Anwar Syed

President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, and the PPP Secretary General Jehangir Badr and other party elders do not tire of claiming that they are the true bearers and preservers of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s legacy. They imply that his legacy includes all that is good and desirable in politics and governance. This calculation on their part […]

The ruling party at the Centre, the PPP, does not command majority support in the National Assembly. It formed a coalition with some of the smaller parties in the house to create the requisite majority and set up a government. Some of them have since then abandoned the PPP and the fate of its government […]

Mr Nawaz Sharif, head of his own faction of Pakistan Muslim League (PML), is in London with heart trouble. The good news for his well-wishers is that it has been attended to, and that he should be back on his feet, ready to resume his role in politics. He is the undisputed leader of his […]

It was a fateful day in the year 399 BC. Socrates sat outside his home, ready to drink a cup of poison to which the Athenians had condemned him for allegedly misguiding the town’s young people. Friends urged him to escape, saying that all necessary arrangements had been made: the guard had been bribed, a […]

Political stability may be taken to mean that those who make public policy remain in office for periods that are long enough to give the parties concerned the good feeling that the substance and direction of policy will remain constant, and that they will not undergo abrupt and arbitrary changes. In the absence of this […]

Several weeks ago Mr Nawaz Sharif, head of the PML-N, issued a 10-point agenda for improving the country’s governance and economy and called upon President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to implement it within 45 days, failing which he would organise a mass movement to press for it. This deadline has […]

Mr Shah Mehmood Qureshi, widely respected for his integrity and diplomatic adroitness, was our foreign minister until a few weeks ago. He stated at a recent press conference that, after thorough examination of the record, the foreign office had concluded that Raymond Davis was not a diplomat, and that he was therefore not entitled to […]

Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, once wrote that where annual elections ceased, tyranny began. The implication being that if the rulers got to be placed beyond the watchful eyes of their electors, they would become susceptible to temptations of personal gain to the detriment […]

My fifth grade Urdu textbook contained an essay on good kings. The opening sentence said that the king was just, order and tranquillity prevailed in the country, and the people prospered. None of these things is happening in today’s Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani, with some tutoring from General Kayani, have […]

In liberal democratic theory, the individual is the central figure. He has primacy over society and state, which he and his fellows have created to meet needs and problems that they cannot resolve individually. He has placed limitations on their functional jurisdiction and reserved to himself whatever he has not assigned to them. These get […]