The Daily Pakistan Politics Dec1-15, 2016

• Dec15-2016--while anyone can say whatever they want inside the national assembly the speaker says they cannot talk about a matter that is subjudice...The PTI returned to the national assembly and started calling the primeminister a crook after the speaker refused to allow them to address the assembly...The opposition leader called the new CJ a PMLn man...the speaker again objected to that..?The national assembly speaker has lost his earlier reputation as an honest custodian...!
  
• Dec15-2016--pakistan tests another version of its 700 kms solid state cruise missile...It now apparently has several parameters recognition and should theoretically be more accurate...while not much is known about whether pakistan has deployed its cruise missiles or not...one wonders if all the previous ones will be scrapped and replaced or will just be modified..
  
• Dec15-2016--The pakistan army seemingly has made a mess of major generals just lying around ...there are several superceded major generals without an appointment while there are at least seven major generals(not yet superceded) without appointments...two out of the very junior major generals were transferred and appointed as Director Rangers Sindh and IG FC Balochistan which these days are key appointments...Mohd Saeed already in Sindh became DG Rangers Karachi and Nadeem Anjum became IG FC Balochistan...there are now 64 superceded major generals...!That leaves only one appointment pending that of the DG ISPR...the army chief also reiterated that Dr Asim will be tried/mqm london not tobe tolerated... and there will be no going back on as he says gains of the previous era...?
  
• Dec14-2016--grenade thrown at NP office during a meeting in Turbat
  
• Dec14-2016--The new army chief many suggest might literally be scraping the barrel in terms of manpower after he superceded another twenty four major generals showing the paucity of executive talent...most of those superceded included some brilliant officers...his corp commanders conference would show an almost entirely new set of commanders and PSO's with only four Raheel Shareef era corp commanders surviving the change...what many are commenting on is the allocation of key portfolio's to the two from karachi...the inexperienced Bilal Akber has been foisted on the army as CGS after a political roughhousing in karachi...while the karachi corp commander is now the ISI chief...if the karachi scenario is tobe repeated the generals might start meddling in Lahore in the same way or even in islamabad...!however Bajwa suggested that he might start from peshawar and try to cut the nexus between urban facilitators and rural terrorists...suggesting that the taleban had not all run away..?...and that theh Zarb e Azb was not the success that it was touted tobe...!! While punjab has kept up its pressure on any terrorism it is still not too popular with minorities which might be closer to the Bajwa frame of mind...Dawn also suggests that the Quetta corp commander might have fallen from grace after playing up to Raheel Shareef...they also suggest that the corp commander might have been medically degraded...in that case he should have been shifted to a cosy desk job in the GHQ or retired...!!
  
• Dec14-2016--no information has been provided yet on the PIA ATR crash...french experts visited the site alongwith those of the engine makers...with the pilot only having made a mayday before losing all control and communications it is doubtful that it was only an engine problem..some suggest that it might have been attacked in the air while others suggest a blast either due to engine trouble or a blowing up of the cockpit...!the wreckage depicts some big parts and a lot of very small pieces suggestive of a blast in the air...the cockpit has not yet been shown so it could have been blownup too...given the abbottabad-Ossama scenario many suggest that a US plane/drone could have sneaked in and shot down the plane for fun...others suggest that the pakistanis have handed over the entire corridor to the chinese who might have accidentally shot down the plane...still others suggest that a newly placed defensive land based system might have shot down the plane...still other rumours suggest that a taleban encampment in the hills might be responsible...a still remoter possibility maybe the pilot being a suicide bomber...in some of the recent airplane mishaps terrorist pilots have been blamed..still remoter the army may have eliminated philanthropist JJ as a terrorist facilitator...!!
  
• Dec12-2016--three provinces face upto 16 hours of electricity outages as the 500KV line tripped during heavy fog conditions which have spread upto multan
  
• Dec12-2016--a navy that could not detect an indian submarine moving around its sea coast to get near Gwadar and than did not even fire at it now says that they will provide security to Gawadar...Gawadar theoretically is inside a pocket where few ships venture and there is obviously no threat from india despite a perceived animosity...The Navy theoretically is supposed to protect the entire sea coast
  
• Dec12-2016--The army chief quickly allotted portfolio's to the armies new Lieutenant Generals after he was generally being blamed for moving slowly...his choices are vastly different many suggest than raheel shareefs...he probably slotted in some of his personal favorites or those who had worked with him...some choices could be looked at with queries...eg would a DG(welfare), DG FWO or a DG admin really be deserving of a promotion...?...the only similarity might be Bilal Akber who got his men shot at and killed in karachi...many noticed how soldiers used vehicles for non official purposes and got shot at?...while Bilal Akber may now be a frontrunner for the next army chief's position as CGS he might have some competition from Sher Afghan or even Sarfraz Sattar...The other key appointment is that of Naveed Mukhtar as DG ISI whose predecessor moved to the NDU...corp commander peshawar was replaced by Nazir Butt from NDU who took over bajwa's previous assignment...the hollywood drama queen Saleem Bajwa was also transferred to IG arms....he probably left his films and drama's venture undone...a new ISPR chief and karachi rangers chief have not been announced which are the army chiefs other key subordinates...The new eight Lt Generals will be the only ones in the run for the next army chief's position as all other senior generals will retire during Bajwa's tenure...!while the ISPR position had been upgraded by Raheel Shareef there is no Lt general without a posting so a major general will probably get the job...There seems tobe a new IG for communication and information technology which could include ISPR
  
• Dec11-2016--Another ATR faced problems and was grounded in multan...one had already been grounded...a crash usually makes pilots jittery and they start following the rules...however reports of some sort of sabotage continue making the rounds...with some suggesting a ground attack while others suggest happenings inside the plane...The ATR is a french plane manufactured in indonesia...one remembers Benazir announcing the purchase of ATR's on a trip to indonesia in 1996...!!
  
• Dec11-2016--CJ Anwar Zaheer Jamali says he has refused to decide a case which is almost crystal clear inits contents suggesting he refuses to please a particular politician or the media..that will leave the case for the next CJ who can appoint a totally new panel to rehear the case...There are precedents in pakistani legal history of a dubious sort in which a new judge is announced as a replacement and a rehearing has not taken place...It will all depend on the legal sense of the next CJ Saqib Nisar..The present CJ seemed to seek the compliance of the two parties in his decision which many feel is not the right way...If he wanted to announce an effective commission he could have under the SC rules that a decision of the commission would be implementable...All the various permutations of the case have already been presented and the court cannot have asked for more information to decide the case...if a law did not exist than the court should not have taken up the case...The next panel should ask the PTI under what law it wants it to decide the case and than announce its decision depending on what it thinks of the evidence...There is enough evidence to go around removing the sharif family and probably Imran khans from being able to participate in any future elections...The court just could go so far as to tell the ECP that it cannot rehear cases that it has already decided and should wait for the next elections for any further perusal of fact or fiction...The suggestions of self accountability are valid but one has rarely seen any judge resign because of that and politicians like Nawaz Sharif who have never had any love for honesty are not even supposed to do that...therefore the court has an obligation to the people above the constitution...even islamic shariah has a history of some sort of accountability for the rulers who here literally mock the judiciary and any sort of accountability of their own...
  
• Dec11-2016--An unknown colonel becomes the mayor of Lahore to the surprise of even PMLn wala's...!
  
• Dec10-2016--with the SC chief justice retiring it was announced that the SC will rehear Panamagate arguments in the case in January after a new judge joins the bench...Justice Saqib Nisar to head the SC...many suggest that SC also should decide whether the PPP and MQM can have their own shaheeds and whether the PPP can criticize the SC for not letting of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto but is willing to let off the entire sharif family in cases openly looking corruption oriented...if the the SC judges cannot add two and two than they should not hear politico criminal cases...the entire information has been presented to the courts and they still cant make up their minds about a simple matter...whether there is an exact similarity between Arsalan Iftikhar and Hussein Nawaz is literally something that a judge should be able to do...on the other hand the PTI said that there was no point in commissions having seen the results of the east Pakistan and Abbottabad commissions and that the court should be able to decide the matter...The court on the other hand suggests that they are only able to believe in the politicians belief in their right to adjudicate and there seem no laws on how to declare an entire family of sharif's corrupt and politically incompetent...!they apparently says the PTI lawyer had no difficulty in sentencing Bhutto to death despite not even a direct connection with the process...!
  
• Dec10-2016--The army chief seems biased against corp based officers not associated with him...as rumours mounted of the slow paced army chief and resignations increased...the vacancies mounted too...with five Lt.generals having resigned and another two seemingly also wanting to go home...for a Lt. General not seeing a possibility to become a general almost ends a military career...the promotion of seven major generals also seemed to show extreme bias...either the men were previously associated with Bajwa or were from deskbound innocuous jobs...some did have tribal experience in the past...however another 24 major generals were superceded including some who had a good reputation but were probably not close to the army chief...key appointments such as the ISI chief and CGS have also not yet been announced...the unfit pudgy looking Karachi Rangers chief was also promoted despite having a somewhat patchy record of achievements...this is the third Karachi Rangers chief tobe promoted...another FC balochistan chief was promoted despite continuous problems in balochistan...putting it mildly the Karachi rangers chief and the DG FWO chiefs promotion seems tobe political...usually promotions include a DGMO or DGMI but this time both missed out...corp commander Rawalpindi has been replaced by Nadeem Raza and multan corp garnered Sarfraz Sattar...Zafar Iqbal has been shifted to DG JSHq...several key corps are now headed by new appointees...this seems a time of major upheavals in the army and political world with Nawaz Sharif having barely delayed a SC verdict against his family corruption...several foreign policy disasters and almost total isolation in the Islamic world...with the USA continuously blaming us for its indian and afghan problems...
  
• Dec8-2016--PIA's ATR crashes near Havelian killing all those on board including Junaid Jamshed and his wife...a flight from chitral to islamabad...given the tensions and the major changes in the army that has raised many question marks...!
  
• Dec7-2016--according to the internet listings five Lt.Generals have retired after the promotion Of Bajwa to the position of army chief...That will leave the army short of at least six-seven Lt. Generals and at least five or six major generals will have tobe promoted...The internet also suggested that Lt General Shahid Baig Mirza who was the military secretary has been transferred from the GHQ to the karachi corp...The senior most Lt General is now the Engr's Khalid Asghar while Lt General Mazhar has been transferred to the Strategic Arms Division before which he was the military secretary...vacant posts in the GHQ are mounting...many are suggesting that the Karachi corp commander Naveed Mukhtar might endup as the ISI chief...!with a possible mohajir being appointed as Karachi corp commander after the literal political mayhem in karachi...The army chief apparently has supposedly discussed key appointments and promotions with Nawaz Sharif...with so many positions vacant in the GHQ most senior generals will have tobe moved there...Lt gen Ghayur Mahmood has been appointed as military secretary from Chief of Logistics...corp commander peshawar could endup as CGS...usually the army chief discusses the positions with the officers before the transfers or appointments are made...most officers have a personal choice and Bajwa could obviously differ with raheel shareef choices/decisions/thinking/suggestions...the primeminister could also have an input in appointments such as ISI chief and CGS etc...Raheel Shareef had given key appointments to the newly promoted however most of them were coming off key appointments in the terrorist counter struggle
  
• Dec6-2016--while the Indians are thought to be better thinkers they have a poor record with pakistan...while they don't care what hurts Pakistan and how they treat the hapless Kashmiris...they blame us for reactions inside occupied kashmir...if Pakistan can do that than they must be really brave and capable militarily...many think they are not Pakistani state orchestrated...!however with Indians unable to do the math on this score..they also suggest that Kashmiris fighting for liberation from their yolk are terrorists too...!since Nawaz Sharif is the foreign minister one wonders why he sends the pathetic Sartaj Aziz to the hearts of Asia meet in Amritsar...!with the Indians acquiring 41-kilometer artillery, Pakistan too must study the long-range artillery pieces which are being fast-tracked for delivery by our supposed friends/enemies the USA...!The Indians must really think that our embassy is a hive of very capable spies as they harass them on a daily basis...they even refused to allow the sorry faced Basit and Sartaj to meet the press...!...!
  
• Dec6-2016--the new army chief approves four terror-related death sentences amongst which one is Ata ur Rehman the head of LJ, sindh...supposedly he had achieved the status as head of religious-allied militants in Karachi and had tried to shift LJ from being a totally anti-Shiite group...the military death sentences now number 140 with 96 life sentences...supposedly this is also one of the reasons behind the appointment of Bajwa as other Lt generals opposed the death sentence/military courts syndrome propagated by Raheel Shareef...military courts are to end next month and whether the army chief has asked for their continuation it is surmised..!whenever an army chief meets the prime minister it is not usually for seeking his signature..it usually is about making a personal or army demand about something...since the only issues at the moment are the LOC and the ending of military courts...many feel that sending someone like Raheel Shareef to the heart of Asia meet would have been more credible than the occasional foreign minister Sartaj Aziz...many heads of state attended the heart of Asia meet suggesting that Nawaz Sharif is apparently frightened to show his face in India...!many suggest that the army chief may have requested the appointment of a full-time foreign minister, the extension in military courts as well as acquiring the latest artillery pieces to match the Indians...Sartaj Aziz is suspected of having been fooled by the Indians and Iranians and has no policy on many of the issues of the region and the Islamic world...
  
• Dec6-2016--Balochistan government announces the elimination of Jehangir Badini alias Ameer Saheb as the mastermind of the Quetta civil hospital suicide attack...earlier the army chief and prime minister had blamed ISIS and anti CPEC forces who they identified as Indians...they named the suicide bomber as Ahmed Ali...the Balochistan interior minister named the Afghanistan NDS and Indians behind the bombing...supposedly an anti-Shiite group who are not known to work for the Indians at least...the suicide bomber was identified after DNA tests although that is theoretically not possible as there is no DNA database
  
• Dec6-2016--Quaid e Azam university physics dept named after Dr Abdus Salam...Nawaz Sharif these days seems under the influence of ahmadis...coming on the heels of naming a supposed Ahmadi as the army chief and an ahmedi finance minister...!!!...while Abdus Salam being a Nobel laureate is deserving of the honour it has taken five decades for the government to recognize that...maybe he should have climbed a mountain...given the government's love for over achievers that does seem out of character...Ahmadis have been touting Salam and a former foreign minister for ages...religious groups have been opposing Ahmadis as non-Muslims as they claim to have their own prophet...!
  
• Dec6-2016--a fire at an upmarket Karachi hotel leaves 12 dead including five doctors attending a meeting on immunisation
  
• Dec6-2016--The chakarbaaz sharifs are now starting to unveil their chakry foreign investments...many suggest that at the very minimum the SC should declare the recipients of Panama funds Shahbaz and Nawaz sharif and Hussein Nawaz /Mariam Nawaz as ineligible to participate in politics in the future...Imran Khan too unveils how he came to be gifted a Jemima Khan property...!The SC CJ is to retire on Dec15 and the case may end up in another CJ's court although both lawyers suggest that the CJ windup or decide the case by Dec15 before heading home for good...On the other hand former CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry says that the SC is not a secure place for the bullet-proof vehicle that he is using...an IHC judge had ordered him to hand over the vehicle..!
  
• Dec5-2016--Pakistan allocates $500 million for afghan aid despite the afghans and the Indians being in cahoots against pakistan..Sartaj Aziz obviously a bit mentally depreciated as the people of Afghanistan hardly matter...it is only governments that handle such issues...terrorism is a local issue and despite there being some central Asian components Pakistan does not turn against those countries...Pakistan should realise that regional meetings are at best a political forum for animosity propagation...Pakistan should work on matters bilaterally as regional forums rarely solve anything...Pakistan should have stayed away as there is literally nothing to gain from sitting down with Indians anywhere..
  
• Dec5-2016--12 killed in Tirah airstrikes..the military position is that militants from Bara generally having an interest only in local area militancy and control have set up in Rajgal an area near the afghan border after being driven out of Bara by the military
  
• Dec5-2016--Javed Khanani falls to his death from his under construction building...?
  
• Dec4-2016--india has taken to harassing the Pakistan embassy staffers...now they have to fill in forms to withdraw their salaries and explain their expenditures and exchange their dollars at the same bank which has a lower exchange rate
  
• Dec4-2016--Baleeghur Rehman minister of state for the interior says that military courts no longer needed...a Seraiki he was until recently minister of religious affairs i think...his sudden unannounced emergence in the interior ministry and the sudden leaving for England of the interior minister Chaudhry Nisar might be some sort of major change in the slow-moving Nawaz Sharif cabinet....that caused the sudden return of Chaudhry Nisar who came home without hernia surgery within three days
  
• Dec4-2016--the price of an egg has risen to Rs.11 in karachi...the government is urged to see that prices of chicken, roti, sugar, milk, eggs and pulses/daals don't skyrocket as along with onions and potatoes they are still the staple since vegetables are no longer cheap...!bread which used to be available for 50 paisa's in the 1960's now costs Rs70...a roti also costs upto Rs10...
  
• Dec4-2016--In what is largely seen as a joke given the PPP's lacklustre support levels Bilawal Zardari says he will be prime minister in 2018 and have his own party president as well...he does however seem to know how to smile in his selfie with the celebrity Paris Hilton...!!crybabies donot get elected in Pakistan many suggest...!however the mqm breakaway faction PSP also thinks that it has a chance in punjab...that is even funnier...!
  
• Dec3-2016--three mqm-London men have been indicted in the murder in London of Imran Farook a former mqm secretary general...many had opined the involvement of Altaf Hussein's security guards and bookies or even Sikhs...!Mohd Anwar is said to be a former mqm head of its terrorism wing while Iftikhar Hussein is an Altaf Hussein relative while Kashif Kamran is said to be one of the assailants...!
  
• Dec3-2016--The prime minister and all recent army chiefs have a high interest in facial enhancement...showing their deep narcissistic tendencies...The freshly peeled new army chief arrived at the LOC and told troops to retaliate swiftly and severely to any Indian violations...This after the Indians refused any interest in talks...!The US also appeared to intervene in the conflict in an unfriendly manner by supplying India 140 artillery guns with a 40 km range...Obama showed his anti-Pakistan animosity by agreeing to supply two guns over the weekend...the use of such guns in the conflict could spark a war...there is nowhere that the Indians can use such guns apart from the Kashmir valley and the only target is the Pakistan army...!The Indian sounding Pakistani ambassador retorted that they could wait several years for any talks...Pakistan should many suggest agree to back Khalistan and Kashmiri rebels openly as they are both wars of liberation
  
• Dec2-2016--in what is a clear repudiation of the governments pro shiite policies maulani Mansoor Nawaz Jhangvi won a byelection in Jhang PP-78 after maulana ludhianvi backed out...he is the son of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi who was hanged by the Zia government...the government has been fighting LJ rebels all over the country who despite being a small group have literally run circles around teh military and government security services...The LJ was an offshoot of teh SSP and all three related organizations SSP, LJ and ASWJ have been banned...however the government has allowed similar shiite organizations to function...The PMLn has usually been the main opponent in the area but has fallen afoul over its government policies...
  
• Dec1-2016--many suggest that the Sharifs have been able to fool the SC on the matter of the London flats...while they acquired and used the flats since 1993 they now are suggesting that they only got possession in 2006...there is even an old Mrs Nawaz Sharif statement suggesting that they had bought the flats in the early 90's when their children wanted a place to stay during educational activities...!
  
• Dec1-2016--Rumours on the media suggested that one of the new army generals had a meeting with Husain Nawaz...the timing is not known...whether the meeting had anything to do with Panamagate, military appointments or suggestions that a million dollars would be a welcome donation for them too...others suggest that the meeting caused a wild swing in the appointment of the new army chief as political leaders became involved in the matter...others suggest that the general may have wanted to know where the millions were coming from..? others suggest that army officers flush with cash wanted to invest in his Hedge fund for higher returns...! Raheel Shareef's 80 million donation of his perks to the Shuhada foundation showed the unrealistically high levels of perks enjoyed by military officers...many also object to the military associated propaganda related to normal job activities of the army chief...in such activities talking to victims of terrorism is supposed to be an act that civilians or the prime minister cannot do effectively or avoid doing...prime ministers and even former army chiefs have avoided reaching out immediately to terror/ disaster ridden victims...many of whom feel that they have been hard done by...Raheel Shareef was always on the ball taking no time in getting to any problem area while the primrminister waited for security clearances...!