Dr Qaisar Rashid

The National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) functional currently was promulgated by General Pervaiz Musharraf and it led to the constitution of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in 1999. Now, the incumbent government has been preparing a National Accountability Commission Bill (NACB) of 2012 to transform NAB into the National Accountability Commission (NAC). The Bill is due […]

Pakistanis are not lesser Muslims. A peaceful protest against a sacrilegious movie would have perhaps meant that Pakistanis were compromised Muslims. What Pakistanis proved on September 21 (last Friday) was that if Arabs in their countries could turn the anti-movie protest into acts of violence by razing property and devouring human lives, Pakistanis were equally […]

One wonders why there was a hullabaloo in the National Assembly (NA) on the arrival of a six-member Working Group of the UN on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on September 9, 2012. Did the visit of the UN delegation injure the patriotism of our parliamentarians? If yes, what about the kill-and-dump policy being practised in […]

Life is a conflict between one’s intent and one’s fate. No one knows this truth better than Pakistanis. Interestingly, Pakistan has also been trying to synchronise its intent with its fate. Regarding its western border, the prevalent intent of Pakistan is based on three main presumptions. First, the military operation in North Waziristan has not […]

Pakistanis are innovative in their field of interest, which currently is politics, after cricket. While Britain’s Westminster system stops at the concept of a shadow cabinet (formed by the Opposition in parliament) to have shadow ministers, Pakistanis have introduced the concept of a ‘shadow prime minister’ (PM) — though still in an inchoate form — […]

Is Pakistan trying to sort itself out? This is a major question one can ask in the light of the prediction made by US President Barack Obama in January 2016 (in his final State of Union address) that, if Pakistan does not reform itself, it would continue to be buffeted by instability for decades. There […]

As words are required to facilitate thought, leaders are required to facilitate politics. Mustafa Kamal, an ex-mayor of Karachi, has presented himself to fill the gap of alternative leadership in the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). In the league forged by Kamal (and backed by Anees Kaimkhani), Karachi may find a respite from violence and salvation […]

Signs are now ubiquitous that the terror-spell casting a shadow on Karachi is dwindling, even if it is not over in absolute terms. The rise of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in the late 1980s, in the name of safeguarding the rights of the mohajir (refugee) community, is on decline. The last ditch efforts undertaken […]

With an increase in the number of electronic media houses, the TV channels have been facing a two-pronged challenge: how to attract more viewers to watch a program and how to keep the viewers glued to the screen. This challenge is shifted onto the shoulders of the anchors and the analysts that are always attached […]

President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain seemed to have some special intelligence reports suggesting that the whole nation was about to rejoice by celebrating Valentine’s Day on February 14. The figure head of Pakistan must have felt something sinister in the offing leaving him with little chance to observe silence and not share his misgivings with […]