Saturday, October 13, 2018
Asia Bibi, Mother on Death Row in Pakistan, Asks Christians Worldwide to Pray for Her Release
By Stoyan Zaimov
Asia Bibi, the Christian mother of five who's on death row in Pakistan for "blasphemy," has asked Christians worldwide to pray for her as her nine-year ordeal continues.
On Monday, Pakistan's Supreme Court decided to reserve judgment on her final appeal against execution on the charges of blasphemy.
Her husband, Ashiq Bibi, told Premier while traveling to the U.K. that she has a message for fellow Christians.
"She told [me] that the community must remember her in their prayers because this is an international country ... [I] need international pressure for the release of Asia Bib," the husband said through an interpreter.
"She always has said that Jesus is her life and she is living in the name of Jesus, and [trusting] that Jesus will help her," he added.
He said that the family is suffering without Bibi.
"As the husband, I am missing Asia and the daughters are also missing Asia," he attested.
Eisham, one of Bibi's daughters, also traveled with her father with the aim of raising international attention for her mother's case.
"[Eisham is] praying that her mother is with her as soon as possible and she is also requesting that you also pray for their family and especially for Asia," a translator relayed.
"The family of Asia Bibi is always under threat and when Asia Bibi would be [sic] released from the jail she will never, ever be living in Pakistan [again]."
Still, the family told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that they are hopeful that an acquittal is not far away.
"Although the judges didn't give a judgement, this has happened in many cases of this kind in the past — and they still ended positively," Father Emmanuel Yousaf said on behalf of Ashiq Bibi.
"We will have to wait a few days but we are confident that things will go well."
Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010, but has been held since 2009 after she was accused of blaspheming the Islamic prophet Muhammad during an argument with Muslim farmworkers.
She has denied the charges, and her plight has drawn the attention of several human rights and persecution watchdog groups around the world.
Yousaf noted that uncertainty over the mother-of-five's fate remains, but also said that there is good reason to hope for good news.
"There is no decision — we are hanging in the air — but God willing it will soon be over and [Asia Bibi] will be back home with the family," he said.
"We have prayed 10 years now for our sister, Asia, and I am confident that our prayers will be heard, and the judgement will go in favor of Asia, her family and the entire Pakistani Christian community."
https://www.christianpost.com/news/asia-bibi-mother-on-death-row-in-pakistan-asks-christians-worldwide-to-pray-for-her-release-227918/
Asia Bibi - Family Of Pakistani Christian First To Face Death For Blasphemy Holds Out Hope
Asia Bibi, who has been on death row since 2010, is at the centre of the high-profile case that has divided Pakistan and drawn prayers from the Vatican.
The family of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother who faces becoming the first person to be executed for blasphemy in Pakistan, said they hoped the Supreme Court would free her.
But in any case they feared for their future living in Pakistan under the blasphemy laws, they told AFP.
Bibi, who has been on death row since 2010, is at the centre of the high-profile case that has divided Pakistan and drawn prayers from the Vatican.
On Monday the Supreme Court heard her last appeal and said it had reached a judgement, which it has yet to reveal.
"We are hopeful that whatever the court proceedings are it will come out as positive for us," her husband Ashiq Mesih told AFP. Her daughter Eisham Ashiq added: "I will be very happy the day my mother will be released. I will hug her and will cry meeting her and will thank God that he has got her released." (AFP)
"We are hopeful that whatever the court proceedings are it will come out as positive for us," her husband Ashiq Mesih told AFP.
Her daughter Eisham Ashiq added: "I will be very happy the day my mother will be released. I will hug her and will cry meeting her and will thank God that he has got her released."
Bibi's family are in London on a visit organised by Aid to the Church in Need, a charity which helps repressed and persecuted Christians.
Bibi, a labourer, was accused of blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed in 2009 by Muslim women she was working with in a field.
The charge is punishable by death under legislation that rights groups say is routinely abused to settle personal vendettas.
Her family said that if Bibi is released, it would be difficult to stay in her homeland.
"Pakistan is ours: we were born there, raised there," Mesih said.
"The only tension we have is the blasphemy law. It is imposed on Christians. When it is imposed on us our (Muslim) brothers should think that the Christians never say anything bad about the Koran," he said.
Asia Bibi, after her release, can't stay there in the presence of this law.
"Living in Pakistan for us is very difficult. We don't go out of our home and if we go, we come out very carefully."
Life in Pakistan "for us is very difficult".
Tackling Pakistan's pathetic economy: Is Imran Khan up to the task?
Almost two months after Imran Khan took office as Pakistan's PM, the reality is knocking hard on the doors of his government. Wracked by a raft of financial challenges, the country has become an economic basket case.
Pakistan's economy is a perpetual mess. It's not hard to come to this conclusion considering the fact that the country has gone begging to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 14 times since 1980 seeking bailouts. The current Pakistani government, led by the newly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan, has once again gone cap in hand to the IMF requesting yet another rescue.
"An IMF team will visit Islamabad in the coming weeks to initiate discussions for a possible IMF-supported economic program," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday.
The South Asian nation, home to over 200 million people, is beset by a range of financial and structural challenges. Pakistan has long imported more than it exported. The result is a surging current account deficit — now estimated at over 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — and a looming balance-of-payments crisis.
For decades, Pakistan's real per capita income growth has underperformed many of its peers. Corruption and tax evasion remain rampant, resulting in reduced revenue for the state. Less than 1 percent of Pakistanis, for instance, pay income tax.
Severe problems
State resources are also often squandered. Defense spending takes a higher priority than allocating resources for more productive purposes like education and healthcare. That's a consequence of the Pakistani military's obsession with maintaining a military, political and diplomatic competition with neighboring India.
Furthermore, Pakistan faces a chronic energy crisis, resulting in regular power outages across the country. The economy is highly vulnerable to shifts in global crude prices, as 80 percent of its oil needs are met through imports. The recent rise in oil prices has aggravated the nation's already fragile financial situation.
Many state-run firms are loss-making and the government has failed to make enough headway when it comes to their privatization as well as cutting bureaucratic red tape and improving ease of doing business.
The problems have put heavy pressure on the nation's currency, with the Pakistani rupee falling by more than 20 percent in four big drops since December. Its foreign exchange reserves are also dropping rapidly. In September, they stood at $8.4 billion (€7.25 billion), barely enough to cover Pakistan's debt payments due through the end of the year.
IMF to the rescue — once again
When Pakistan has previously found itself in this situation, it has knocked on the doors of the IMF. But this time around, the nation's leaders appeared to be a bit reluctant to approach the global lender, as it is likely to impose tough conditions on government policy, limiting Prime Minister Imran Khan's vision of an Islamic welfare state.
"As the price for a deal with Pakistan, the IMF is likely to demand a further sharp tightening in fiscal and monetary policy as well as structural reforms aimed at raising more revenue and improving the business environment," Gareth Leather, Senior Asia Economist at Capital Economics, said in a research note.
Khan, whose new administration took office in August, said on Wednesday that his government will seek help from "friendly countries" alongside any assistance provided by the IMF.
Khan has also promised to recover funds stashed abroad by corrupt officials, and embarked on a series of populist austerity measures such as auctioning luxury cars owned by the prime minister's house and crowdfunding to build a dam in the country's north. He has also vowed to turn around loss-making state-run enterprises and reform tax collection.
"This prime minister and his team seem serious about focusing on Pakistan's economy, and moving beyond superficial economic management to deeper reforms, given that they have engaged some prominent Pakistani economists to help them out," Madiha Afzal, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told DW. "Some of their rhetoric and actions, however, are markedly superficial, which does not bolster confidence in their approach," she added.
To combat the economic woes, many Pakistanis seem to be expecting help from their ally China, often called an "all-weather friend" to Pakistan due to the two sides' close political, economic and military ties as well as aligning strategic interests. But it is unclear how generous Beijing will be in helping its strategic partner weather the current economic storm.
CPEC's role
Many inside and outside Pakistan also partly blame China for the troubles afflicting the Pakistani economy. They argue that the deteriorating balance of payments is a result of higher import spending by Pakistan on materials from China for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
CPEC is a Chinese-led series of ambitious transport and energy projects to build infrastructure in Pakistan that some estimate at over $60 billion. It forms part of Beijing's wider Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
As part of CPEC, China provides loans to Pakistan, which imports equipment and services from China. This adds to Pakistan's debt and worsens the current account deficit.
If investments are sound, CPEC has the potential to boost the Pakistani economy. But observers say the terms and conditions of much of the Chinese lending are opaque, and interest rates on some loans may be higher than Pakistan can afford.
Acknowledging that Pakistan needs more infrastructure development, the IMF's chief economist Maurice Obstfeld recently cautioned: "It is important that the design of the projects... be solid and excessive debts which cannot be repaid are avoided."
One implication of Islamabad approaching the IMF now is that Pakistan will likely have to be far more transparent about the lending terms of its CPEC projects than it has been so far. "This transparency may have positive implications in terms of generating public support for renegotiating some CPEC deals which are not necessarily beneficial for Pakistan," said Afzal.
Difficult reforms await
Regardless of CPEC, there are a number of difficult measures Khan's administration will have to take to pull Pakistan out of its economic malaise. Economists say the government needs to tackle tax evasion and broaden the tax base by removing tax loopholes and exemptions.
It has to privatize some loss-making and inefficient state-owned firms, which are acting as a major drag on the economy.
Reforming the product and labor markets, particularly the energy and agricultural sectors, will also have to be high on the agenda. Also, the Pakistani rupee, experts say, has to be fairly valued, flexible and market-determined.
If Khan's administration manages to push through at least some of these measures, it could significantly improve Pakistan's growth trajectory. "While a sharp slowdown in growth looks inevitable over the coming year, Pakistan's longer-term prospects should improve if the IMF deal leads to a sharp fall in the country's external vulnerabilities and an improvement in its business environment," said Capital Economics' expert Leather.
https://www.dw.com/en/tackling-pakistans-pathetic-economy-is-imran-khan-up-to-the-task/a-45844615
#Pakistan - #PPP to resist political victimisation: Bilawal Bhutto
Accusing Prime Minister Imran Khan of behaving like a dictator, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said the PPP will resist any move by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government to start political victimisation in the name of accountability.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1823847/1-ppp-resist-political-victimisation-bilawal/
“We also support the accountability process; but political victimisation under its garb is not tolerable. Khan sahib is behaving as if he is still in opposition,” Bilawal said while speaking to media after co-chairing a party meeting along with the PPP supremo Asif Ali Zardari.
The meeting, which was convened at the residence of PPP MNA Naveed Qamar, was attended by senior party leaders, including Khursheed Shah, Yousaf Raza Gilani, Nayyar Bukhari, Sherry Rehman, Farooq H Naek, Murad Ali Shah, Faryal Talpur, Chaudhry Manzoor and Nisar Khuhro.
“What can we say when the prime minister is threatening the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to take action merely for victimising opponents,” the PPP chief added.Bilawal said even though Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif had not used reasonable words for the PPP in the past, his October 5 arrest by NAB in connection with a housing scam “is a condemnable act”.
Replying to a question about possible arrest of PPP leaders, he said, “We have been hearing this since the PTI has come to power and political leaders are being victimised.”
However, a source privy to the meeting said the moot was convened in view of rumours that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) may arrest Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur by October 13.
“The recent actions of NAB and the FIA have set the alarm bells ringing in the party. The arrest of the PPP leaders who are facing money laundering and corruption charges and an inquiry into the 10-year record of the Sindh government were the main agenda of the meeting,” a source said.
He said sensitivity of the meeting could be gauged from the selection of its venue, where not a single political activity has taken place for the past decade. The sources said various legal and political options were discussed and party leaders also suggested joining hands with the PML-N on various issues.
NFC and Thar
Bilawal announced that the PPP would protest if provincial share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) award was slashed. “We will be a stumbling block if anyone tries to repeal the 18th Amendment and reduce the provincial autonomy. We will launch a campaign for the rights of provinces,” he said.
To a question about a hearing in the Supreme Court on plight of Thar, he said, “One should also look at the development (work undertaken the PPP provincial government) in Thar.” He criticised the PTI government’s policies said the country had suffered a loss of billions of rupees in a short span of time.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1823847/1-ppp-resist-political-victimisation-bilawal/
Friday, October 12, 2018
Blasphemy ruling could signal strength of hardliners in Pakistan
On Monday, Pakistan's Supreme Court heard the final appeal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy in November 2010.
The verdict, not yet issued, could well signal if the hardline Islamists, who seek to create a full-blown theocracy, are gaining influence throughout the country and helping to shape its future.
Bibi's case began on June 14, 2009, when an ordinary altercation between women working in a field in an area north of Lahore turned into a feud over their faiths. Three women did not want to share a cup of water with Bibi because she was Christian and they were Muslim. After a heated argument, the three women trooped off to complain to the village cleric, claiming she had sullied the name of the Prophet Mohammed.
As Bibi's lawyer, Saiful Malook, argued on Monday, the legal case against her is weak at best, featuring blatant contradictions between witness statements. The cleric, who actually registered the case and made the allegations against Bibi, was not even present when the altercation between the women took place, and he did not have permission from the appropriate officials to register the case. These legal and evidentiary issues would likely be determinative in any other case, but in this one, they may have little impact on the outcome.
The murky facts of Bibi's case may make it hard to discern whether the case, filed at a time when the region was seeing an increase in recruitment by hardline Islamists, was filed at the behest of a particular group. It is known that in the decade since then, hardline groups -- the Tehreek-e-Labbaik in particular -- have gunned down politicians and lawyers who have dared question the validity of the blasphemy law or championed the cause of blasphemy defendants.
In January 2011, a little over a month after the trial court sentenced Asia Bibi to death, Salman Taseer, a Punjab governor, was gunned down by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, because he had visited Bibi in prison and questioned her conviction. Qadri, a member of Tehreek-e-Labbaik, said he had been protecting the honor of the prophet and that he had killed Taseer because of his support for Bibi. Qadri himself was executed in 2016, an event which brought out thousands of mourners affiliated with various hardline groups to the street.
These are not the only deaths. In March 2011, Pakistan's Federal Minister of Minority Affairs, a Christian man named Shahbaz Bhatti, was gunned down after calling for reform of Pakistan's blasphemy law. In 2014, gunmen barged into the office of Rashid Rehman, a human rights lawyer who had been representing another blasphemy suspect, and killed him.
Pakistan has never executed anyone convicted of blasphemy. Until very recently, Pakistan was not executing many people at all. But a moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 2015, reflecting Pakistan's rightward political swing.
According to Amnesty International, though there was a 31% decrease in executions from the previous year, Pakistan still executed 60 people in 2017, while nearly 7,000 people languished on death row. When this inclination to execute is combined with the pressures of groups like Tehreek-e-Labbaik, and the fact that Bibi is a Christian woman in an increasingly misogynistic and xenophobic atmosphere, there seems almost no cause for hope.
But it doesn't have to be this way. The three justices who heard Bibi's final appeal could do the right thing, take note of the many holes in the case, the baselessness of the allegations themselves, the contradictions between witness accounts and exonerate a poor woman who has been wrongfully accused and imprisoned.
The military, which has worked so diligently to eradicate terrorism in Pakistan, could crack down on groups like Tehreek-e-Labbaik that make ordinary Pakistanis pawns in their game of blood and terror. They could promise added protection to all involved in the case and deploy forces in sensitive areas of the country, such that Tehreek-e-Labbaik and their threats of violence cannot materialize.
Pakistan's new administration, led by the swashbuckling former cricketer Prime Minister Imran Khan, could also take a stance against the intimidation of Tehreek-e-Labbaik, whose leaders have demanded that Khan fulfill his promises to make Pakistan an "Islamic state" and that "Asia Bibi should be hanged keeping international pressure aside." Khan could respond to this by noting that Pakistan is already an Islamic Republic and that, according to the Quran, Pakistan cannot execute an innocent woman for any crime.
Instead of snubbing the international community, one that Islamists see as impinging on Pakistan's move toward a full theocracy, Khan could emphasize the need to embrace it and to work with it. In other words, Khan could choose to stand with the innocent woman instead of the rabid and bloodthirsty extremists.
Saving Bibi need not only be a Pakistani campaign. The Supreme Court of Pakistan, likely fearing violence by hardliners, has instructed Pakistani media to refrain from discussions of Bibi's case until the verdict is issued. This places responsibility on international media and human rights groups to step up their efforts and fill the vacuum.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan would never admit to being permeable to international campaigns for a particular accused, but judges exist in the same larger political context as all the rest of us. A groundswell of international protest and attention, via media and social media, could drown out the venal voices of hardliners demanding death and replace them with activists insisting on life.
The verdict is not in yet on Bibi's case; there is time still to write and tweet and petition. Global attention may well add up to the difference between life and death for a woman sitting alone in a cell in a Pakistani prison.
For Pakistan's 13th IMF Bailout, Expect Tougher Conditions
A regular client of the International Monetary Fund, investors are asking whether Pakistan’s 13th loan program since the late 1980s will finally break a cycle of financial crashes and bailouts.
Pakistan’s history of taking the lender’s money while dragging its heels on economic reforms suggest otherwise. With Islamabad now formally requesting IMF aid -- seeking to raise anywhere between $6 billion to more than $12 billion -- it will also face more scrutiny over debt owed to China. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said he will oppose any use of IMF funding to repay loans to Beijing. “Their conditions will be tougher and we’ll have to pay the price,” said Nadeem Ul Haque, the ex-deputy chairman of Pakistan’s Planning Commission and a former economist at the IMF. “We’ve kept postponing solutions and not taking bold steps -- the cancer has been in the body since the 1960s.”
Pakistan has regularly failed to meet conditions attached to its previous IMF loans -- for example trimming spending and privatizing bloated state-owned corporations. The nation has only ever managed to successfully complete one IMF program, meaning it received all the disbursements as planned, on a $6.6 billion three-year facility that ended in 2016. Even then, a number of requirements, were relaxed.
IMF Bond
Pakistan does not withdraw the entire amount in most loans with IMF.
Economists have pointed to decades of inaction against widespread tax dodging across all levels of society handing the country one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in Asia. In addition, the country has failed to revamp key export industries, such as textiles -- which have lost out to regional neighbors like Bangladesh -- or fix an energy system straining under more than 1 trillion rupees ($7.6 billion) of debt.“Pakistan needs to work on structural problems now so they can avoid another IMF program,” said Kimihide Ando, the chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Corp.’s Pakistan unit. “It’s just sheer will. The solutions are known including industrialization that has been declining in Pakistan.”The current crisis has been exacerbated by China’s Belt and Road initiative. Beijing has been criticized by some for pushing countries like Pakistan -- which has taken opaque Chinese financing for road and power plants projects of more than $60 billion -- into a debt trap. Welfare State
The projects have meant imports to South Asia’s second-largest economy have surged. In turn Pakistan’s current-account and budget gaps have swelled to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product and foreign-currency reserves have plunged to the lowest in almost four years. In response authorities have devalued the rupee five times since December and hiked interest rates the most in Asia. The U.S. is also watching. “Part of the reason that Pakistan found itself in this situation is Chinese debt,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “This is something that we’ve been tracking fairly closely.” Elected in July and promising to roll out an “Islamic welfare state,” Prime Minister Imran Khan was reluctant to turn to the IMF. He criticized previous administrations for going to the lender and promised to break the “begging bowl” habit. Instead, the former cricket legend has been seeking funds from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but with little success. Muhammad Aurangzeb, the chief executive officer of Habib Bank Ltd., said IMF aid will provide some “breathing space” but the tough part will be narrowing the twin deficits.
Rupee Devalued
“We see all the signals coming from the new government, including the pronouncements that’s been made by the finance minister, that they are going to make some very, very tough political choices,” he said in an interview in Bali on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting. “And if that is done, then we do have a sustainable path to not get back into an IMF program.” There are signs Khan’s government will take a reform program more seriously after making early concessions. This week monetary authorities devalued the rupee the most in two decades after long-standing IMF observations that the currency was overvalued. Finance Minister Asad Umar told Bloomberg in August he will publish the terms of the Chinese loans. “Getting the house in order is painful, but I assure you we will see better days,” Khan told businessmen in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Military Pressure
The government is also being pressured by a domineering military that has made unprecedented statements about Pakistan’s economic quandary in the past year. Having directly governed the country for almost half its 71-year existence, the armed forces continue to control foreign policy and has been accused of engineering Khan’s rise to power through political and press repression. Along with debt servicing, it also takes more than half the federal budget.At a Karachi business conference last month, Major General Muhammad Samrez Salik said Pakistan’s economy had suffered from “negligence and incompetence” and highlighted that the country was “lagging behind in developing our economic cooperation” with Asia. Salik compared Pakistan’s $6 billion regional trade with arch-rival India’s $72 billion and added he believed Khan’s administration would drive commerce with Asia as relations with the West sour.The army’s worries have increased after U.S. President Donald Trump cut military aid to Pakistan earlier this year. Trump raged that Pakistan was continuing to support terrorist groups.
“Trump is no fan of Pakistan,” Charles Robertson, chief economist at Renaissance Capital in London, said in a report on Tuesday. “We heard in the summer that the IMF had already warned in 2016 that -- after being fairly generous to Pakistan during the last program –- if it was invited back, it would have to go hardcore with Pakistan.”
Pakistan’s fortunes can’t be rescued by celebrity PM and recycled foreign minister
HUSAIN HAQQANI
India and US’ concerns over Pakistan are old but now China and Saudi Arabia too are indicating wariness over unfulfilled promises.
Few friends or presumed enemies seem willing to trust Pakistan’s promises even under a new leader. Reluctance of ‘friends’ Saudi Arabia and China to pump in billions of dollars in a faltering economy forced Prime Minister Imran Khan to turn to the IMF for a bailout. Ironically, he had said at one time that he would “rather commit suicide than go round the world begging for money”.
The offer of a ‘reset’ in relations by the United States is also not panning out. The US wants Pakistan to help with the peace process in Afghanistan and remains concerned about terrorism. Washington refuses to restore suspended economic and security assistance until it sees signs of change in Pakistan’s conduct.
India, often painted as Pakistan’s ‘eternal enemy’, has refused to hold high-level talks unless Pakistan stops supporting Kashmiri militants and other terrorists. Pakistan, it seems, has a credibility problem with most countries that matter in its foreign policy. American and Indian concerns about Pakistan are quite old but now even China and Saudi Arabia are indicating wariness over unfulfilled promises.
China is concerned that Pakistan is trying to revise the terms of the approximately $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). From the Chinese perspective, a nation must honour its contracts and the Pakistani penchant for revisiting international business deals with every change of government in Islamabad is unacceptable.
Saudi Arabia is also unwilling to continue giving cash first and making requests later – something it has done as a friend of Pakistan in the past. Its current leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al-Saud, wants Pakistan to shed ambiguity and stand by the Kingdom against Iran, in addition to providing troops or other material support for the Saudi war effort in Yemen.
The Saudis say they are willing to invest in Pakistan but, like the Chinese, would want security and a good return for their investments. Pakistan has a poor track record in cancelling projects and using engineered judicial verdicts and criminal cases to deprive foreign investors of promised returns.
Independent Power Producers (IPPs) learnt the lesson on Pakistan’s unreliable investment environment in the 1990s. Over the years, several foreign investors have won hefty international arbitration awards against Pakistan because of allegedly unfair cancellation of contracts.
Tethyan Copper Company Pvt Ltd, a joint venture between Chilean mining giant Antofagasta and Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation, is claiming more than $11 billion in compensation in the Reko Diq project after proving to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) that Pakistan’s decision to cancel its mining contract in Balochistan was unlawful and unfair.
To be fair to Khan, many of these problems are the result of policies that have persisted for decades. But Khan still supports the hyper-nationalist Pakistani narrative that has given rise to Pakistan’s lack of international credibility. It persists with myths about Pakistan’s external friendships and animosities that are at the heart of the country’s global isolation.
The entrenched establishment that brought Khan to office had hoped that a new government, led by a fresh face, would be enough to convince the world that a new Pakistan had been born. In this view, renewed national pride and a celebrity prime minister was all that was needed to make other countries see Pakistan differently than they had in the past.
But a new prime minister and a recycled foreign minister do not change harsh realities. Pakistan does not honour United Nations’ terrorist designations nor does it abide by commercial contracts and agreements considered sacrosanct by the rest of the world. Such attitudes have consequences. Appointment of a new top management cannot help sell the old, bad product.
India was the first to burst Khan’s bubble. Khan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sought talks between Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. India initially agreed, leading to premature euphoria in Islamabad.
For years, Pakistan’s leaders have defined the ability to keep India engaged diplomatically as an accomplishment in itself, even when no substantive progress is made in India-Pakistan talks.
As nuclear-armed neighbours, it makes sense for both sides to continue talking. But after terrorist attacks in India following Modi’s trip to Lahore in 2015, Indians had decided to stop talking.
There has been much speculation over why the Modi government initially agreed to the foreign ministers meeting in New York and subsequently changed its mind. The language of the statement by the Indian ministry of external affairs announcing the cancellation was definitely undiplomatic and provocative. But the argument that Pakistan must act against anti-India terrorists operating from its soil before there can be meaningful talks was certainly not new.
As if to prove India’s point that the Pakistani side only wanted talks to score a point, not to solve any outstanding problems, Khan’s response to the cancellation of talks was worse. He tweeted about Modi being among “small men occupying big offices who do not have the vision to see the larger picture”.
Those familiar with Pakistani hawks’ characterisation of Indian leaders in the past could see the pattern in Khan’s egomaniacal bravado. Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s propagandists had described Lal Bahadur Shastri as “a little man” during the 1965 war and General Yahya Khan had been dismissive about Indira Gandhi being “that woman”.
Of course, the outcome of the anti-India bombast in 1965 and 1971 was not favourable for Pakistan and, notwithstanding the Modi government’s purported mishandling of ties with Pakistan, nor will the current swagger. But in the Pakistani establishment’s worldview – which is shared by Khan and his hyper-nationalist supporters – that is beside the point.
While India’s refusal to talk could be chalked up to the historic India-Pakistan dynamic, the lukewarm response of China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States to Khan’s diplomatic initiatives represents greater challenges. It seems that major partners around the world want Pakistan to change its policies, not just its prime ministers and that change in policy does not seem to be on the cards.
If anything, the Khan government, backed by the establishment, has doubled down on the failed policies of the past. Foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, insisted recently that there can be no peace in Afghanistan without Pakistan, implying that Pakistan must be given a veto on the future of Afghanistan. This defies the notion of a peace process that is owned and led by Afghanistan’s government.
Similarly, Pakistan’s UN ambassador recently called on the international community to differentiate between ‘terrorists’ and ‘freedom fighters’ – an argument that was effectively buried by UN Security Council Resolution 1566 of 2004. That resolution defined terrorist acts and declared that they are “under no circumstances justifiable by considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature”.
Instead of insisting on an ideologically driven, unrealistic agenda for engagement with the rest of the world, Pakistan needs to see itself from others’ eyes and embrace some humility. Whether it’s the issue of terrorism or the question of abiding by international contracts, Pakistan must change its policy direction.
Until that happens, Pakistanis can express to each other as much optimism as they like about their future, based on the ‘dynamism’ and ‘incorruptibility’ of their new leadership. The rest of the world will not be swayed by such rhetoric.
https://theprint.in/opinion/pakistans-fortunes-cant-be-rescued-by-celebrity-pm-and-recycled-foreign-minister/132639/
Imran Khan can sell buffaloes and choppers, but Pakistan’s economy is still crashing
By Gul Bukhari
Before coming to power, Imran Khan said Pakistan market will be flooded with money. It crashed this week.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan continues to talk down the country and its economy. He was finally successful in causing the market to crash on 8 October, after a series of faux pas, U-turns and zero-policy statements. He continues to assure the world that Pakistan is bankrupt because of the previous government. To show for Khan’s performance, his government sells eight buffalos in the PM House, which had been gifted to former PM Nawaz Sharif, in a highly publicized auction. They also tried to sell four old helicopters and auctions old cars.
Economists have been saying that given the current condition, Pakistan will have to seek an IMF bailout soon. But Imran Khan and the PTI’s repetitive accusations of beggary on Nawaz Sharif perhaps prevented him from taking a timely decision on this and introduced further uncertainty into the market. Khan had also been asserting that once he is in power the international community and offshore Pakistanis would flood the country with money because of their confidence in an ‘honest’ leader.
The Imran Khan government even announced that Saudi Arabia would be giving – no, this is not made up – $10 billion to Pakistan and followed this up with a trip to Saudi Arabia. He came back and announced that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been invited to be a strategic partner in CPEC.
This was refuted by the Chinese authorities. As per the agreements between China and Pakistan, only with mutual agreement can a third party become a part of CPEC. Before this, government advisor Razzak Dawood had given a shocking statement to the Financial Times saying that the government will suspend all CPEC projects for a year and review them thoroughly. Pakistan refuted this. Observers believe army chief General Bajwa’s trip to China after Dawood’s statement was essentially a damage control exercise.
The government then took a U-turn and announced that Saudi Arabia will not be a partner in CPEC. Finance minister Asad Umar stated that Pakistan will be looking to ‘friends’ (read China, Saudi Arabia etc) instead of the IMF. However, nothing was forthcoming from China either. Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had reacted angrily to the second suspension of Coalition Support Funds by the US and made defiant statements at the time.
However, during his UN General Assembly trip he ended up pleading the US for money for the armed forces. Clearly, he was snubbed. He was even willing to consider offering jailed Shakil Afridi, of the Osama Bin Laden operation fame, in return for some money. But the US is not budging – various statements show that the US will not settle for anything less than safe havens of terror groups being destroyed and their financing being squeezed. Nor is the US will to work on promises. It wants evidence.
As all of this unfolded, investors became jittery seeing no viable plan on the horizon. Then, former chief minister Shahbaz Sharif was suddenly arrested in a stunning move. The arrest came after the stock market had closed for the day. Perhaps the government was hoping the weekend would serve as a shock absorber for this horrifying move. The arrest is shocking because the case on Sharif is probably fictional: A housing scheme that never happened and for which no monies were exchanged.
The outrage then spurred Khan to make an address in which he said himself that one of the reasons he is addressing the nation is because he wants to dispel the images of Shahbaz Sharif becoming a Nelson Mandela because of his arrest. He further presented the completely unqualified chief minister, Usman Buzdar, he has appointed in Punjab as the ‘tabdeeli’ (change). And then proceeded to introduce a toilet cleaning scheme. The nation was in shock. Here they wanted clarity on policy, and the man was talking corruption, bankruptcy, toilets and Buzdar tabdeeli. The result, obviously, was the crash in the Karachi stock exchange which fell by over 1,300 points in a single day causing wealth destruction of over Rs 110 billion in a single day.
This was accompanied by a 7 percent devaluation of the rupee and the decision to approach the IMF was announced. Earlier, huge price increases in gas, electricity, petrol, and urea were announced. Consumers, investors, traders continue to reel in horror at the steep economic decline within a mere 50 days or so.
As I write, the stock market continues to fall. Sentiments in Pakistan remain negative because the PM continues to sell incredibly stupid and half-baked schemes to the public. He recently launched his housing scheme to build – this is not made up either – 5 million homes that would cost $180 billion. To put the scale in perspective, there are a total of 4.9 million pucca houses in all of Pakistan’s urban areas; 5 million houses in five years means constructing more than 2,700 houses per day; $180 billion can construct almost 13 Diamer Bhasha dams for which he has joined the chief justice in his appeal for charity funds. They have thus far collected about $3.7 million only for the dam – that too mostly via forced ‘charity’ by cutting salaries of employees without their consent.
It is now abundantly clear that the vortex Pakistan’s economy is in right now will not disappear till a regime change.
https://theprint.in/opinion/imran-khan-can-sell-buffaloes-and-choppers-but-pakistans-economy-is-still-crashing/133225/
TSUNAMI OF INFLATION HAS ARRIVED IN PAKISTAN: BILAWAL BHUTTO
He was talking to media in Karachi.
“Tsunami of inflation has arrived in Pakistan due to policies of the incumbent government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). This isn’t the way to run a country”, Bilawal was quoted as saying. On a question about Shehbaz Sharif, Bilawal made it overtly clear that PPP does not have sympathies for president of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) as he had used foul language against PPP.
However, he stressed on serving justice to the arrested leader.
https://www.suchtv.pk/pakistan/general/item/76029-tsunami-of-inflation-has-arrived-in-pakistan-bilawal-bhutto.html
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Video Report - : Economic situation of country is creating severe problems for common man: Bilawal Bhutto
The economic situation of the country is creating severe problems for the common man. I had already predicted that Government will approach IMF for the bailout package in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Increase in Gas prices by up to 143% will affect everyone. Current Federal Ministers always gave irresponsible statements.
Those irresponsible statements have an impact on our Foreign Policy and well as the economy, says Bilawal Bhutto while addressing media in Karachi.
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