All posts in Kunwar Idris

The preamble to the Constitution of Pakistan binds the state ‘to exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives’ who, in turn, are bound to fully observe

A day after President Zardari conceded in an interview with an American television channel that the Taliban had established their presence across large swathes of Pakistan, the government

IT is a paradox of a peculiar kind. A battle royal is going on in the courts and in the streets for the integrity and independence of the

IN the sixty-second year of independence the political dilemma facing the people of Pakistan is the same as it was in the first year — in whom the

PAKISTAN’S sovereign economic rating has fallen to a junk triple-C. Similarly rated, it would be lower for security and lower still for the institutions that handle the economy,

AS far back in time as a senior citizen can recall, say 40 years ago, the federal and provincial governments and the municipality of Karachi (also a government

LAST week three funerals took place on three successive days. The dead came from different backgrounds, belonged to different places and professions. Common to the three was their

HAVING installed a loyalist prime minister and filed his own papers for the presidency (barring a political tsunami he should be the president when these lines appear in

THE people and the press have often spoken of ‘milestones’ and ‘turning points’ — which never were — in Pakistan’s 61-year march downhill. If one event can be

MR Nawaz Sharif’s unbending stand on the impeachment of President Musharraf is wholly understandable, though to his detractors it is to avenge the pain and insult he suffered

PUNJAB Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has publicly pledged to recover every penny looted by his predecessor in office, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi. He must proceed further and not let it

“AFTER the elections faces have changed but not policies” is the commonly held, and freely expressed, opinion about the PPP government. One lets it pass for it is

FIVE months into a five-year term and Pakistan’s democratic government has yet to define itself. It is not known which party or person will remain in it, join