by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
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Islamabad : Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who is set to be the new Pakistan Prime Minister, on Thursday said his government would seek good relations with India and would like leaders of the two countries to sit across the table and resolve all disputes, including the “core issue” of Kashmir.
“If Indian leadership is ready, we are ready to improve relationship. If you take one step, we are ready to take two. Now it is one sided blame on Pakistan. We have to resolve the main issue through dialogue. This is important for the sub-continent,” Khan told the media here as results indicated that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was close to majority in the 272-member National Assembly.
At the same time, he blew hot over the Kashmir issue, alleging that there were human rights violations by security forces.
“Kashmiri people have suffered in the last 30 years,” said Khan, known for his hardline towards India and is widely believed to be having the backing of the Pakistan Army.
He said there has been a blame game between India and Pakistan with New Delhi holding Islamabad responsible for all its problems. And Pakistan is blaming India for what is happening in Balochistan, he said.
“We are (back to ) square one. We are ready to improve relationship with India. Now it is a one way blame on Pakistan.”
He said trade between India and Pakistan can be instrumental in eradicating poverty in the sub-continent which should be the focus of the two countries.
Khan lamented that the Indian media had projected him as a Bollywood villain. “I am a Pakistani who is most popular in India because I played there. I am a Pakistani who wants friendly relationship with India.”
Khan said his government would take all efforts for bringing peace in Afghanistan with which Pakistan would like to have open border while trying to strengthen ties with Pakistan’s all-weather friend China.
With the US, he said, his administration would like to have mutually beneficial ties. “This has been one way so far. We should have a balanced relationship.”
Set to capture power after being in politics for 22 years, the firebrand politician said he would not indulge in political victimization but would implement the law against those who go against the law of the land.
He said he would root out corruption which was the bane of the country and he would himself be accoutable first.
“The National Accountability Bureau will be strengthened and the law will be same for everyone.
He said the Pakistan economy was the most challenged and dysfunctional with high fiscal and trade deficits and the value of rupee plunging deep.
Khan pledged austerity measures for the government and said he himself won’t live in a “palace like” Prime Minister’s residence but would prefer a house in the ministers enclave.
On his priorities as the head of the new government, Khan said governance system had collapsed in Pakistan and he would like to set it right first with all policies for poor and the common man and not for elites.
“All our policies will be for workers, farmers. We are not able to give proper healthcare and Pakistan has the highest maternal mortality rate.”
Rejecting his rivals’ charges that the just concluded elections were rigged in his favour, Khan said this was one of the cleanest polls Pakistan ever held.
“I want to tell those who are saying that elections are rigged that we are ready to investigate.” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World, Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Even the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. If the Pakistan army wanted Imran Khan to score a runaway victory in the elections, it will be disappointed. If an inability to reach the halfway mark forces the former cricketer and international playboy to constitute a coalition, the already confused scene in Pakistan will become more muddled.
The reason is that Imran cannot have any truck with either his bete noire, Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League or with Bilawal Bhutto’s People’s Party. He will have to depend, therefore, on the Independents to form a government.
But for a person who has had no experience of governance, a khichdi or hodge-podge ministry will have a hard time finding answers to the country’s myriad problems — an economy in a shambles, shortage of electricity and even water and, the most contentious of all, terrorism, which has made it a virtual pariah in the eyes of the world.
Will Taliban Khan, as Imran’s critics have called him because of his supposed soft corner for jihadis, be equal to the task? If he wanted among his putative supporters the party of the mastermind of the Mumbai massacre of November 26, 1908, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, he must have been disappointed to learn that the latter’s Allah-o-Akbar party has fared poorly in the polls.
This failure is in keeping with Pakistan’s electoral tradition of keeping out the so-called Islam-pasand parties — or the outfits known for their avowed love for religion — at a safe distance from the legislatures. The Jamaat-e-Islami, for instance, the fountain head of religions extremism, secured a bare two per cent of the votes in 2013. The Pakistan army’s hope, therefore, of “mainstreaming” the militants has been dashed.
In contrast, the electoral snub for Saeed can be seen as a sign that Pakistan’s heart remains in the right place, even if that is not always evident to Indians because of its conversion into a haven for terrorists under the tutelage of the pathologically anti-Indian army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Although Imran criticised Nawaz Sharif’s linking of the 26/11 outrage in Mumbai to Pakistan, that did not boost Saeed’s prospects.
For the Pakistan army, Imran’s stumbling just before breasting the winning tape cannot but be disquieting. Although Rawalpindi, where the army headquarters are located, will be in overall control over the country’s foreign policy (as also the domestic scene) as always, it still likes a civilian to be the formal head of the government to tell the world about the country’s democratic credentials.
Imran may be able to play that role even at the head of a coalition. But he is likely to be somewhat hamstrung, especially in the face of criticism by Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League, which is now headed by the former (and currently jailed) prime minister’s brother, Shahbaz, and also by the Pakistan People’s Party.
The army’s relief, therefore, of having succeeded with a little help from the judiciary to oust the supposedly pro-Indian Nawaz Sharif will only be partial. It will also be concerned about how reliable a puppet Imran will turn out to be. Will the swashbuckling hero of cricket and now of politics, who has been accused of being a drug addict by one of his former wives, scrupulously follow the script written for him by the army ?
It is known that once a person ascends to the throne, he tends to develop a mind of his own. In view of Imran’s extrovert and flamboyant personality, it is difficult to believe that he will be the army’s poodle all the time, especially when his interactions with the world leaders will tell him that Pakistan’s reputation is not as pristine as he would like it to be and that India’s case on terrorism is widely accepted.
Besides, the army will remember that Nawaz Sharif, too, was once its favourite till his business instincts told him that endless enmity with India will not benefit Pakistan even if such a state of affairs is indispensable for the army if it wants to retain its stranglehold on the country’s politics and society.
India, therefore, will have to tread carefully with the new dispensation across its western border. Any summary rejection of Imran as a friend of the army and of terrorists will be inadvisable even if his initial observations on Kashmir, for instance, tend to portray him as a hawk. That may be more for domestic consumption in Pakistan than a long-term view.
The caution on India’s part is all the more necessary because the political scene in the country is on the verge of change with several elections in the states and a general election due to take place within the next 12 months. Therefore, the Pakistan “desk” in the external affairs ministry will have to keep its options on hold.
(Amulya Ganguli is a writer on current affairs. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Massive delays in counting and allegations of rigging dominated the early hours of Thursday in Pakistan, where official poll results were still awaited even 15 hours after voting ended.
Preliminary results indicate Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has obtained a clear edge over other parties with 119 in their kitty as unofficial results continue to pour in.
Although PTI workers and supporters started celebrations before the final results, no statement — or even a tweet — has been issued by the former cricker himself on the victory.
His spokesperson Naeemul Haque, however, tweeted that the PTI chief will “address the nation” at 2 p.m. “in celebration and recognition of the massive support received from the people of Pakistan in the 2018 elections which was a contest between the forces of good and evil”.
In Punjab, with preliminary results from 50 per cent polling stations available with ECP, PML-N is currently holding its lead on 129 provincial seats but PTI is closing in with a lead on 122 seats.
Imran Khan’s party is clearly steering ahead in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with a lead on 64 seats against Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which is currently leading on 12 seats, as per reports from 35 per cent polling stations in the province.
The preliminary results from 37 per cent polling stations in Sindh show PPP-P leading on 75 seats, followed by PTI on 22 seats.
In Balochistan, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) is leading on 12 provincial seats, followed by Balochistan National Party (BNP) on nine seats, based on unofficial results from 35 per cent polling stations.
According to Geo News, Awami National Party leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour conceded defeat to PTI’s Shaukat Ali, his competitor on Peshawar’s NA-31 seat, saying: “The results indicate that Imran Khan is a favourite leader of the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. I am a democratic person and I admit the defeat.”
Counting is still going on at the polling stations of different constituencies.
According to PTV news, Imran Khan has maintained a massive lead over PML-N’s Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in Islamabad constituency. The PTI chief was pitted against former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the crucial National Assembly seat.
The voter turnout was recorded at 50-55 per cent of the nearly 106 million electorates, similar to the previous electoral contest in 2013.
Television visuals showed election workers sorting through massive piles of paper ballots at polling stations across the country.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif at a mid-vote count press conference said his party rejects the poll results.
In a tweet, he said the party had rejected the results “due to manifest and massive irregularities”.
Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also said he had not received any official results from any constituency where he was contesting, despite it being past midnight.
“My candidates (have been) complaining (that) polling agents have been thrown out of polling stations across the country. Inexcusable and outrageous,” he tweeted.
A delay has been reported in the transmission of election results due to the breaking down of the Election Commission of Pakistan’s Results Transmission System (RTS), which is being run through a software powered by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).
The Election Commission’s secretary Babar Yaqoob flatly denied allegations of vote count manipulation.
Shortly before Sharif spoke, state television said that just one-fifth of the votes had been counted so far — an unusually slow count that further fuelled suspicion of rigging.
Yaqoob said the vote-counting system, which was untested, had “crashed”, adding: “There is definitely no conspiracy, no one wants to influence the results”.
A single party will need to bag at least 137 of the directly elected seats to be able to form the government on its own.
As many as 12,570 candidates were in the electoral fray for a total of 849 seats of national and provincial assemblies in the country’s 11th general election.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Islamabad (IANS) A day after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party denied Imran Khan owned a flat in London through an offshore company, the party chief admitted that he formed an offshore company to buy the flat in 1983 to evade British taxes.
Khan on Friday said he formed the firm on the advice of his accountant to evade taxes during his playing days to buy a flat in London, Dawn online reported.
“I was already paying 35 percent tax on my income there, so to evade further taxes, I bought the flat through an offshore firm, which was my right as I was not a British citizen,” Khan said.
A PTI spokesperson said Khan had formed a “legal” offshore company, which owned his London flat.
While speaking to Geo News, PTI spokesman Naeemul Haq took back his earlier denial.
“I was Imran Khan’s bank manager in London at that time, his accountants formed this company to buy the flat.” When the flat was sold, Imran brought the money to Pakistan, Haq said.
Answering a question about Imran Khan’s tax returns and this offshore firm, Haq said he will “reveal the details to the media on Saturday”.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif criticised Khan for repeatedly denying the possession of any offshore firm.
Moreover, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz, through her official Twitter account, termed Imran Khan the “pioneer” of offshore companies.
Khan had criticised Sharif and his family for owning and benefiting from offshore companies after the release of Panama papers.
He, along with other opposition leaders, demanded Sharif’s resignation until the issue was investigated and the premier gets a clean chit.
Just two days ago, he told a public rally that the Panama Papers exposed how “corrupt” Pakistani prime minister was.
