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| Spokesman of the middle class |
| Imran Khan is the talk of the town as his bombast of bringing ‘change’ and building a ‘new Pakistan’ has caught the imagination of the youth - the biggest stratum of country’s population - who throng his public meetings in thousands. The youth of today should not forget that he made similar tall claims, fifteen years ago, when he launched ‘Tehrik-e-Insaf’. The teenagers of 1996 are in their thirties now, a bit disappointed and disillusioned because he failed to deliver what he had promised, then. |
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| Speeding bandwagon and eager climbers |
| Someone whom I have always admired unabashedly, Khan Roedad Khan, after his long years in the bureaucracy is now one of Pakistan’s leading armchair samurais, not only advocate of change but proponent of revolution. Loudly welcoming Musharraf’s coup – so many bleeding-heart liberals did that – he said that the man and the moment had come together. |
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| Political manoeuvring: PML-Q likeminded group divided over alliance |
| The PML-Q’s dissident likeminded group split into two factions over the decision to form a political alliance after it failed to reach a consensus in its core committee meeting on Saturday. The splinter group led by Senator Saleem Saifullah insists on joining forces with the PML-N, while the other one led by Khurshid Kasuri prefers an alliance with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), sources privy to the development told The Express Tribune.
Saifullah’s faction was all set to announce an alliance of the likeminded group with the PML-N after the meeting, but the faction led by the former foreign minister vociferously opposed the move, according to sources. However, both groups have decided they will pursue talks with the PML-N and the PTI and if they reach an agreement, they will announce their alliances, concealing any impression of discord within their ranks. In line with this decision, they refused to come on record and broadcast the difference of opinion. The Kasuri faction comprising members of the core committee, Hamid Nasir Chattha, Mian Asif, Lala Nisar, tried to convince Saifullah to ally with the PTI, while Saifullah’s faction comprising Humayun Akhtar, Kashmala Tariq and others made equally unsuccessful attempts to persuade them to join the PML-N, sources said. The breakaway group continued their discussions the whole day to forge a compromise deal. |
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| Over to You Begum Bhutto |
| Over to You Begum Bhutto
Nasim Zehra
Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s death has forced us all to re-focus on the almost forgotten icon of Pakistan’s democracy. As the Bhuttos, especially Sanam and Fatima Bhutto and the rest deal with the pain of both Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s death and tragic life, inevitably family bickering, power struggle and politicking will also accompany Begum Bhutto’s last rites. But there is a larger canvas that deserves recall. |
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| Developing leaders |
| Every morning, about 30 million Pakistanis make their way to school, college or university, aiming to get an education. Our general perception of what an education means is a degree certificate (be it Matric, FSc, O Levels, Bachelors etc.) and not much beyond it. An education most believe is what children or students get from when school starts till it ends. The time they spend in school, what they learn, the quality of learning are all important issues and have been and still are being discussed. But it is what they do during the time that they are not in school that often gets neglected. The fact is that a large part of our youth’s time and energy gets wasted, and they also don’t get an opportunity to develop life skills that are integral to a successful career later on. |
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| Ch Nisar v Javed Hashmi |
| Ch Nisar and Javed Hashmi are like two sides of one coin-the coin being PML-N. Both are sincere to the party and its leadership, but by nature they are poles apart. I have known both of them closely and can say with confidence that I can write a book on each. Who knows, one day I might even. But today, without touching on their private lives, I will try to highlight factors effecting their personalities pertaining to politics. |
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| More Mayor, less Malik |
| Every seth organisation has one — the incompetent buffoon who, despite being a fool and inept in every conceivable way, defies logic and remains employed in a senior position within the organisation. A chamcha, he is the Boss’s right-hand man (and it’s always a man). He performs all the unsavoury tasks, thus ensuring that the boss’s manicured hands do not get even remotely dirty. All three seth organisations I worked for had this character type. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the seth Government of Pakistan has one too. How else can one explain the continued employment of Rehman Malik? |
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| Reasons : Ali Moeen Nawazish |
| Life is indeed very strange, stranger than one can ever imagine, and mine is no exception. Around this time three years ago I was setting off to Cambridge to start my degree in Computer Science. I was young, naive, apolitical and like many of my contemporaries absolutely unaware of what was going on in the ìreal worldî. My dream and ambition at the time extended at most to surviving Cambridge and getting a job in one of the big technology companies of the world i.e. Google, Apple or Microsoft and then settling abroad in the US or the UK. Looking back at that time now so much has changed, oh so much has changed. |
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| Where is that leader? |
| Two indispensible features have all along been lacking in the political landscape of Pakistan. One is selfless, motivated and patriotic leadership. The other is the institution building. The newly born country had fallen prey to the vandals of worst pedigree. |
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