenges ahead.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 05 April 2008 01:26 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto shall remain young in the annals of history, says Prime Minister.

A dictator had hanged ZAB, but he was still alive in the hearts of the people. He taught the poor to fight for their rights.

Ceremonies in Peshawar, Mangora, Chitral, Dargai and Nowshera.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 09 April 2008 05:34 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Labour wants more:
quote:
Shaikh Majid, General Secretary, Peoples Labour Bureau (PLB) Karachi, and others lauded Prime Minister (PM) Yousuf Raza Gilani’s speech in the National Assembly on March 29 and announcement of repeal of IRO 2002 and the increase in minimum wage.

They said the government had to do a lot to turn these announcements into reality.

The general impression is that the announcement of raising minimum wage will ensure Rs6,000 income for every one. But the trade unionists said . . the present minimum wage even if fully implemented would benefit only a small number and exclude a vast majority of population.

They said the PM’s announcement to raise the minimum wage from Rs4,600 to Rs6,000 was for the unskilled workers. As per law this shall apply only to commercial and industrial establishments. This means a vast majority of workers in services, self-employed, home-based workers and unpaid family workers will not benefit from the recent announcement.

The law clearly says that it shall not apply to the civil armed forces, postal, telegraph, telephone services, ports, railways, fire fighting services, electricity, gas, water supply, public conservation and hospitals. In addition, this law is not applicable to agricultural workers.

They strongly recommend to the government to universalise the applicability of minimum wage and make sure that every employed person receives a minim wage of Rs6,000 and help those self-employed whose income falls short of that amount. It can be done through state run targeted schemes such as food support scheme.

They said the state had to bring its laws in conformity with Core Labour Rights (CLRs) particularly ILO Conventions 87 and 98, to ensure fundamental rights of free association, collective bargaining and dispute resolution.

The mere announcement of lifting ban on trade unions or even repeal of IRO will not serve the purpose of freedom of association unless fundamental changes are made in laws.



Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research calls for action by new government:
quote:
PILER Director Karamat Ali said Sunday that prime ministers 100-day action, as promises such as repealing IRO 2002 and increasing minimum wage to Rs6000 per month are a good omen for the nation and country, provided they are actually implemented within given timeframe.

He said they believed that lifting ban on trade unions and restoring the right of association were two different things, and former must accompany the latter, otherwise it will not serve the purpose.

The government may need to go back and fully restore the Trade Union Act of 1926, which provides freedom of association and formation of trade unions in all sectors except armed forces, he said. The PILER chief said the main issue would be to ensure the universal applicability of labour laws such as Factories Act 1934 and Standing Order Ordinance 1968.

Though throughout the decades, the state had suspended workers right whenever it deemed fit but it was done through the application of section 3 of Pakistan Essential Services (Maintenance) Act, 1952.

He regretted the ban on trade unions was never discussed in the parliament. Similarly IRO 2002 was also not discussed in the parliament rather imposed as part of so- called Legal Framework Ordinance (LFO). We strongly suggest the new government to announce a special parliamentary committee to scrutinize labour laws on priority basis and ensure that all laws and changes are thoroughly discussed in the parliament.

He said public debate on labour laws is also necessary given the fact that workers hardly have any representation in legislative forums.



Two new labour complexes will be constructed to facilitate the industrial workers of Sialkot . . each complex will consist of a utility store, a school, dispensary and a community hall.

From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 10 April 2008 09:04 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Chaudhry Manzoor is also the president of PPP Lahore division. So far, he seems the hot favourite within the PPP cadres as the PPP's future provincial president for Punjab. See above: as MNA from 2002 - 2007 he was the leader of the Left in the PPP.

"All my life, I have spent my time in jails or in trains and I know both too well.” Razi says he is thankful to Raza Rabbani and Chaudhry Manzoor from the Pakistan People’s Party who convinced party authorities to reinstate unions.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 11 April 2008 08:58 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Pakistan's new government on Friday introduced a bill in Parliament to lift harsh restrictions imposed on the media.
quote:
The bill of 2008 proposes the lifting of curbs on live broadcasts, and the repeal of amendments made to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance in November last year by Musharraf's regime. It also aims at curbing restrictions on the electronic media and ensuring its independence.

"The amendments will remove all restrictions imposed on the press," said Information Minister Sherry Rehman.



Rehman said that government believed in complete media freedom and would stand by the journalists’ community besides resolving all issues amicably.

From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 17 April 2008 06:57 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A former ISI Director General explains why Pakistan needs proportional representation:
quote:
PPP is the only major party with a federal profile. Even the Muslim League, contesting as separate factions under different patrons in past elections, has been gradually restricted to the Punjab, with limited and factionalised presence in smaller provinces. Marginal representation in the other three provinces has created obvious problems of nationwide acceptance, and denied the League of its “All Pakistan” status. Two or three parties with nationwide spread would have been beneficial to democracy.

Yet another flaw in our electoral system is the introspective approach of our electorate, which tends to vote on issues of personal concern like electricity, gas supply, roads and other local requirements, rather than issues of national importance.

The Anglo Saxon concept of “winner takes all” may be workable in the UK, but in Pakistan the winner invariably works only for his own voters, ignoring all other constituents.

The single constituency concept of elections needs to be reviewed. We should switch to proportional representation, or a mix of the two systems which could be more responsive to our socio-political environment.

There are no ‘copycat’ solutions, but federal structures and electoral systems of Germany and Switzerland could be studied for reference.



Even the PPP can see the problem. Its base is Sindh, yet in Sindh's largest city -- indeed Pakistan's largest city, Karachi -- 18 of its 20 seats were won by the MQM, and only 2 by the PPP although the MQM got only 66% of the votes across Karachi while the PPP got 27% (not counting the fact that the PPP supported the Awami Party in one seat, reflecting the fact that many Pashtuns have migrated to Karachi). Karachi's PPP voters were entitled to elect 6 MPs, not just 2. The MQM near-sweep reflects the fact that Sindhi-speakers are a minority in Karachi. But not a 10% minority.

[ 18 April 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 19 April 2008 09:37 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Eight bye-elections June 18.

PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari will contest the byelection in Larkana where Benazir Bhutto had been to run. He is facing disqualification due to the graduation condition, a matter which was to be taken up for consideration in the Supreme Court Friday and is likely to be settled before the last day for a decision on objections. There are doubts about whether Zardari holds the bachelor’s degree required of all candidates.
His sister Faryal will be the "cover candidate."

Nawaz Sharif and his brother both hope to win seats in Lahore. NA members who had won more than one seat in the elections vacated six of these eight seats. Lahore's NA-123 was 70% PML(N), while NA-119 Lahore-II is another deferred election due to a death.

Bar president and PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan has applied for a PPP ticket from one of the two Rawalpindi seats open which had both been won by the PML(N).

The other National Assembly byelections include NA-11 Mardan, NA-131 Sheikhupura, and NA-147 Okara. NA-11 Mardan in the NWFP had a 61% PPP vote. NA-131 Sheikhupura was split three ways with a 44% PML(N) vote. NA-147 Okara was won by local strongman Mian Manzoor Ahmad Khan Wattoo as an independent affiliated with Musharraf's PML(Q).


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 20 April 2008 05:09 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti aims to restore peace in the region:
quote:
Violence would not be reciprocated in violent manner rather the path of reconciliation and negotiations would be followed in letter and spirit to achieve the desired goals. The Chief Minister said that it was need of the hour that all political forces should steer the country out of the existing difficult challenges facing the country today. He said that the land of Pukhtoons suffered due to aliens' war which made countless number of women widows and thousands of children orphan and numerous families homeless. The ruling coalition partners in the centre and the province would work for the betterment of Pashtoon.

NWFP Minister for Information Public Relations Sardar Hussain Babak said it was very unfortunate that the so-called civilized world has resorted to very brutal way to safeguard its vested interest.
quote:
Sardar Babak said the civilized world should practically demonstrate that was really civilized and take a new start with the poorer nations of the world. He said whatever could be done through peaceful means can never be obtained by use of force. He said the history of Pakhtoons was known to the entire world. No nation could conquer them. He, however, added that the world community would tremendously benefit if it was truly befriended. Quoting the famous saying, "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword", the Provincial Information Minister said his government was a representative government of Pukhtoons and on their behalf it was offering an olive branch to the entire world community. He said his Pakhtoon wanted to peacefully co-exist with the entire mankind and it would prefer to iron out differences through the process of talks and negotiations. The world community particularly the United States of America should not get offended by offers of talks for restoration of peace in any part of the world. He said that millions of innocent human beings have lost precious lives and millions other were suffering due to the inhuman policies of so-called civilized world. Babak said, it was never too late to take a new start. And in matters of precious human lives it would be wise to abstain from shedding further blood of the fellow beings and try to make the world a cradle of peace, he concluded.

NWFP Prime minister Haider Khan Hoti faces challenges of huge infant mortality rate, malnutrition and infection rates.
quote:
“We invented, manufactured thousands of antibiotics, invested huge human resources and economic power in a centralized healthcare system and hospitals caring for only ten percent of country’s population,” Hoti said. On the other hand, he added, ninety percent of the population, living in rural areas, was neglected and no proper ways and means were adapted to provide them simple and cheap healthcare facilities.

NWFP Minister for Social Welfare, Women Development and Special Education Ms. Sitara Ayaz has said that Social Welfare Department will no more be a traditional department, rather it will convey its facilities to all sections of society under its frame of responsibilities.
quote:
The Minister said that the department has planned to open a women sports complex for the women of Peshawar at Hayatabad in the near future besides improving the Parda Bagh of Shahi Bagh, so that women and children of the city could enjoy sports and entertainment facilities. Similarly, women bus service would be started very soon after necessary planning and working women hostel would also be established. She said that vocational centers would be upgraded in the light of market survey. Skill development would be encouraged to provide jobs to young men and women.

From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
toddsschneider
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posted 07 May 2008 09:19 AM      Profile for toddsschneider     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Bad omen for Musharraf: Pakistan's chief justice back"

Bad omen for Musharraf: Pakistan's chief justice back

quote:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's fragile coalition government agreed Thursday to reinstate the chief justice and 60 other judges fired by Pervez Musharraf, a move almost certain to spell trouble for the U.S.-backed president, government officials said.

Under a compromise between the parties that's expected to be revealed Friday, the judges will be restored, but the powers of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry will be reined in. Also, the pro-Musharraf judges who took the oath of office in November will be kept in office.

According to officials close to the negotiations, Chaudhry's tenure will be limited to five years in office, meaning that he would have another two years in the job. Previously, he could have continued until retirement in 2013 ...



From: Montreal, Canada | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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posted 20 June 2008 06:36 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
North West Frontier Province to become Pukhtunkhwa this month.
quote:
The North West Frontier was fixed in the British firmament at the turn of the last century when "soldier sahibs" struggled to subdue its bellicose Pukhtun (or Pashtun) tribes.

The Frontier, the precursor to NWFP, carved out of Afghan territory, several mountain kingdoms and the vale of Peshawar, was brought under British control by a group of young soldier-administrators by force and guile.

Arbab Khan, a Peshawar dignitary, noted wryly that the name should be changed to "Curzonistan". Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, created the province by removing it from the Punjab's administration in 1901.



As noted above, more Pushtuns live in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. If you want to see the future of Afghanistan, watch the news from Peshawar: non-violent opposition to Islamists:
quote:
peace was not only main issue of NWFP but that of the country and entire region to ensure its very existence, stability and prosperity.

He said the current wave of lawlessness, extremism and unrest could be checked by following the philosophy of great Khudai Khidmatgar leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Senior Minister said that the past regimes held negotiations with enemies for peace but unleashed bloodshed and suppression of its own people that resulted into the present environment of instability and tension in the country.

He said that the so-called torchbearers of Islam did nothing for the benefit of Muslims but continued criticizing us, though he said they could not dare to release Maulana Sufi Muhammad or honour the promise of enforcement of Shariah only in Malakand what to think about implementing Islamic system in the country or province.

ANP on the other side, he said, started honouring its election promises from first day of its government and Swat peace agreement was ample proof of this claim that helping in stopping the worsening situation of lawlessness and uncertainty in the province.

He said that the entire world community acknowledged that the dialogue was the only remedy for solving the problems while no issue could be resolved with force or war as he said war was by itself a big issue and threat to peace.

He said that ANP did not believed in politics of hypocrisy and obtaining ministerial slots but we believed in true welfare of the people and service of humanity. He said that fruitful results were being coming out of our sincere efforts for maintenance of peace and stability while solid steps of far reaching impacts would be taken in the next phase for socio economic uplift of the masses and overcoming the poverty and unemployment in the province.



The eight by-elections mentioned above, to take place June 18, were postponed to June 26 but will produce little drama.

PPP leader Asif Zardari decided not to try to enter Parliament after all. His sister Dr. Faryal Talpur was acclaimed in NA-207 Larkana after the withdrawal of her rival candidates.

PML-N candidate Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, the son of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, has been acclaimed in NA-119.

Six seats remain contested. However, no PML-N candidate is contesting from Okara, leaving it to the PPP's Khurram Jehangir Watto.

Mardan NA-11 has also been agreed to go to the PPP's Khanzada Khan while the PPP is not running in Lahore's NA-123, Rawalpindi's NA-52 and NA-55, and NA-131 (Sheikhupra).

In Lahore's NA-123 PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has been nominated but a rival candidate has filed a petition seeking his disqualification.

[ 20 June 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
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posted 13 July 2008 12:25 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Remembering 1931: Today is Kashmir Martyrs' Day:
quote:
Unfortunately, Kashmir’s agony is far from over. Dogra rule was replaced by a more repressive Indian rule. No less than 70,000 people have laid down their lives for the cause of freedom since 1989 when open rebellion broke out against Indian occupation.

Kashmir ‘Martyrs’ Day’ is observed every year on 13 July to commemorate this day in 1931, when 21 Kashmiris made the supreme sacrifice of their valuable lives for the supreme cause of freedom of Kashmir from the clutches of despotic Dogra rulers.

Dogra rule (1846-1947), which is considered the darkest period in the history of Kashmir, is replete with tyrannical and oppressive treatment of Kashmiris by Dogra forces. The subjugated and downtrodden Kashmiris, under the yoke of repressive Dogra rule, were leading a life worse than that of animals. Throughout Dogra regime, slave labour, capital punishment for cow slaughter and living under terror was order of the day. The Kashmiri Muslims had no self respect and even their religious freedom had been snatched away.

It was on 19th April 1931 that the Dogra DIG Chowdry Ram Chand barred Imam Munshi Muhammad Ishaq from giving Eid sermon in the Municipal Park of Jammu. This incident sparked off widespread protest demonstrations for many days in Jammu city. Ban on Eid sermon in Jammu was followed by desecration of the Holy Qurán at the hands of Dogra troops, in Jammu. This outrageous act sparked extensive resentment throughout the state. In Srinagar, people gathered in Jamia Masjid Srinagar to denounce this ultimate sacrilege and demanded punishment for the culprits and realization of basic rights for Kashmiris. One such gathering was held in Khankah-e-Muella Srinagar, which was addressed by prominent Kashmiris. A youth, Abdul Qadeer was also listening to the speeches of the Kashmiri leaders. When the meeting was concluded, Abdul Qadeer, pointing his finger to the Maharaja’s palace raised full-throated slogans “destroy its every brick”. He was accused of sedition and arrested instantly. Abdul Qadir was to be tried in the court but due to large public resentment the court was shifted to Central Jail Srinagar. On 12th July, intense public demonstrations were held against the shifting of the court to the Central Jail, throughout the city.

On July 13, 1931, thousands of people thronged the central jail Srinagar to witness the in-camera trial of Abdul Qadeer. At Zuhar time, people surrounding the Central Jail, demanded an open trial of Abdul Qadeer. To disperse them, the Dogra Governor, Rai Zada Tartilok Chand ordered his soldiers to open fire. As a result, an indiscriminate slaughter ensued in which 21 demonstrators embraced shahadat on the spot and scores of them were seriously wounded. Enraged Kashmiris formed a procession and paraded the highways and streets of Srinagar, carrying the Shaheeds on their shoulders, chanting slogans of protest against Dogra brutalities. Complete strike was observed in the city, which was followed by weeklong mourning. This incident shook the whole state and the traffic from Srinagar to Rawalpindi and Srinagar to Jammu came to a complete halt from 13th to 26th July. Since then, the day is observed as Kashmir Martyrs’ Day.



In 1934, State's first elections were held, and the Muslim Conference won 16 out of 21 seats.
quote:
It was in this backdrop that Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas and Sheikh Abdullah formed All Jammu and Kashmir Conference, and its first meeting was held from 15 to 17 October 1932, which was later named as Muslim Conference. In 1934, State's first elections were held, and the Muslim Conference won 16 out of 21 seats. After two years in 1936, it succeeded in getting 19 out of 21 seats. Congress was upset with these results, and tried to create division in the ranks of Kashmiri leadership. In 1937, a meeting was arranged between Jawahar Lal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah and the latter agreed to convert Muslim Conference into National Conference. When Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas and his colleagues realized that Sheikh Abdullah was toeing Nehru's line, they revived the Muslim Conference. Historical evidence suggests that Kashmiris have passed through the longest ordeal, and faced repression, death and destruction even before the partition.

Once again at the time of partition when people of Kashmir had dreamt of freedom from oppression, India accepted Lord Mountbaten as the first Governor General of India with a view to extracting maximum advantage. An insidious plan of annexing Kashmir was contrived and implemented by Lord Mountbaten and Nehru when Raja Hari Singh was persuaded rather coerced into signing the controversial document on 26th July 1947, which was prepared by Lord Mountbatten. It was on the basis of this document that Indian forces entered the Valley, and endless dark night for Kashmiris started. On 19th July 1947, Muslim Conference held a convention and passed a resolution to merge Kashmir with Pakistan, which stated: "This convention of Muslim Conference has reached the conclusion that geographical conditions, 80 per cent Muslim population, important rivers of Punjab passing through the state, language, cultural, ethnic and economic relations and contiguity of the state with Pakistan make it imperative to merge with Pakistan". According to the Partition of India Plan, the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir was to be decided in the light of its people's wishes. However, India occupied the State through military force and claimed it as an integral part of India.



Violence update:
quote:
From Jan. 1989 to June 30, 2008
Total Killings * 92,390
Custodial Killings 6,942
Civilians Arrested 115,151
Structures Arsoned/Destroyed 105,638
Women Widowed 22,611
Children Orphaned 107,090
Women gang-raped / Molested 9,813
* Including custody

From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged

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