After the order of Supreme Court to sell sugar for 40 rupees per
kilo. Now the situation is that there is no sugar in markets or
shops. Even Utility Stores have shortage of sugar. If by chance we
find sugar, then it is being sold at 80 - 90 rupee kilos. The people
who are involved in the storage of sugar at large are now waiting
for the increase in sugar prices so that they can make more money
easily afterwards. In Karachi, shopkeepers are demanding high price
for sugar, and no one is their to take action against them. City
Government has closed their eyes and Price Control Authority is also
sleeping somewhere. Nevertheless, Interior Sindh Government have
arranged some stalls, where sugar was being sold at the prices
suggested by Supreme Court. The poor citizens queued up for long
time and hardly got 1 kilo sugar. On the other hand Chairman Sugar
Mills association, said that he is ready to provide sugar in 36
Rupees per kilo, but for that he is asking the government to
organize a proper system for that. So the question occurs where are
the hurdles? Or here are those thousands of sacks which were seized?
What are those powers, who have got united for the failure of
Supreme Court’s orders? Will Supreme Court be able to make their
orders work?—Karachi
Borders protection
Anwar Jalal Khattak
We need to secure and protect our borders with Afghanistan and
India, where militants linked to the pro-Al-Qaeda Taliban gain
control over the border region and then turn eastward toward the
more populated areas. Will the encircled Northwest Frontier city of
Peshawar become Pakistan’s first major pro-Taliban Islamist city? It
is still a question mark and more likely to happen like this under
current circumstances. Perhaps the risk is not so much the Pashtun
pro-Taliban tribesmen taking over the rest of Pakistan but the
fragmentation of the country.
According to this pessimistic scenario, the Army will slowly begin
to lose its grip. Given the stagnant popular support for Islamabad,
the Army may have to put so much energy into holding the main cities
and fighting the extremists in the Northwest Frontier border areas
that, absent a central government galvanized by a renewed mandate
from the people, the on-going incremental secession of Baluchistan
and Sind from Punjabi-ruled Pakistan may become irreversible.
Businessmen keep the National economy afloat. Political parties
bring in new blood so they become less dynastic family fiefdoms and
more institutional. Islamist parties are fighting against each other
and raise slogans against other sects. Terrorism and suicide
bombings occur but do not spike upward and, most importantly, do not
succeed in killing more leaders but general public.
Since 9/11, US aid has been designed not to strengthen Pakistan’s
internal stability but to achieve counter-terrorism objectives
specific to Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan. US
engagement with Pakistan is highly centralized and
military-to-military, with little assistance reaching the majority
of Pakistanis. The dilemma of US policy in Pakistan, similar to the
broader Middle East, is how hard to push for democratization.
Pushing too hard runs the risk of electing incompetent politicians
like we recently did or radical Islamists to power. In the long term
a democratic Pakistan should be the goal, but the challenge lies in
attaining that goal without bringing about a worse result than the
current army-led polity. The best one can hope for is that Pakistan
will muddle through as it has done in past crises, with continuing
oscillations between military and civilian rule. —Peshawar
Can we make amends?
Rao Tahir Hussain
We can mend our ways in the light of these ever-green words spoken
by the fourth Caliph of Islam that while a godless society may
survive, but an unjust will never. This rings true even today and
would continue to be so for generations to come. Many would have
heard that during the course of Second World War, London was
subjected to regular aerial bombardment by the German planes for
months on end thus paralyzing normal life completely. One day, the
British Prime minister Sir Winston Churchill inquired from his Home
Secretary whether the courts were functioning properly. Upon finding
the answer in affirmative, Churchill replied that ‘in that case
nothing is going to happen to Britain ’. And history stands witness
to the fact that subsequent evens tipped the scales in Britain ’s
favour.
It goes without saying that whether it is a capitalistic system of
government or a socialist one, it can survive only if there is a
respect for law. Our tragedy has been that there has never been even
a semblance of rule of law in this country! It was a criminal
neglect on the part of the politicians who called the shots between
1948 and 1956 in this country to delay formulation of the first
constitution for this country for such a long time. Mind it, India
promulgated its constitution in 1951. It is another matter that the
1956 constitution, according to many, didn’t reflect the aspirations
of the then East Pakistanis who constituted a majority. No wonder,
it rent asunder Pakistan into two.
Dictator Ayub Khan gave his constitution to the country in 1962
which was replaced by 1973 constitution .The tragedy is that the
maker of the 1973 constitution which had been passed with a majority
by parliament started violating it within hours of its promulgation
and his successors too never hesitated to carry out amendments in it
for justifying their stay in power. Make no mistake that unless we
learn to respect law of the land, the desire of good governance will
remain a pipe dream. Who will change the course of our destiny? Your
guess is as good as mine. —Islamabad
Intellectual seduction
Shaheer Ellahi
It is the seductive intellectual combat which has evolved up to the
alarming borders deceiving human innocence. The gap between the
human and humanity have given enough vacuum where power battles to
satisfy in the name of God, in the name of peace, in the name of so
called humanity. Countries feeding their prestige over their
histories changing under the idol of globalization, their fading
languages, their legend of civilization, their philosophies and
religion. Masses running short of words therefore exercising the
bites of emotions injecting physical realms recreating the same old
intellectual dialogue to support absoluteness and one’s uniqueness.
What actually makes a person or a reality or a strangely beautiful
face is not the carrier of the soul rather it is the mystery, the
enigma, the unknown of sharing the intangible concepts and emotions
of love, nobility, altruism and so much more which proves its
identities by evolving as in opposition to each other therefore
balancing the veil of reality and the ultimate reality. So, how can
we at the end of the day perceives or conceives the reality as it is
nothing but intangible; which stages the entire drama from illusion,
mystery, enigma, belief, faith to the most intangible of all
intellectually known as “The GOD”. Like most of the high rank
scholars I am here quoting a lovely passage from the mystic poet
Rumi in which he describes the mystic search after reality:
The Sufi’s book is not composed of ink and letters; it is not but a
heart white as snow. The Scholar’s possession is pen marks, what is
the Sufi’s possession? Foot marks. The Sufi stalks the game like a
hunter; he sees the musk deer’s track and follows the foot prints.
For some while the track of the deer is the proper clue for him, but
afterwards it is the musk gland of the deer that is his guide. To go
one stage guided by the scent of the musk gland and is better than a
hundred stages of following the track and roaming about. —Islamabad
UN role
Syeda Hira Naqvi
The United Nations is the world’s most inportant international
organizaton, the Organization aims at the creation of conditions of
stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and
friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles
of sovereign equality of all its Members, equal rights and
self-determination of peoples and at achieving international
cooperation in solving international problems of an economic,
social, cultural or humanitarian character. The role and functions
of the United Nations in international economic and social
cooperation, as defined in the Charter and as further elaborated in
various international agreements, including in the outcomes of major
United Nations conferences, range wide and deep and should be
fulfilled. Among the key characteristics of the United Nations are
its universal membership and comprehensive mandate. The United
Nations occupies a unique position for addressing the challenges of
promoting development in the context of the globalization of the
world economy and deepening interdependence among nations.
It must play a central and more active and effective role in
promoting international cooperation for development and providing
policy guidance on global development issues. The responsibilities
of the United Nations in the economic, social and related fields
should be fulfilled, taking into account the importance of its
activities in these spheres vis-ŕ-vis those in other fields. The
United Nations constitutes a unique forum for building international
consensus on global priorities for which there exists no substitute.
Forging consensus and commitments through, inter alia, various
international conferences, on international economic, social and
related issues is one of the most important functions of the United
Nations system. To this end, the capacity of the United Nations and
its various bodies to undertake analytical and policy-oriented work
in the economic and social fields must be fully utilized.
An important feature of the United Nations is its operational
activities for development in the field. Their fundamental
characteristics should be, their universal, voluntary, and grant
nature, their neutrality and their multilateralism, as well as their
ability to respond to the needs of the developing countries in a
flexible manner. The United Nations development system should take
into account the specific needs and requirements of the countries
with economies in transition and other recipient countries.
Furthermore, because of its mandate, the Organization is well suited
to promote a balanced approach to development. Therefore, the
challenge for the United Nations and its funds and programmes is to
effectively support Governments, particularly those of the
developing countries, in their efforts to address increasingly
complex issues of development in an interdependent world.—Islamabad
