Opinion Lahore attacked again

Pakistan received its first set of F-16 aircraft from the US this week. Dawn quoted Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleiman as saying on June 28 in the presence of the US air chief,at a ceremony at the Shahbaz Air Base: “ ‘Our mission is to maintain peace in the region with honour,but if the primary effort fails we will use all our assets,including these aircraft,to defend our country against any internal or external threats’… Answering a question,he said the acquisition of the hi-tech falcons would neither spark an arms race nor disturb the balance of power in the region. It would be the other way round,he said,adding that the induction would restore the balance of power as the neighbours already had hi-tech aircraft in their inventory.”  

Maximum city

Daily Times carried an analysis on the Sindh Capital on June 28: “Close to half of the 600 murders reported so far this year in Karachi have been ‘target killings’. This figure is roughly double the number that occurred in all of 2009. ‘Successive political governments with conflicting political interests,fragile policies and weak political determination and will are not able to deal with the cancerous disease of sectarianism,ethnicity and the mafias,’ Imtiaz Ahmed,a former intelligence chief,said of Karachi’s problems.” The report also held responsible the city’s chaos,which provides cover for Taliban and al Qaeda militants looking for a hideout beyond the northwestern tribal regions. 

What’s in a name?

The PPP government’s ambitious pro-poor scheme,the Benazir Income Support Programme,met with an unusual hindrance before being turned into a law,reported Dawn on June 29. “In a historic move,the National Assembly inscribed Benazir Bhutto’s name into law by its vote,unanimously passing a pro-poor bill after the main opposition party gave up a blocking amendment amid ‘long live’ slogans for the assassinated leader… The opposition PMLN had sought to rename the bill as Qaumi (national) Income Support Programme but was greeted with ‘no,no’ chants and slogans of ‘long live Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’ from members of the ruling PPP,and was withdrawn after Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called for giving a legislative recognition to the former prime minister’s sacrifice for democracy.”  

Malik’s usual escape route

Interior Minister Rahman Malik was rescued once again by the PPP-led government,reported Dawn on June 29: “The National Accountability Bureau informed an accountability court that two corruption references filed by the bureau 13 years ago against Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other officials of the Federal Investigation Agency were ‘not genuine’ and it did not want to further prosecute the cases… The judge asked the him not to speak about merits of the references and only cite laws relating to withdrawal of the cases.” 

Degree pedigree

Pakistan’s fake degree scam took a new turn this week when one of PPP’s top leaders made a controversial statement. Dawn reported on June 30: “Balochistan CM Nawab Aslam Raisani stunned the nation when he said he believed a ‘degree is a degree,whether genuine or fake’.” The News added: “It’s the biggest scandal to hit the Pakistani academic system and unearthing its scale and magnitude is not just stretching the resources of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) but probably also of the universities of this country. The HEC dispatched the academic certificates of 934 lawmakers… to their universities for verification and authentication by July 13.” It quoted PPP MLA Dr Azra Fazal on June 30 as saying: ‘it is not proper to bring this matter into the limelight and defame the members who belong to different parties… it means 80 per cent of the population having no degrees was not eligible to become members of the assemblies’? Fazal is President Asif Zardari’s sister. On July 1,Zardari was quoted by Dawn in a speech “loaded with innuendos against his political rivals,” that he saw the degree issue “as nothing but a smokescreen behind which a plot was being hatched against him. I will once again survive attempts to dislodge me from the presidency and go on to complete my term.”