Lost Opportunities By: Daily Times on May 4, 2024Credit where credit’s due. It must have taken extraordinary courage for Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to sit on a World Economic Forum panel and openly admit to the shortcomings of his own government. As he exclaimed “putting things in order is easiser said than done,” and proceeded to list down a myriad of challenges engulfing […]
Education Emergency By: Daily Times on May 4, 2024Pakistan has too much on its plate to worry about the seemingly unimportant issue of education. So what if 26 million of its children remain out of school? Clearly, there are more pressing matters than a disturbingly low literacy rate (lowest in South Asia) and report after report ringing alarm bells over the dismal quality […]
Wheat Woes By: Daily Times on May 3, 2024Months after a witty, holier-than-thou, jack-of-all-trades caretaker government retreated from the executive, repeated horrors from their tenure keep raising ugly heads; emphasising all that the cliche implies. The latest to hit the soundwaves is the backbreaking burden of almost three million tonnes of wheat imported by the Punjab interim government in full knowledge of the […]
Modi’s Tricks By: Daily Times on May 3, 2024For all those hoping to see matured Pak-India relations enter a new chapter of normalisation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unfounded accusation must have come as a great shock. While the ruling BJP is known to always pull out the anti-Pakistan card whenever it sniffs trouble, a lower turnout and an overall lack of momentum […]
Pandora’s Box By: Daily Times on May 2, 2024We may have seen public displays of the judiciary split down the middle before but the stakes have never been this high. As the honourable higher judiciary finds itself standing at a crossroads, there’s no telling what the pandora’s box will reveal next. A month after a letter from six Islamabad judges addressed to the […]
Sectarian Attack By: Daily Times on May 2, 2024Peace remains an elusive dream in Afghanistan as a team of three armed men stormed into a mosque belonging to the minority Shia community and decided to mow down at least six civilians, injuring several others. The fact that a local elder and a three-year-old were among those wiped off the face of this earth […]
Political Engineering By: Daily Times on May 1, 2024In a much-albeit delayed development, the National Accountability Bureau has decided to withdraw the reference against former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. Six years after the accountability watchdog had alleged a blatant misuse of public office that had caused loss to the tune of Rs 21 billion to the national exchequer, the validity of the […]
More Floods By: Daily Times on May 1, 2024Not long ago, a flood of biblical proportions had wiped away thousands of houses across Balochistan, Pakistan’s most undernourished province that has lately been reduced to a sitting duck thanks to minimum infrastructure and a majority living in mud houses. Today, when powerful spells of rain have become a living reality as the region continues […]
New Twist By: Daily Times on April 30, 2024Some habits die hard. After enjoying a game-changing role in Pakistani politics for decades on end, which had little to do with his actual mandate on the ground, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman seems to be having a hard time adjusting to the new pecking order. On Monday, he stood before the National Assembly in […]
What’s Next, Mr Sharifs? By: Daily Times on April 30, 2024More than one news cycle has passed after a strange cabinet appointment notification hit the airwaves on a Sunday, that too when both the premier and the intended beneficiary were not even in the country, but the frenzy appears far from settled. The decision to elevate Dar to this significant position has raised questions about […]