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Posts Tagged Imran Khan

THE NATION: Imran and Nawaz under life threat

Nawaz, Imran under life threat
 
April 07, 2013 
Nawaz, Imran under life threat
 

ISLAMABAD – Top political leaders of the country are under serious life threat, Caretaker Interior Minister Malik Habib disclosed on Saturday after a meeting with Director General Military Operations (DGMO).

 
 

PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, PTI Chairman Imran Khan and some other top leaders are under serious threat and special security plan has been chalked out in this regard, the minister told the media, without specifying the source of the threat.
“If something happens to them, it can affect the whole electoral process,” he said, adding that the interim government would take all possible measures and provide security cover to all high profile political leaders irrespective of their political association.
The minister said, in the meeting with DGMO, he stressed the need for intelligence sharing at grassroots level to avoid any unhappy incident. He said it was decided that the army would be ready as a quick response force in sensitive areas of the country during the elections. The DG Military Operations also gave assurance of full support to the civil administration in this regard, he added.
Malik Habib said that the government could deploy the army at the polling stations on the demand of ECP, but their deployment at every polling station was a non-professional approach. “If any incident happened on polling stations it would create a negative image of the army,” he said.
However, he said the army could be deployed at Hazara Town in Quetta and sensitive areas of Karachi. Habib said he would visit all the provinces to finalise the contingency plan and in this regard he would visit Balochistan next week. To a question, the minister said that the list of sensitive polling stations had still not been received from the Election Commission.
“It is priority of interim government to hold free, fair and timely elections,” he said, adding that “display of weapons will not be allowed during general elections except in specific areas of KPK where people faced security threats,” but in those areas too, no one would be allowed to carry arms at the polling stations.
To a question, the minister said that the demand of politicians to delay elections was their personal opinion. About delay in the issuance of passports, he said the ministry would assign an honest officer to investigate this matter. The meeting was also attended by the chief secretaries and inspector generals of police from all provinces and representatives of ECP and law and enforcement agencies.

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What Imran Khan and the March 23 rally will bring us

What Imran Khan and the March 23 rally will bring us

 

 

 

March 22, 2013

I’m predicting the rally tomorrow to be one of the largest, if not the largest ever rally in the history of the country! PHOTO: REUTERS

The importance of the coming elections cannot be overstated. Pakistan today stands on the point of implosion and the kind of leadership that is elected to take the country forward could make or break it.

My loyalties in this matter lie with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and I’m writing this to present my reasons for handing the party my vote and what I think you should expect tomorrow at Minar-e-Pakistan.

Internal democracy.

When a party is democratic then it is full of elected position holders. This means the leadership has integrity and mandate. More importantly it means they have more pressure to deliver because they would, in the future, have to fight for their position again. An elected leader has the power of command and respect which a nominated leader does not.

The leadership has declared their assets and uploaded the information to the party’s website.

Pakistan’s administration is full of corrupt, tax evaders. This gesture therefore is unique and very praiseworthy. Pakistanis are amongst the highest payers of charity and the country has one of the lowest tax to GDP ratios. This dissonance can only mean that people are not inspired to pay taxes because of a lack of trust. I don’t really blame the people either.

Who would pay their taxes when 70% of our parliamentarians do not themselves pay, and when no sign of efficient and productive use of tax payer’s money has been shown?

Detailed policy papers prior to election.

This again is, and was unprecedented in Pakistan. Calling an education emergency and trebling the budget for education were refreshing announcements. It was also heart-warming to hear policies on neglected issues such as the environment and disabled people.

Commitment to harmony and equality.

When the Ahmadi place of worship was attacked three years ago, Imran Khan visited the injured in the hospital and vowed to stand by the Ahmadis, protect them and end the power of the state to decide if certain sects could be counted as Muslim or not.

When the genocide against the Shia community began, the PTI leadership visited scholars and leaders of the Shia community to show solidarity. Imran Khan has also travelled to Quetta twice; once for a rally and more recently a month ago to openly condemn Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and show solidarity with the Hazara community.

A few days ago Khan visited Joseph Colony in Badami Bagh where hundreds of homes of Christians had been burnt by an angry mob. The PTI is the only party to stand by the defenceless minorities in Pakistan. Be their philosophy religious or ethnic.

Impressive personalities that are a part of the team.

Asad Umar resigned as chairman of Engro in April 2012 to join the PTI. Umar worked for Engro for 30 years and transformed the firm from a mere chemical company to a giant conglomerate. He left his position at Engro where he was the highest paid CEO in the country at a salary of almost Rs6 million a month – to work for the betterment of Pakistan with the PTI. In 2010 he received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz for his business achievements.

Another example is the appointment in May 2012 of Azeem Ibrahimas the strategic policy advisor. Ibrahim holds a PhD from Cambridge and has served as a scholar at Harvard and Yale. He was named as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009 by the LSDP European Social Think Tank and has advised over half a dozen world leaders.

The counter-terrorism policy.

The PTI is the only party to comprehensively address the situation of terrorism in Pakistan and provide a solution. Eight years of military action have only succeeded in creating more militants because the root causes of the issue have never been looked at.

Disengaging from the US war on terror, hence ending the Jihad narrative used by the terrorists to recruit displaced and homeless tribal locals looking for revenge, will help isolate retaliating Pashtuns from hard core terrorists who would be eliminated by force. The PTI addresses the issue, identifies the complexities and elements involved and presents a solution. Its competition in this matter is non-existent.

Imran Khan and what’s to come tomorrow.

The best part of Khan’s life has been nothing short of selfless service to Pakistan. He chose this life of struggle over a life of luxury. His philanthropic works in addition to his sporting achievements makes very few Pakistani’s doubt his intentions, integrity and ability. In comparison we have criminals, corrupt officials and fundamentalists.

With the Tehreek-e-Insaf’s intra party elections taken care of and the organisation complete, it is time for a show of power.

PTI rally at Minar-e-Pakistan on March 23

I’m predicting the rally tomorrow to be one of the largest, if not the largest ever rally in the history of the country!

There will be people from every walk of life, every segment of society, every religion and every ethnicity Pakistan has to offer. The rally is going to be one of the rare moments that a true representation of Pakistan’s society will stand in unity and with purpose. Tomorrow is going to be the beginning of a short movement that will be remembered for ages as the tipping point of Pakistan’s politics. Tomorrow is going to be a day of pride, patriotism, optimism and most importantly hope. Tomorrow will give every Pakistani hope and maybe if nothing, that’s what the Tehreek-e-Insaf can offer you. The hope that it’s not too late, that you have the power to change everything and that Pakistan not only has a future, but a bright one.

The fourth week of March is a historic and spiritual time. The Persian New Year and the spring equinox both fall in this period. This is known as a time of new beginnings, where the cold dark sadness of winter ends and is replaced by the emergence of blossoming flowers and the sunlight of spring.

God-willing March 23, will be the beginning of the road towards a new Pakistan.

A Pakistan where we all feel safe, a Pakistan where we all feel proud and a Pakistan in which there will always be ‘insaf’. Let’s be optimistic and let’s have hope.

Let’s take Pakistan and go, as Shakespeare said,

“To unpathed waters, undreamed shores”.

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NOTES FROM A SOCIAL SCIENTIST: The March 23rd Outswinger!

NOTES FROM A SOCIAL SCIENTIST
The March 23rd Outswinger!
By Dr. Haider Mehdi
The Nation, 3-6-13
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NOTE: Several readers who reviewed my last week’s article (“Fraudulent Intentions – Deceptive Motives,” The Nation, Feb. 28th) have asked a question: How are we going to get rid of “Muk-Muka” democracy in Pakistan?  Today’s article is my response to this important query.
 
If you have played cricket yourself, or if you are a passionate fan of the game, then you will know that a fastbowler’s outswinger is his most deadly weapon against any top-class batsman. Decades ago when the Australian cricket team came on its first tour of Pakistan, I remember Fazal Mahmood clean-bowled Neil Harvey with his famous outswinger (an inswinger to left-handed Harvey).  The bails literally flew to the boundary.  Pankaj Roy, Indian former opener, repeatedly lost his wicket to Mahmoud Hussain’s (my older brother) outswingers.
 
Indeed, outswingers are deadly ammunition in the bowling arsenal of a pacebowler, specifically when the wind is blowing from behind the bowler’s end.  Imran Khan swung the ball both ways (outswings and inswings) with tremendous speed, razorblade sharpness and pinpoint accuracy.  He surprised his opponents with the sudden quickness of the ball and controlled directions during his bowling spells.  That was Khan’s masterpiece on the cricket ground.  And that is what he is going to do on the political field – clean-bowl his political opponents out of the game with his splendid outswing. 
 
PTI’s March 23rd “jalsah” at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore is going to be Imran Khan’s political outswinger to knock his opponents out of Pakistan’s fast-changing political game.  It will be a day when Khan’s long-held claim of shattering all three wickets in one ball will come true. It will be a day of PTI’s tsunami hitting hard on Pakistan’s political soil.  It will be a day of reckoning – the day that a fundamental change, both in Pakistan’s political field and in the ways the political game has been played so far in this country, has inevitably come.  It will be a day of victory for the politics of change in the country. 
 
Indeed, the day’s triumph will belong to Imran Khan’s PTI’s movement for change.  Hundreds and thousands of PTI political activists, supporters, workers, and common citizens from all over Pakistan will most certainly descend on Lahore to participate in this historical moment.  80,000 of PTI’s elected representatives will take oath to their party’s ideological manifesto.  PTI’s political manifesto will be presented to the general public, media and international news agencies.  Speeches will be made. Political goals will be set and the objectives of a movement of change will be reiterated.  It will be a massive demonstration of the public’s democratic sentiments and aspirations.  It will be an occasion of fun and delight with subtle sound and serious declarations of an agenda of political change in this nation of deprived people, unstable institutions, collapsed economy, non-existent law and order, which is facing existential threats and at the edge of a political abyss – all  caused by 5 years of “Muk-Muka” democracy.
 
But the massive gathering of people is not a political doctrine or a desired political goal in itself.  It is the significance of such public participation that matters.  If hundreds and thousands of Pakistanis from one end of the country to the other, come to the March 23rd “jalsah” at Minar-e-Pakistan, and they certainly will gather in immense numbers unprecedented in Pakistan’s political history, it certainly will be a demonstration of public indictment against the traditional ruling elites, politics of status-quo and the political system they have vowed to protect, sustain and promote.  Already, several public opinion polls have vividly indicated that over 80% of Pakistanis desire a fundamental change in political structure, political culture and the political leadership of this country. 
 
Ironically, at this crucial and critical juncture of Pakistan’s political history, the traditional political forces and their leadership are still committed to the reactionary “farsooda,” non-progressive, non-democratic ways of yesteryear. Take, for example, the PML-N’s present strategic approach to the forthcoming elections: traditional electables are being inducted into the party with enormous efforts all over Pakistan.  Party alliances with all major status-quo forces are being organized.  Hence, it is vividly apparent that the PML-N leadership still believes that increased public consciousness is of no real political significance; they believe that the masses’ heightened political awareness cannot adversely affect the traditional political system and its highly empowered political organization devoted to vested interests political leadership and their associates.  PML-N and PPP leadership seem to becertain  that no real change has occurred or can occur in political outlook in the foreseeable future of this country.  Political business will continue as usual – they are confident of their victory and electoral success to political power. 
 
Imran Khan’s PTI has prepared their political pitch to play the game with meticulous understanding of the undercurrents affecting the country’s political landscape.  PTI’s leadership fully appreciates public sentiment for change.  In fact, Imran Khan’s anti- status-quo doctrine has helped people in perceptual awareness of political backwardness that has plagued the country for the last 65 years and most specifically the damage the present-day “Muk-Muka” democracy has wreaked on the nation. 
 
Imran’s political direction, political organization and ideological doctrine is accurately in sync with public sentiment and democratic norms, and is in step with the political undercurrents going through the entire society and its demands for a fundamental change in the present-day political system and culture of this country.  PTI’s political strategy for the forthcoming elections is sound and methodically planned.  Imran has done his homework – he understands his opponent’s weaknesses, drawbacks and fears.  He knows it is time to deliver a lethal outswinger. It is time to win a well-deserved victory. 
 
March 23rd is going to be the day when Imran Khan will strike his opponents on the political field at Minar-e-Pakistan with a deadly outswinger – shattering all three wickets with one ball!
 
It is quite simple: outdated, out-of-form, out-of-sync and strategically weak and fearful players are no match to the hellfire of a deadly outswinger.  One way or the other, the March 23rd public  gathering at Minar-e-Pakistan is going to be the end of the game for the PPP, PML-N, and all of the status-quo forces in Pakistan.  

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Rafia Zakaria, The Hindu-India : The cleric and the cricketer

The cleric and the cricketer Rafia Zakaria

 
Published: January 16, 2013
 
AP APPEARANCES: Tahir-ul-Qadri seems to have evaded all usual categories that have exhausted and enraged Pakistanis. Supporters of Tahir-ul-Qadri at a meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday. 
 
AP Imran Khan at a rally in Mianwali, north Pakistan. File Photo 
 
Tahir-ul-Qadri could well be called Imran Khan with better timing, a beard and a more religiously appealing resume 
 
Whether or not the neatly bearded cleric commanding the crowds in Islamabad will succeed in toppling the flailing Zardari government may not be known, but he has undoubtedly been blessed by the benevolence of good timing. The week before Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri began to gather his supporters for the march on Islamabad was bloody even by Pakistan’s recent death smeared standards. On January 10, 2013, the Wednesday before the march, two bomb blasts ripped through the embattled city of Quetta killing over a hundred of the city’s beleaguered Shia Hazara minority. North of Islamabad, in the town of Swabi, another bomb blew up a seminary killing another 20. In the south in Karachi, in the shadow of a 2012 that saw over 2,000 killed in targeted attacks of varied origin, a single hour of the same day saw 11 shot dead outside a homeopathic hospital. Two days in Pakistan and over 200 killed. And those were the extraordinary troubles, the ravages that came atop the fuel strikes in Karachi that routinely paralyse millions of commuters, the natural gas shortages in Punjab that prevent hordes from cooking their evening meals, the measles epidemic sucking life out of hundreds of children in Sindh and scores of health workers felled by the Taliban. 
Scepticism to blame 
 
Against this grim backdrop of failure; arrived an Allama from Canada, the leader of a group named Minhaj ul Quran; known not for its politics but long advocated “moral and spiritual reform.” It is not that Pakistan has not ridden the heady waves of fiery reformers before. Most would remember the rousing rallies in which Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf leader cricketer Imran Khan drew thousands and, by some ebullient estimates, even hundreds of thousands to his ranks. His too was a promising cross-sectional mix; fervent Pakistani youth, bearded and clean shaven, headscarved and not, rich and not so rich all united under the umbrella of change. The dimensions for the cricketer of yore were similar to the cleric of now; a new figure willing to take on the feudals who have clutched onto power for too long; able to whet with sportycharm the nationalist passions of a politician wary Pakistani public. Imran Khan spoke of accountability and avarice and grabbing the collars of all the fattened bureaucrats and lethargic leaders; the men who didn’t pay taxes and turned their backs on the poor and cared little for the tears of the unconnected and the ordinary.
But if the ache for change was on the side of the charismatic cricketer; timing may not have been, and the space between the engagement and the wedding proved too long, as the months to the promised elections of 2013 crept by ever so slowly, the slow poison of scepticism began to settle into the cracks in the promised upheaval and wedge themselves into crevices. Was he accepting too many feudals into his ranks, wasn’t his house just as big as those of other leaders, and wasn’t his ex-wife British? None of it was damning, but together it dampened the flames of a fire-driven machinery just enough. 
 
Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri then could well be called Imran Khan with better timing, a beard and a more religiously appealing resume. To the Pakistani public, all of it makes him absolutely irresistible, a harbinger of change at a time when any change at all seems better than the crushing punishing status quo. Like the protesters in other parts of the Muslim world; Tahir-ul-Qadri’s supporters seem to have no decided agenda; asking at once for the dismissal of a duly elected government and a return to constitutionalism and the rule of law. The microphones at the Qadri march blared at one moment thumping patriotic music and at another the calls to prayer. The mix would be confusing if it wasn’t so particularly Pakistani — with his amalgamation of faith and moderation, his repeated avowal of spiritual and moral reform and his insistence on peaceful protest; Tahir-ul-Qadri seems to have evaded all the usual categories that have exhausted and enraged Pakistanis. He is neither the violent Islamist nor the fattened feudal, not the ethnic commander nor the tattling technocrat and in being nothing, he seems to have come dangerously close to becoming the something many Pakistanis would like to follow. 
 
The danger of course lies in the very ambiguity Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri has been able to harness. Most troubling among these is the fact that unlike Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, he has decided to operate outside the party system, never attempting to create a political party but harnessing the reformist power of a faith-based reform movement to gather thousands in the streets. To the most pessimistic, watching a bearded man, who speaks of constitutionalism but not of contesting democratic elections; of getting rid of a government without enumerating the basis of selection of the next, who gives few details of what would happen after the corrupt and inept leaders of now are finally dragged out of office, seems a dangerous mix away from Pakistan’s always delicate democracy. If they are correct, the appearance of Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri may seem the first visible symptom of a long secret ailment ravaging Pakistan; the Pakistani public’s decades long move away from feudal and technocrat dominated politics and decrepit institutions to the faith-based reform movements that have no faith in the party system. Or it could be the usual Pakistani disease; a new front for a military always waiting in the shadows, always impatient with political transitions and able perhaps to create just the right man to fit just the morose mood. To the supporters of Tahir-ul-Qadri huddled in borrowed blankets and threadbare sweaters, in the settling fog of a cold Islamabad night, the details of such dynamics may not matter at all, their chilled and weary focus remaining instead simply on change, in any form and at any cost and under the leadership of any man. 
 
(Rafia Zakaria is a PhD candidate in Political Theory/Comparative Politics at Indiana University, Bloomington. E-mail: [email protected])
 
 
 

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