Comment by Riaz Haq on May 27, 2013 at 4:30pm

Excerpt of a blog post in New York Times on Burgers (PTI supporters) vs Bun Kababs (MQM supporters) in recent elections in Karachi, Pakistan:

In the run-up to the second vote, the media predicted a showdown between the city’s burgers and bun kebabs. Gastronomic comments ranged from the frivolous to the frightening. Ayesha Tammy Haq, a broadcast journalist, tweeted, “All this burger-bun kebab talk is nonsense. After this election I am foie gras to your chopped liver.” A senior M.Q.M., meanwhile, warned that outright violence between burger and bun kebab could erupt, dividing the city. Such language highlights the continuing relevance of class divisions even after a campaign that focused on gender, youth and ethno-linguistic identity to mobilize voters. It is no laughing matter. On the eve of the second vote on Sunday, Zahra Shahid Hussain, a senior P.T.I. leader, was shot and killed outside her house in Karachi. Although the media reported that her death occurred during a burglary, Khan has said that the leader of M.Q.M., Altaf Hussain, is responsible. The burger vs. bun kebab divide has turned deadly.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/in-pakistan-even-jibes...

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 28, 2013 at 10:30am

Here's a Xinhua report on transfer of power in Pakistan:

Pakistan's interim government will transfer power to the new government on June 5, a cabinet minister said Monday.

Information Minister Arif Nizami said that the interim government will relinquish responsibilities on the same day.

Talking to newsmen in Islamabad, Nizami said the members-elect of the National Assembly will take oath on June 1.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso has sent an advice to the president to summon the Assembly on Saturday, the prime minister office said.

The elections for the Speaker of National Assembly and Deputy Speaker will be held on June 3 through secret ballot. Nizami said outgoing Speaker Dr. Fehmida Mirza will chair these sessions till the oath of the new Speaker of the House.

He said the new Speaker may reschedule the further program but most probably the elections for the Leader of the House will be held on June 4.

It is for the first time that a caretaker set-up conducted free, fair and transparent elections, he said.

According to the constitution, the caretaker government is bound to summon the house up to June 2 in which newly elected members will take oath.

The house after completing this process will elect new prime minister.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) which won a landslide victory in the May 11 elections has nominated Nawaz Sharif as candidate for the leader of the house while Pakistan Tehrik-e- Insaf or PTI has nominated Javed Hashmi for the slot.

Pakistan Peoples Party has decided to sit on opposition benches. It has not yet decided to take part in the race for the leader of the house.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/28/c_132412236.htm

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 28, 2013 at 10:59am

The key to solving the electricity load shedding problem is to renegotiate the old IPP contracts with new terms that reward lower fuel costs and higher efficiency. In addition to that, Pakistan's incoming government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's has to explore multiple fuel options to meet the nation's growing energy needs. Some of the fuel options are as follows:

1. Developing its shale gas reserves estimated 51 trillion cubic feet near Karachi in southern Sindh province. The US experience has shown that investment in shale gas can increase production quite rapidly and prices brought down from about $12 per mmBTU in 2008 to under $2 per mmBTU recently. Pursuing this option requires US technical expertise and significant foreign investment on an accelerated schedule.

2. Increasing production of gas from nearly 30 trillion cubic feet of remaining conventional gas reserves. This, too, requires significant investment on an accelerated schedule.

3. Converting some of the idle power generation capacity from oil and gas to imported coal to make electricity more available and affordable.

4. Utilizing Pakistan's vast coal reserves in Sindh's Thar desert.

5. Hydroelectric and other renewables including wind and solar. Several of these projects are funded and underway but it'll take a while to bring them online to make a difference.

In my view, the newly-elected government should pursue all of the above options with options 1, 2 and 3 as a priority for now. Its best interests will be served by developing its own cheap domestic shale gas on an accelerated schedule with Saudi investment and US tech know-how.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2013/05/pakistanis-suffer-load-shedding-as.html

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 28, 2013 at 9:55pm

Is Nawaz Sharif a graceful victor? Does this have echoes of Jaag Punjabi Jaag?

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif says people of Punjab have voted on rational basis while of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa have voted on emotional basis.

He was addressing his party workers in a ceremony to commemorate atomic explosions carried out by Pakistan on May 28, 1998 during Sharif’s previous tenure....

http://www.thenewstribe.com/2013/05/28/future-pm-nawaz-sharif-think...

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 30, 2013 at 7:39pm

Excerpt from Economist:

Mr Sharif has long advocated a soft line. The TTP’s offer of talks with the government should, he said recently, be taken seriously. ...It is unlikely that Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief, approves of any of this. Last year he declared that the whole country should join in a “war against extremism and terrorism”. After the general election on May 11th, he congratulated Pakistanis for voting in huge numbers, despite threats from an “insignificant and misguided” TTP.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21578709-new-prime-minister-and-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 11, 2013 at 9:46pm

Here's a WSJ piece on Nawaz Sharif's decision to keep defense and foreign affairs portfolios for himself:

Mr. Sharif hasn't commented publicly on the reasons for retaining the defense and foreign-affairs portfolios. A spokesman for his party, Tariq Azeem, declined to comment.

An aide to Mr. Sharif, however, offered this explanation: "When Nawaz Sharif was in power in the past, there were misunderstandings between the prime minister and the army," he said. "This time there will be a direct link."

The thinking in the Sharif camp went, the aide added, was that, "with the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan in 2014, foreign and defense ministries are going to be working very closely together."

Mr. Sharif has frequently said he wants to improve relations with India, and has accused the army—then headed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf—of undermining his peace initiative toward India in the late 1990s. The traditional justification for retaining an army of more than 500,000 men, which eats up about 20% of Pakistan's budget, is the long history of hostilities with India. The two neighbors have fought three wars since partition in 1947.

The current army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has differentiated himself from many of his predecessors by repeatedly stating his commitment to democracy. A spokesman for the military didn't return calls seeking comment.

Whether the shift will sap power from the army remains to be seen. Putting so much weight in one man's hands could backfire, some analysts said. "One of the reasons why people voted for Nawaz Sharif was that they thought he had the best team," said Aasiya Riaz, joint director of Pildat, an Islamabad-based think tank. But ministries require full-time "strong and effective fully fledged ministers" to enforce civilian control, she said.

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The foreign ministry will be run by two Sharif appointees: His former foreign and finance minister, 84-year-old politician Sartaj Aziz, has been named adviser on national security and foreign affairs, and will have the rank of minister; Tariq Fatemi, a former ambassador to Washington, has been named a special adviser, and will serve as a deputy minister, with the rank of minister-of-state.

Mr. Chaudhry, the ministry spokesman, said both men were "very experienced."

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The new finance minister, Ishaq Dar, was set to unveil an emergency budget on Wednesday.

The issue of tackling the country's energy shortage is in the hands of lawyer and former banker Khawaja Asif. The ministry of petroleum and natural resources went to entrepreneur and engineer Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

Mr. Sharif won praise for not trying to grab control of the provincial governments in two violence-plagued western provinces, Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In the latter, he deflected coalition entreaties from Islamists and allowed the party of former cricket star Imran Khan, which won a plurality of provincial legislature seats, to form the provincial administration.

In Baluchistan, where a low-level separatist insurgency has been waged for nearly a decade, Mr. Sharif—whose party won the most seats in the provincial legislature—last week decided to support the leader of a nationalist party, Abdul Malik Baloch, as the new chief minister.

Mr. Baloch is a middle-class professional—unusual in a province where both the government and the armed rebellion have long been led by tribal chiefs.

"Baluchistan is on fire today," Mr. Baloch said in his first address to the provincial parliament Sunday. "If the federal government and the militant organizations help the provincial administration, there will be no difficulty in finding a solution to all festering issues of the province."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324904004578539070809...

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 18, 2013 at 10:17pm

Here's a CPJ article on risks to journalists in Pakistan:

Among the more 200,000 Pakistanis living in London is Altaf Hussain, leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. This powerful political party is widely thought to be behind the murder of reporter Wali Khan Babar, a rising star at Geo TV who was shot dead in Karachi in 2011. His coverage focused on politically sensitive topics such as extortion, targeted killings, electricity thefts, land-grabbing, and riots.

Police arrested several suspects affiliated with the MQM, but the investigation into Babar's death fell apart when five people connected to the investigation--witnesses and law enforcement officials--were systematically murdered, one by one. The two original prosecutors were threatened and forced to flee the country.

The brutality of the Babar case was highlighted during a discussion in London on Friday of CPJ's special report, Roots of Impunity, which examined the unsolved murders of 23 Pakistani journalists over the past decade. The discussion, at Chatham House, featured the report's author, Elizabeth Rubin, and the Pakistani author and CPJ board member, Ahmed Rashid.

In Pakistan, the fear is such that journalists will not go on the record to speak about the MQM, Rubin said. She described a cycle of violence and impunity where journalists are targeted not only by militants, criminals, and warlords, but also by political, military, and intelligence operatives.

"They are caught in an undeclared war between the U.S. and Pakistan, or between the different factions in the country ... and until that is resolved, they will continue to pay," Rubin said.

Hostilities against journalists are nothing new in Pakistan. Rashid described the journalist imprisonments of past generations as having evolved into the targeted killings of today. At the same time, a traditionally weak civil society has forced the media to take on a primary role in investigating and denouncing social ills and official misdeeds. Journalists "are bribed, cajoled, threatened and ultimately even killed," said Rashid, who noted that the "war on terror" has left Pakistani authorities free to act with impunity against the press.

The root of the problem, Rashid said, is the government's dual policy of allowing the Taliban and other militant groups to operate freely even as they take part in international efforts to stem terrorism. This has given the Pakistani military and intelligence services an unlimited mandate with no accountability.

The issue extends beyond Pakistan's borders. Hussain's speeches from London are broadcast in full throughout Pakistan, Rashid said, who expressed dismay at "the stunning silence of the British government" regarding the MQM's violent activities and its involvement in the killing of Babar.

Rubin and Rashid expressed hope as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif shapes a new agenda. The most important steps the government can take, said Rashid, are to reopen the cases of journalists killed with impunity and to make public the undisclosed investigative reports into those killings. One such report involves the killing of Hayatullah Khan, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped and found dead in 2006 after receiving threats from Pakistani security forces, Taliban members, and local tribesmen. The day before his abduction, Khan had photographed the remnants of a U.S. missile believed to have killed a senior Al-Qaeda figure, an image that contradicted Pakistan's official accounts of the killing.....

http://www.cpj.org/blog/2013/06/in-london-echoes-of-pakistans-deadl...

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