The Project IJI – Second Edition
Note: This post was bitterly criticized by Hamid Mir and Ansar Abbasi in an episode of Capital Talk in November 2009.
Title:
The Project IJI (Islami Jamhoori Ittehad – Second Edition)
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ISLAMABAD: Some Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) MNAs on Tuesday severely criticised opposition parties for blocking the NRO in parliament and the role played by a section of the media in the affair. While the government decided to withdraw the ordinance, the controversial document appears to continue to haunt those in power. National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza clarified a news item, saying her husband and she never benefited from the NRO, while the PPP’s Nawab Yousaf Talpur also had to give a similar clarification. PPP member Akunzada Chattan said the move to block the NRO in parliament was worse than former president Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule, as “political forces, the civil society and a section of the media acted against the PPP at the behest of the GHQ”. The PPP’s Chaudhry Nadeem Afzal Chan said politicians were being defamed under a conspiracy. He also criticised some private TV anchorpersons and journalists who had become “propaganda tools”. irfan ghauri (Daily Times)
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Kerry-Lugar law critics are Taliban backers: Holbrooke
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: US special envoy Richard Holbrooke has said those criticising the Kerry-Lugar law are either opposed to the current Pakistani government or are supporting the Taliban, reported a private TV channel on Tuesday.
Holbrooke told the channel that Pakistan’s current political situation would not become similar to the crisis on March 16 – when top US officials had to make phone calls to the Pakistani leadership to sort out issues related to the restoration of the judiciary. He said the US only supported the leadership of constitutionally elected governments. Holbrooke said although the NRO did not come under much discussion during Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to Pakistan, US officials were fully aware of the situation.
About Pakistan’s claim that India is supporting militancy in the Tribal Areas and an insurgency in Balochistan, the envoy said the US fully understood these concerns.
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Related Articles: History of LUBP
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زرداری نے صدر ہاوس كو جیالا ہاوس بنادیا ہے, جو افس وفاق كی علامت ہے, اس میں بیٹھ كر جیو ٹی وی اور ان كے اینكرز پرسن كے خلاف تقریر كر رہے ہیں, جس كے حق میں پورا پاكستان ہو اس كو ڈاكٹر شاہد اور شاہین صبائی سے كیا خوف ہونا چاہے, نہیں نہیں نہیں!!!!! دراصل زرداری كو پتہ چل گیا ہے اب عدلیہ اس كو نہیں چھوڑے گی اور میڈیا بھی اپنا پورا زور لگاے گا, جناب كمانڈو صاحب نے بھی جانے سے قبل اسلام باد میں ایك بڑا جلسہ كیا تھا, اور سب كو باور كرایا تھا ,كہ اس كا كلہ مضبوت ہے, مگر جاتے ہوے پتہ بھی نہیں چلا اور اج كل دنیاں كا بہت بڑا دانشور بنا ہوا ہے, لیكچر دیتا ہے , امریكا اور یورپ میں اب زرداری بھی اس طرف ہی جا رہا ہے
After a high level meeting of the ruling alliance at the Presidency on Monday, the PPP government has decided not to bring the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) to parliament for a vote. This is clearly a reversal but one which could have been avoided had the ruling party consulted its allies beforehand. It is quite apparent that the NRO as a bill was brought to the relevant committee of the National Assembly without making sure that all the numbers needed were in hand.
The withdrawal will not put an end to the “dangers” that the NRO represented to the map of power brought about by the 2008 general elections. After the debacle caused by an aggressive withdrawal of the MQM from the pro-NRO consensus, the next crisis in the offing is the march of the opposition to a no-confidence vote. The PML-N, whose chief is determined to start a Long March on the ordinance, is no longer averse to the thought of a mid-term change, whether through a new general election or through the ‘minus-one’ formula under a ‘national government’, possibly with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in the driving seat.
Monday night, the MQM seemed overly righteous about the NRO, which betrayed some other long-brewing disagreement between the PPP and Mr Altaf Hussain. The disagreement was definitely not on the NRO. Had that been the case, the MQM would have taken a position on it long ago. It says the MQM members supposed to be let off the hook by the NRO were never really affected by it. It insists that all the cases were criminal and were reviewed by the courts and struck from the record. Mr Altaf Hussain, who spoke in some detail to the TV channels, kept emphasising that his party was not targeted for corruption, hinting that the PPP government was in the dock for corruption, not only under the NRO, but also because of its current performance.
The depth of the MQM alienation from the PPP could be grasped from the way the MQM chief kept using the “sacrifice” innuendo for President Asif Zardari, which the media took to mean that he was actually asking the PPP chief to resign as president. This can only mean that the two allied parties had engaged in some kind of polemic over the sharing of power — most probably in Sindh — and had failed to resolve it despite the several meetings the MQM top leaders had with President Zardari over matters in Karachi. Mr Hussain was angry but was at pains to hide his anger behind the justifications he offered for not supporting the government on the NRO.
Had someone in the PPP looked deeper into the NRO imbroglio he would have examined the options of a power-denied MQM. It was a question of whether the PPP should give the MQM what it wants in Karachi or face the NRO alone. It is obvious that the PPP took it for granted that the MQM will not be able to go against the NRO because of the extent to which it had benefited from it. It forgot that the MQM was disciplined enough to take the fallout from going against the NRO to pressure the government in Islamabad. It is because of the cadre discipline of the MQM that it has been able to take the bitter pill of opposing the NRO in order to challenge the PPP’s decisions in regard to the governance of Karachi. The intensity of the PPP-MQM clash is reflected in the latter’s decision to vote against the passage of the NRO.
Pakistan will be further destabilised from now on. The PML-N will muster the forces intent on overthrowing the government and will move to ask the government to take a confidence vote. Its pious assertions to the contrary, it will push the country towards another general election while the Taliban have passed to the phase of targeting innocent citizens wherever they find them in large gatherings. Taking the PPP government as ‘pro-America’, they will most likely spare the Long March agitation of the grand opposition, if it comes. Faced with this, the remaining allies will rethink their political strategy and make the paucity of numbers in parliament more glaring for the PPP. Meanwhile there is always the “peaceful” alternative of going to the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike the NRO down as being violative of the spirit of the constitution. * (Daily Times)