Ripple Effect

By Omar R Quraishi 1. Self censorship To some extent this has always been there in Pakistan. As a reporter or an editor you are trained on the job to not talk or write about certain things and you know it's best (for you) if you tend to gloss over certain issues or altogether ignore them.  Examples are the state's policies with regards to India, America and Afghanistan. Of course, you will find some debate and discussion on this in the English print media which has a limited audience but you won't any discussion on it on the TV talk shows.  In the case of CPEC, the only time there was any debate about its potential costs to Pakistan's economy was when Adviser to the PM on Commerce and Industry Abdur Razzak Dawood said in an interview to the Financial Times (a UK paper) that the new government intended a review of CPEC and its addition to the country's debt burden.  However, most journalists and reporters will tend to take the easy path

By Omar R Quraishi 1.         Of the 102 PM House vehicles put up for auction, 61 were sold. What happens to those not sold? The government estimated that around Rs 2 billion would be raised by the sale of the vehicles, which included 4 bullet-proof limousines whose combined value was estimated at Rs 1 billion. Also, how much was spent on the ads placed in the newspapers and on the video clips made to share on social media about the auction? It has been reported that the auction fetched in the region of Rs 200 million, a mere one-tenth of the amount that the PTI government hoped to collect. The PTI did this – which now seems more of a PR spectacle than anything else – because it wanted to show its supporters that it believed in austerity and belt-tightening. However, the reality is to the contrary because senior government leaders continue to have lots of protocol and roads continue to be blocked for their convoys to pass, just like in Purana Pakistan. (Many of the cars w

By Omar R Quraishi Imran Khan's residence in Bani Gala Here is a list of U-turns performed by the PTI government in its first 5 weeks in office 1. The PM said he wouldn't live in the Prime Minister House - he would instead live in the residence of the Military Secretary to the PM, which incidentally is also within the boundaries of Prime Minister House. However, he doesn't stay there either - commuting between the Prime Minister Office and his own Bani Gala residence every day, usually by helicopter. During that whole debate, the information minister waded in, adding a gem for which he went on to receive considerable ridicule, especially on social media, when he said that taking a helicopter was in fact cheaper because it cost just "Rs 50-55 km per litre" Prime Minister House 2. The PM and senior members of the government have repeatedly said that they will either have no protocol or have sharply reduced protocol and will

By Omar R Quraishi More than 2 months after a police encounter in which Naqeebullah Mehsud was killed and labelled a Taliban by SSP Rao Anwar, and several weeks after the said police officer went into hiding, he surfaced on March 21, and presented himself before the Supreme Court in Islamabad. He was promptly ordered arrested but not before the Honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saquib Nisar proudly proclaimed that the majesty of the Court had been maintained by the police officer's 'surrender' to the Court.  Prior to this, Rao Anwar had written twice to the Court, including once asking that his accounts be unfrozen -- and this happened during a period spanning several weeks where the Court was calling in senior police officials of the Sindh government and reprimanding them for failing to arrest the SSP and present him before the Court. Then, later, the Defence Ministry sought a week's time to find details of his whereabouts and present them to the Court

By Omar R Quraishi The PML-N government of Nawaz Sharif began its tenure in early June in 2013. That mean's five years of the current dispensation will end in early June 2018 -- after that we will have 90 days of a caretaker government and general elections (unless they happen earlier due to an unforeseen circumstance, or don't happen at all, also because of any unforeseen circumstance) no later than early September of this year. I will write in more detail about the prospects of the major mainstream parties in the coming election at a later time. However, there has been much talk of late about the 'mainstreaming' of religious groups other than the parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam etc. in an effort to include them in the political mainstream. The first such example that comes to mind is the Milli Muslim League which many observers seem to think is an offshoot of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Last week, the MML won a big victory in its effort

By Omar R Quraishi A couple of days ago a popular Pakistani morning TV show host Sanam Jung had a segment in which models put on make-up to darken their skins. The idea, the host on Hum TV said, was to show that dark skin could also look good. It seems Ms Jung was presumably unaware that this is universally considered morally reprehensible.  One can only help but wonder how a nationally known show host at a major TV channel would be unaware of how offensive all this was. The show's producer is also at fault -- presumably he will also claim that he didn't know this would be offensive. The 'N' word was repeatedly used by the TV show host when referring to the make-up, and even terms like 'makrani' and 'sheedi' were also used.  At the very least, the host and the channel both need to make an unqualified apology.

By Omar R Quraishi The election of the Chairman of the Senate saw the following: 1. The first ever Senate chairman to be elected from Balochistan Sadiq Sanjrani 2. The PTI and the PPP -- not exactly friends -- both backed the same candidate, Sadiq Sanjrani Earlier, the PTI chairman Imran Khan had categorically said that his party would never vote for any candidate put forward by the PPP Someone should tell Khan sb that the candidate for Senate chairman that his party's 12 senators will be voting for is the same as that of the PPP pic.twitter.com/TYVs27nZep — omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) March 12, 2018 However, once the election came and the result was reached with Mr Sanjrani achieving a resounding victory by a relatively wide margin, both the parties celebrated it as if the candidate were exclusively its own. PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari gives a gulab jamun to Senate Chairman-elect Sadiq Sanjrani 3. The ruling PML-N, which had the high

Expect more than shoes and ink to be thrown at politicians in the coming days By Omar R Quraishi Over the weekend we first saw ink being thrown on Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif as he spoke at a party event in Sialkot. Dawn reported that the man who threw ink on him chanted 'Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah' as he carried out his act. He was promptly arrested. Ink was thrown at Pakistan's Foreign Minister yesterday while he spoke at a party convention in his hometown of Sialkot Dawn reports that the suspect said "Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah" as he threw the ink pic.twitter.com/PaP32KfNab — omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) March 11, 2018 Here is a pic of the man who threw the ink on the foreign minister The following day, on Sunday, a shoe was thrown on ousted Prime Minister (and the ruling PML-N's 'Supreme Leader') Nawaz Sharif as he visited a madrassa in Lahore. In this instance, the person who threw the shoe was reported to be angry wit

Journalists are also public figures and should be open to scrutiny By Omar R Quraishi I respect Umar Cheema and have known him professionally for many years. He's an outstanding reporter and has broken many a story, not least the Panama Papers, in conjunction with the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). Umar Cheema Now he's reported extensively on Imran Khan's third marriage, specifically that he denied that his nikah took place in early January 2018 and that it took place before he iddat period of his third wife Bushra Maneka had ended. This understandably created quite a stir among many people, not least among Imran Khan's shrill and boisterous supporters -- and in fact among many people who don't necessarily support the PTI but thought that the reporting was in poor taste. Umar Cheema has already explained his reasons for doing so here  saying that the media had a right to report on public figures and how their personal de