After learning a valuable lesson following the Parliamentary Debate on the Accountability Bill, which has been categorically pigeonholed after three years of futile debate, the government decided to avoid stalling tactics such as taking a bill to the Parliament floor and passing it via presidential promulgation instead. The most recent of which is the suspension of article 111 of the Income Tax Ordinance which allows officials to tax income, assets and investment of a person whose nature and source are unexplained. This translates into a motion whereby the Federal Board of Revenue will not ask investors about the source of capital they trade with on the Stock Market for 120 days, making it possible for Pakistan’s 34 billion dollar black market to whiten itself overnight. Thus no question raised, investors will be allowed to trade with all they have for motives thus detailed.
The beginning of the U.N. observer mission to Syriaheralds a new phase in more than a year of upheaval across the country. Success, however unlikely, could open the door to some form of dialogue between the regime and its opponents. But such is the polarization in Syria that most analysts see the mission as the least worst option before violence sets the agenda again.
Pakistan at present suffers from the worst energy crisis history has ever recorded. The economy is becoming increasingly dependent on imported petroleum products with an alarming 86% reliance on imported oil. With gas shortages to power plants, insufficient hydro-electricity generation plants and bureaucratic red tape to thermal power projects, currently Pakistan experiences a shortfall of approximately 5700 MW. Industries and businesses have started to collapse from the unbearable input costs.
Just when the Raymond Davis fiasco was subsiding the CIA launched a Drone attack on a tribal gathering of elders in the open on a bright sunny day. The rage and hate that this generated ensured that the Davis affair would never go away. Just when the US-Pakistan relationship was about to move forward the retiring US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen decided to sing his swan song with the refrain that the ISI was a veritable arm of the Taliban thereby jump starting the convergence on ‘sticking it’ to the Pakistan military and the ISI— and the US media, already loaded for bear, declared open season on Pakistan. Just when there was a respite the US covertly recruited Pakistanis to work for it and then carried out a unilateral attack deep inside Pakistan to kill Osama bi Laden. Just when Pakistan had begun to cope with this situation there was the obviously deliberate and unprovoked more than hour long attack on a Pakistani border post killing 24 soldiers. Just as Pakistan began to reconsider the US-Pakistan relationship a US Congressman suddenly woke up to become the champion of what he called the ‘freedom struggle’ in what he called ‘Balukistan’. Finally even as Pakistan civil and military leaders were meeting the US proceeded to slap a $10 million bounty on a Pakistani head of a religious organization and then proceeded to admit that the man had not been indicted and that there was no actionable intelligence available to confirm that he was a terrorist. The fact that a US official made the bounty announcement in Delhi in a syrupy speech that endeared her to her Indian hosts made it a certainty that the bounty stratagem would be rejected by Pakistan.
The vibes from the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Zardari are excellent. The Indian establishment choreographed the event just fine. No grandstanding, no rhetoric, no rush into self-righteousness. Most important, there is hope that high-level meetings in future may become ‘routine’, frequent affairs.
