ECP issues nomination papers, 400 monitoring teams constituted

 The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) began the issuance of nomination papers for the upcoming elections to the respective candidates on Sunday, DawnNews reported.

Moreover, 400 monitoring teams were also formed to ensure implementation of the newly formed code of conduct for the upcoming elections in the country.

Each team would comprise of two security personnel and two cameras to record the proceedings on polling day.

Details of polling stations located in sensitive areas have been sent to the military authorities who have assured the ECP of full cooperation.

ECP further ordered for the removal of State Bank’s Deputy Governor, Ashraf Mahmood who was accused of non-transparent scrutiny of the candidates, within two day.

The distribution of 120,000 nomination forms had begun from Mar 15 till Mar 18.

According to the election schedule of 2013 issued by the ECP, The final date for the candidates to submit the nomination papers to the Returning Officers is March 29, 2013.

The nomination papers will be scrutinised from March 30 to April 5.

All appeals against these will be accommodated from April 6 to April 9.

The final decision on these appeals will be announced on April 16 whereas the last date for the withdrawal of candidature is April 17.

Musharraf vows to ‘save’ Pakistan on return from exile

Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf returned home on Sunday after more than four years in exile, defying a Taliban death threat and vowing to “save” the country at the risk of his life.
“I have come back home today. Where are those who used to say I would never come back?” the former dictator, who plans to stand in a historic May 11 general election, told members of his political party at Karachi airport.
Hundreds of supporters had gathered at the airport, beating drums, dancing, waving green flags with pictures of Musharraf and Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and scattering rose petals.
“I don’t get scared by anyone except Allah the Almighty… I have come back by putting my life in danger,” Musharraf, who also faces a series of legal cases, told a gathering of his All Pakistan Muslim League.
“I have been ordered by my people to come back and save our Pakistan, even at the risk of my life. I want to tell all those who are making such threats that I have been blessed by Allah the Almighty.”
Musharraf was forced to scrap plans to hold a public rally at Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi after the Taliban threatened to send a squad of suicide bombers to assassinate him.
Party supporters said Musharraf was not now expected to make an address at around 5:00 pm and would leave the airport shortly for an undisclosed destination.
His official Facebook and Twitter accounts provided an upbeat commentary on his return, complete with photographs.
An AFP reporter said supporters on the flight from Dubai shouted “Long live Musharraf”, annoying some of the regular passengers.
Musharraf, who has been granted protective bail to lift the threat of immediate arrest on his return to Pakistan, told reporters before leaving Dubai that he was “not feeling nervous” but admitted some concern.

“I am feeling concerned about the unknown… there are a lot of unknown factors of terrorism and extremism, unknown factors of legal issue, unknown factors of how much I will be able to perform (in the elections),” he said.
One of the legal cases that has long ensnared him concerns the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, three months after she returned to Pakistan from her own self-imposed exile.
The then-ruler is accused of failing to provide her with adequate security.
Another case concerns the 2006 death of Akbar Bugti, a Baloch rebel leader in the southwest, and another relates to the 2007 sacking and arrest of judges.
Bhutto’s son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, has accused Musharraf of his mother’s murder.

Pakistani stock market crosses 17,500 mark for first time

Pakistan’s stock market closed higher on Monday after crossing the 17,500 mark for the first time, partially fueled by gains made in the energy and textile sector as they benefited from a weaker rupee.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index ended 0.40 percent, or 70.60 points, higher at 17,548.54.

The gain was mainly led by the state-run Oil and Gas Development Company, which gained four rupees per share.

Financial services company Jahangir Siddiqui Company saw renewed buying interest in anticipation of better earnings.

Although around 600 companies are listed on the exchange, less than ten percent of them see regular trading. Top companies include state-run oil and gas companies, banking companies and a few textile companies.

Both the oil and gas companies and the textile industry are benefiting from the rupee’s depreciation against the dollar. The energy companies post their profits in dollars, and textile exporters find the rupee’s slide makes their wares more competitively priced internationally.

Pakistan test fires nuclear-capable missile

Pakistan successfully carried out a test fire of the nuclear-capable and short-range ballistic missile Hatf IX (Nasr) on Monday

A statement released by the Inter Services Public Relations  (ISPR) said that the test fire was conducted with successive launches of two missiles from a state of the art multi tube launcher.
The statement further said that Nasr, with a range of 60 km, and inflight maneuver capability can carry nuclear warheads of appropriate yield, with high accuracy.
This quick response system, which can fire a four Missile  Salvo  ensures deterrence against threats in view of evolving scenarios. Additionally Nasr has been specially designed to defeat all known Anti Tactical Missile Defence Systems.

India-Pakistan relations

EVER since Pakistan came into being our mutual relations have seen many troughs and hardly any peaks.

I remember that in the 1950s, when I was a high-school student in Gujranwala, Indian forces were massed on our eastern borders. This compelled our country to get ready for the worst. Senior school students were trained for some kind of a military training just in case a war broke out. Our teachers told us then that India had not sincerely accepted the creation of Pakistan.

How true were my teachers: time and again they were proved right. The major events of 1965 and 1970 proved beyond an iota of doubt that Indian thinking is to harm us in any possible way they could.

The recent events are testimony to that thinking. The Indian rulers cannot stomach anything good coming out of our country but they broadcast the negatives as loud as they possibly can.

In spite of an international agreement they are stopping water flowing through our common rivers and trying to prevent us from getting long-term loans to build dams which we need for our survival.

This is just to mention a few roadblocks recently erected by them. So much so that they have now started showing unhappiness over the good performance of our cricket and hockey players vis-a-vis their own players. Come to think of it, these are only sports whose results could have gone either way.

Rehman Malik admits defeat in unblocking YouTube

After months of effort, sending out innumerable tweets, setting up a special committee and raising the matter in the cabinet and even enjoying four hours of success in the campaign, Interior Minister Rehman Malik finally admitted defeat in having video sharing website YouTube unblocked in Pakistan.

On Thursday, Malik tweeted from his verified account:

    “Dear All; I can only make recommendations to open the UTube and I did so. Accordingly the U tube was unblocked but was re-blocked by the Govt.”

It is the same account from which Malik had tweeted almost a month ago that people should expect a notification on YouTube being unblocked.

That joy was short lived as hours after the site was reopened, it was blocked again.

The orders for that block came from the office of the same person who had ordered it shut on September 18, 2012 – Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.

Business Express: Auditors question contract changes, suspect revenue slippages

Federal auditors have questioned the rationale behind the Economic Coordination Committee’s decision to amend a contract awarded to a private concern for operating the Business Express train service, believing it will cause a loss of Rs2 billion to the national exchequer over a period of five years.

In a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) held here on Wednesday, Acting Auditor General of Pakistan Tanveer Ahmad commented that the basis on which the ECC – the economic decision-making body of the cabinet – reduced revenue share of Pakistan Railways (PR) in Business Express “does not seem reliable”.

The revenue share of PR in the train has been slashed from 88% occupancy to 65%. This will bring down the national carrier’s earnings by Rs1.1 million per day and the loss will reach Rs2 billion for the five-year contract period.

Four Brothers, the operator of the train which was required to pay Rs3.2 million per day to the PR, will now be paying Rs2.1 million, said Arif Azeem, Secretary of the Ministry of Railways, while briefing PAC on the contours of the deal and recent changes made in it.

PR awarded the contract to Four Brothers for running the train between Karachi and Lahore on public-private partnership model with terms that they would pay an amount equivalent to 88% occupancy or Rs3.2 million per day besides investing Rs225.8 million in coaches and locomotives.

PAC members asked whether the ECC had the authority to review the agreement and whether the decision-makers would be questioned by the National Accountability Bureau. But nobody had answers to these questions.

Ex-supporter Jemima Khan says Assange has alienated allies

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange risks turning from a popular hero into an L Ron Hubbard figure, tolerating only “blinkered, cultish devotion”, said one his former backers Jemima Khan.

Jemima is Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s former wife and daughter of the late financier James Goldsmith.

Claiming Assange had alienated his supporters, Jemima, associate editor of the New Statesman, wrote for the weekly British magazine that Assange’s anti-secrecy organisation was now “guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose”.

She compared the Australian to US science-fiction author Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.

Assange has been holed up inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London after losing his battle in the British courts against extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault. Ecuador has granted him political asylum.

Absence of the state

IT is an interesting fact that Karachi has the highest literacy rate in Pakistan, but also the highest rate of political violence. Being the economic hub of Pakistan, Karachi accounts for more than 25 per cent of the country’s GDP, 54 per cent of central government tax revenues, 70 per cent of national income tax revenue and 30 per cent of industrial output.

Contrast this with the fact that in the last three years (2010-2012), about 5,000 people have died in Karachi as a result of targeted killings, according to the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee. The question is: why is Pakistan’s most literate as well as most developed city also its most violent? What explains the descent of Karachi into a cycle of violence and chaos?

This question can be answered by examining the role of ethno-political parties in Karachi as well as the role of the state and its policing powers.

Putting the spate of ethnic violence in Karachi in a conceptual context, one notes that inter-ethnic tensions in the city have to do with the fact that ethnic groups in the metropolis are placed not in a hierarchical/ranked position vis-à-vis each other, but are rather unranked.

Afghan peace talks Pakistan’s urgent priority

Pakistan treats the Afghan peace process as an “urgent priority”, Ambassador Sherry Rehman said on Monday as the US media reported that mistrust among key players had floundered talks with the Taliban.

“Pakistan looks clearly to an Afghan-led roadmap for reconciliation, understands that this is an urgent priority,” said Pakistan’s envoy to the US, rejecting insinuations that Islamabad was trying to delay the talks.

“Pakistan also has shown support at the highest level for any track of dialogue that the Afghans deem important,” she added.

The US media reported on Monday that Mulla Omar has recently made a surprise offer to share power in a post-war Afghanistan. But “mistrust and confusion” among key players had floundered the peace effort, the report added.

The United States hopes to reach some peaceful arrangement for transfer of power in Afghanistan before withdrawing its forces from the country by 2014.

“Although the Taliban appear more ready to talk than ever before, peace talks remain elusive because of infighting among a rising number of interlocutors,” reported the Associated Press, quoting official sources in Kabul.