The Quiet Man. He touched your life today, all of you, though you may not have noticed. He is ignored, today, as he is every day. Ignored by the public, ignored by the politicians, ignored by the unions.
#5
Bright Pebbles, our daughter's British father-in-law is one of these quiet men, now nearly retired but still not quite out of the small business he founded and ran through some tough years. I treasure the lessons he taught our son-in-law, but wonder whether that country or this one will long survive as it pushes such men and women to despair and withdrawl.
#6
"despair and withdrawl" No, I don't see that. These people get up and go on. Each day is a challenge. The will and the drive may weaken but not the sprit. In their darkest hour they should deal with adversity better than most. They have weathered many storms and look forward with hope for a better day."If it is to be, It is up to me".
[Dawn] SPEECHES made at the Pakistain Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) rally in Bloody Karachi on Dec 25 were a perfect "motley mixture of high-sounding phrases ... [and] adherence to the old routine". It will hardly endear Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... and his party to ordinary Sindhi and Baloch publics.
"Speechwriter! More stock phrases! Let's throw them all against the wall, and see what sticks!"
The issues speakers zeroed in on and the topics they did not touch upon offer an interesting insight into the ethos of the PTI and how out of touch it is with the Sindhi and Baloch political pulse. Both in terms of content and form there was little on offer for Sindhis and the Baloch in the vicinity of Jinnah`s mausoleum.
Start with what Imran Khan had to say about Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... . He quite correctly, and I am assuming sincerely, apologised to the Baloch for the wrongs done to them. Who was he apologising as? Was he doing it as a Punjabi? If so, he did not make it obvious. Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... did the same in a meeting with Sardar Ataullah Mengal only a few days back. Instead of echoing what Nawaz Sharif had said to Sardar Mengal, Imran Khan should have paid attention to the veteran Baloch leader`s response in which he considered such apologies hollow and minced no words in conveying to Mr Sharif that the Baloch youth viewed the army as a Punjabi army and not a national one.
Unless politicians from Punjab are willing and capable to rein in the army there is little hope of winning over the hearts and minds of the people of Balochistan. Imran Khan`s answer to Baloch alienation is to bring `development` to the province. Mention `development` to a Baloch and she/he immediately thinks of boots on the ground and men in khaki hunting down Baloch nationalists. `Development` in the Baloch perception means systematic exploitation of Balochistan`s natural resources and a denial of political rights spanning half a century.
Imran Khan quite naively invoked West Germany`s example of helping East Germany in the reunification of the two. He wants to play West Germany to Balochistan, conveniently forgetting that it was the East Germans who brought the Berlin Wall down to be one with their West German brothers.
In the case of Balochistan, the situation is almost the exact opposite where there is an ever-increasing aspiration to get out of Pakistain instead of an urge to be part of it. When it comes to Sindh, the PTI bowled, to use Imran Khan`s favourite cricketing analogy, a wide on Sindhis in both form and content. topi
Let us look at the form first. The team that Imran Khan chose to surround himself with on the stage did not even have a token Sindhi among them. Sindhis have not patented the Sindhi (cap) and it would have done no harm to adorn one when attempting to put up a mega political show in Sindh.
If you are going to punctuate speeches with songs then not having any Sindhi song on the playlist only sends a wrong message. Whether or not you appreciate Shah Abdul Latif`s poetry, it is customary to pay tribute to Latif when politicking in Sindh.
`Tsunami` may be a nice and thunderous word elsewhere but in the coastal areas of Sindh people associate it with misery not merriment. The list of such symbolic follies is too long for a newspaper column.
In terms of content there was little that Sindhis could identify with but a lot that would keep the PTI on the political margins in the province.
Shah Mehmood Wormtongue Qureshi`s speech was, again using cricket analogy, akin to Misbah-ul-Haq`s innings against India in the 2011 World Cup semi-final. Misbah scored only 17 runs during the first 42 balls he faced thus contributing to the cost incurred by Pakistain.
Qureshi did the same for Imran Khan in Bloody Karachi as far as PTI`s immediate fortunes in Sindh are concerned. Qureshi chose to play the nuclear nationalism card and accuse President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... of being not as strong a nuclear nationalist as an ideal Pak president should be. He went on to educate, or rather bore, those attending with concepts such as no-first-use, Cold Start and asymmetric warfare.
The speech sounded more like a pitch to secure the slot of foreign minister in any future government than connecting with the masses in Sindh. Simply put, you don`t talk about that stuff in public rallies in Sindh. It finds little resonance with Sindhis.
Imran Khan was equally off the mark if one purpose of the show was to win the support of Sindhis. His road map was a motley of generalities guided by political naivety that made him look up to England as a model welfare state when he first set foot there as a teenager.
His solutions to complex socioeconomic and political issues are sought in simple steps like computerising the land records because a computer does not accept bribe or aspiration to provide free legal advice to 80 per cent of the population.
And no such talk is complete without customary tribute to Lee Kuan Yew`s ways of `developing` the tiny island of Singapore. These propositions resonate with the urban middle classes of Punjab and possibly Bloody Karachi but have little to do with various segments of the Sindhi population.
For Imran Khan the only hurdle in the way of exploiting coal deposits in the desert Sindh may be the law and order situation in Bloody Karachi but for Sindhis the issue is more complex and requires provinces having a greater say and decision-making powers when it comes to natural resources.
Imran Khan and his party have an attractive platform for the urban middle classes of Punjab but his slogans have little appeal where the Baloch and Sindhi political path is concerned, at least for now.
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[Dawn] THE Pakistain Tehrik-i-Insaf rally near Mr Jinnah`s mausoleum on Sunday was billed by organisers as a continuation of the political `tsunami` that was first in evidence in Lahore on Oct 30. Critics of the PTI maintained that unless some hard policy positions were fleshed out the long-standing accusation that the PTI had not matured as a political party would stick. Both sides were valida- ted to some extent by Sunday`s rally. The PTI certainly validated some of the hype in the run-up to what was a historic rally. In particular, the ability to draw in a diverse crowd in such large numbers in a city like Bloody Karachi where ethnic and political fault lines are deep and deadly suggests that Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... has tapped into a vein of popular discontent against the status quo that isn`t limited to the Punjab heartland or the Pashtun belts. The rally also had a very different vibe to other political events in Bloody Karachi, there being an air of celebration and goodwill that only infrequently marks politics in the turbulent city.
Disappointing, though, was the lack of any serious policy prescriptions. Imran Khan did talk about the goal of establishing an `Islamic welfare society` but mentioned virtually no details. Mr Khan talked of a revolutionary system of service delivery based on computerisation and information technology but where will the concrete plans and implementation come from? The former IT minister who has recently joined the PTI, Azam Swati, doesn`t have a particularly strong track record in getting things done. On taxation, an issue Mr Khan has talked much about (and rightly so), the PTI chief also did not have any suggestions for nudging upwards the disastrously low tax-to-GDP ratio. Does the PTI endorse a meaningful agricultural income tax or support the reforms of the sales tax system? No answers were provided. Given the politicians with diverse, if not opposing, foreign policy briefs in the past that have been inducted into the PTI, what will the PTI`s foreign policy look like? Again, silence.
The broader question: is the PTI set to become a mishmash of the views of the disparate traditional politicians who have been inducted into the party recently or will Imran Khan`s `vision`, to the extent one was discernible before, still be the guid-ing principle of the party? The PTI`s core still seems to be the `new voter`, whether young voters or previously politically inactive citizens disillusioned with the status quo. As Mr Khan works to bring `electables` on board, how will the core PTI supporter respond? Only this is clear: a fascinating election lies ahead.
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12/28/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] THE message by the head of state on the eve of the anniversary of Mr Jinnah`s birthday and remarks by the leader of the opposition on Saturday showed once again a dangerous divergence of views on an issue where the two ought to show unity. President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari`s ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... message wasn`t a run-of-the-mill Dec 25 statement; it showed in unmistakable terms that the government-army row persists and that the PPP-led regime still feels apprehensive of extra-constitutional interference in statecraft. Asking the nation to pledge that it will not allow a change through "force and intimidation", the president said the Quaid believed in the ballot, not the bullet. What made the president issue this alarmist statement will no doubt serve to provide grist to the rumour mills and prolong that feeling of uncertainty which gripped the nation last week after the prime minister spoke twice in a day of conspiracies against the elected government and reaffirmed that the armed forces were responsible to par-liament. A subsequent, though guarded, statement by the army chief seemed to have defused the crisis.
Against this background, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan`s stance, in which he attacked the government, especially the prime minister, and said people would resist any attempt to sack the army and ISI chiefs is indeed astonishing. As leader of the opposition, Chaudhry Nisar is expected to support and strengthen democracy by categorically upholding the principle of civilian supremacy. His remarks, possibly in reaction to rumours, on Saturday constituted a political somersault and will be music to the ears of those keen on perpetuating the armed forces` interference in the civilian domain. Chaudhry Nisar forgot or perhaps chose to ignore Mr Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... `s own decision as prime minister to sack two army chiefs. There is no doubt Nawaz Sharif acted constitutionally. As leader of the opposition Chaudhry Nisar has every right to flay the government, but he should know where and when to discharge his fusillade. Sensitive issues need responsible handling and ought to be sorted out in talks with the government instead of being welcomed as a godsend for government-bashing.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Mehmood 
Punjab
mills and prolong that feeling of uncertainty which gripped the nation last week after the prime minister spoke twice in a day of conspiracies against the elected government and reaffirmed that the armed forces were responsible to par-liament. A subsequent, though guarded, statement by the army chief seemed to have defused the crisis.
