Ripple Effect

A senior defence ministry official - an air-vice marshal - briefed the Senate's Defence Committee on May 19 about the budgetary needs of the military. The official somewhat disingenuously told the Senate committee that Pakistan was the lowest spending on defence in the entire region and the figure he quoted to substantiate this claim was that Pakistan spent around $8,400 per soldier while India spent roughly three times that per soldier. A more accurate measure of comparison would be defence spending as a percentage of GDP which in Pakistan's case is 2.6 per cent of GDP compared to India's 1.8 per cent. Similarly, Pakistan spends $35.4 per capita on defence compared to India which spends $29.9. One is not sure whether any of the Senators present in the committee hearing could figure that what they were being told was not entirely true and that Pakistan does spend far more on defence than it should be given the size of its economy, GDP per capita and low human indicators. ...

By Saroop Ijaz The 2013 election was rigged. It was rigged before it happened. It was rigged before Mr. Imran Khan woke up to the fact. It was rigged when TTP picked favorites. In the run up, during the campaign, ANP leaders were killed every day. PPP and ANP were threatened, attacked, maimed and told that they could campaign at their own peril; the peril was violent death. The field was uneven, and the field was Punjab and Punjab only, since our “estranged brothers” were in no mood to allow campaign and electioneering in the rest of Al-Bakistan. Yet, to point to this elementary fact was to be an apologist for the beleaguered parties, to defend corruption.  The prime beneficiaries were Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Imran Khan, who in the competitive spirit did not even spare a moment to condemn the attacks on rivals, to condole with the leaders and families of those killed. Callousness was the name of the game, leaders of PML-N and PTI implying and sometimes saying it directly that PPP...