Unity
Sir,
We regularly hear how the Shia-Sunni split finds its roots in the early years of Islam, and how this rift continues to play out in what is happening in the Middle East. Too often our TV screen are full of all that created rift, but seldom do we ever see or hear what can bring us together as one people. When you get to the depth of the matter, the things that perhaps divide Shias and Sunnis are very few compared to all that unites us. Our faith, our beliefs, the crux of our practices, even our theological sources are more or the less similar. Why is it then that we refuse to bury the past and start fresh.
Perhaps there are academics and intellectuals that can shed light on the matter and prescribe a way forward. But the fact remains, we Muslims need to come together. The sooner the better. Millions have lost their lives over the centuries, just because they did not belong to someone else’s sect. Surely we can understand the folly of our differences and prevent millions more losing their lives as this drama continues to unfold. Our leaders, religious and otherwise, need to come together and preach love instead of hatred, unity instead of division, tolerance instead of extremism. Not only would this help resolve so many conflicts playing out in the world right now, but also benefit us in Pakistan as a nation.
Asad Amir,
Lahore.
Decline
Sir,
An alarming news was reported in your newspaper that for the first quarter of the current fiscal year (2016-17), home remittances dropped by 5.4% as compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2015-16. Home remittances in July-September 2016 amounted to $4.69 billion compared to $4.957 billion in July-September 2015. In other words, home remittances shrank by around two hundred and sixty-seven million dollars for July-Sept 2016 year-on-year. If this much fall in home remittances continues in the forthcoming remaining nine months of this fiscal year, it would mean around $1 billion will be wiped out from home remittances for fiscal year 2016-17. This is a lot of money for Pakistan, which is heavily dependent on home remittances to support its external account. Pakistan has a heavy trade deficit due to increasing imports and falling exports. The trade deficit swelled to $7 billion during July-September 2016. We consume more than we produce. Surprisingly, it seems the country’s economic managers are not really bothered by the issue. When home remittances fell by a whopping 20% in July 2016 as compared to July 2015, I thought this would ring alarm bells for the country’s economic managers, including the State Bank of Pakistan, but we did not see any media reports about any efforts launched by them to find out the reasons for such a steep fall in home remittances for July 2016. Now the latest data shows that home remittances for September 2016 fell by 9.3% as compared to September 2015. This is a very serious matter and needs the urgent attention of the country’s finance minister and State Bank of Pakistan to launch a professional inquiry to find out reasons causing the fall in home remittances and to seek possible solutions to stop this undesirable trend. Some observers have attributed the drop in our home remittances to the Gulf economies, which are slowing down owing to reduction in the crude oil price and thus resulting in thousands of job losses of expatriates, including Pakistanis. I believe this is not the only reason for our shrinking home remittances because crude oil prices, which have more than halved from their peak since the year 2014, are still hovering in the range of $40-to-$50 a barrel. But we did not see the decrease in our home remittances during the last two fiscal years. On the contrary, home remittances for the last two fiscal years increased. It is noteworthy that our remittances from the United States and United Kingdom also fell during July-September 2016, whereas these economies are doing well and are not dependent on high oil prices. So, what are the reasons that caused the drop of 5.4% in home remittances? I believe one main reason for the fall is the slump in the Pakistan real estate market since May 2016 to date. We all know that almost every overseas Pakistani has a dream to own a house in Pakistan. In order to fulfill this dream, overseas Pakistanis send lots of money to buy property with in Pakistan. But now that the government of Pakistan has imposed astronomical taxes on property, overseas Pakistanis have shied away from buying property in Pakistan. There is a clear and strong link between a stable real estate market and home remittances.
Ejaz Ahmad,
Lahore.
Environmental disaster
Sir,
Lahore and other parts of Punjab are enveloped by dust, pollution and hazardous toxicity in suspension, reducing visibility and making life miserable for citizens. Such a dangerous situation would have raised an emergency of an environmental disaster having hit this country, but such issues are of no concern to the government, state and city regulatory agencies, whose job is to take preventive measures to prevent such disasters. This is a dangerous environment for various kinds of lung diseases and could spell problems for those suffering cardiac-related problems, asthmatic patients causing cancer, tuberculosis etc.
For more than two decades, every government starting from Musharraf to Asif Zardari and the present incumbent allowed substandard petrol of RON89 to be imported, although almost every country excluding Pakistan and Somalia had switched to normal petrol RON92-95, which is more environmentally friendly and emits less carbon fumes. The state regulatory authorities have failed to force local car assembly plants to import Euro-5 or Euro-6 emission automobile agencies and instead are importing Euro-2 emission engines, which are no longer allowed in Europe.
It is shocking that our media and parliament are silent on this grave environmental disaster.
A Malik,
Lahore.
Success
Sir,
I am all for the revolution that periodically promises to go beyond Chowk ‘D’. However, in the absence of the great Canadian spirit and all five personae of our salvation – I, me, myself, my mother’s son and Kaptaan – the greatest thrill of the recent non-event was in the bondesque antics of the Sheikh sporting a large cigar, possibly worth a substantial part of an average citizen’s salary. As a taxpaying citizen (a rare breed here), I too stayed in the comfort and safety of my drawing room urging on my fellow burgers (conspicuous by their absence). The media had a field day, egging on the unruly hordes towards another destructive, disastrous, confrontation. We were assured that, like Brexit, this revolution “was going to be a Titanic success!” And then, just like Boris Johnson’s gaffe, it sank abruptly leaving just the rumour mills spinning like cyclones.
Quite what possessed the Supreme Court to jump into the fray today, an exercise they assiduously avoided during the last abortive revolution and till now, is a matter of great discourse. For the sake of what’s left of the country one is grateful for the intervention. Whatever the conclusion of the exercise, one just hopes they do not end up receiving the same flak that has hit the Crown High Court’s Brexit ruling, throwing the problem back into the lap of Parliament where it rightly belonged and where it should have been handled a long time ago.
Apart from the media hype and some politicians who must be, presumably free of sin and ready to cast the first stone, criticism of Nawaz Sharif remains relatively muted. From their tax records and the occasional election commission release of assets, mostly at gross variance from their visible profile, a significant number of our otherwise baying-for-blood leaders seem near worthy of charity. Unsurprisingly, they would hardly want what goes around to come around. Another good reason for Pakistan to keep lurching uncertainly into the future, with our leaders making mountains out of molehills; ignoring progressively deleterious manifestations of ground reality, just in order to maintain the status quo.
Dr Mervyn Hosein,
Karachi.
Fraud
Sir,
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Sirajul Haq has said elections in four major parties during the last week, in which the leaders of said parties all got elected unopposed, were a big fraud in the name of democracy and it should be an eye opener for the masses.
There is no reasonable, transparent and fair mechanism of elections in our country for choosing representative in parties. The last report published by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) about internal democracy within the political parties of the country ranked JI as the most democratic, while ruling PML-N as the least democratic. This is not a healthy sign for strong and sustainable democracy. The internal structure of our national political parties, including religious parties, is based on autocracy and monarchy. These parties never allowed the people to elect representatives within their parties.
Mansoor Ahmed,
Faisalabad.
Game of egos
Sir,
All this hype about the Almeida story, the contents of which were known much before the story was published, is a “much a’do about nothing”. This alleged leak should not have originated from the PM media cell dominated by cronies and is another mistake, just like the tweet issued when the Iranian president was in the country. Dissemination of information by the state should be left to qualified and experienced professionals.
The biggest betrayal of national interest and state security was committed when power hungry individuals chose to abandon the vision of the Father of the Nation that Pakistan be a modern democratic welfare state, where the will of the people reigned supreme and all institutions must serve people and improve their quality of life. Instead, what happened was power-hungry individuals shredding his vision to pieces. As a consequence, we are in a vicious cycle going from one crisis to another. This country has suffered dismemberment and yet we are not willing to learn any lessons from history.
The solution to Pakistan’s problems is undiluted democracy where every individual or state institution submits to the rule of law, strict accountability and nobody is allowed to abuse power or have any conflicts of interest. For any state to survive, it is imperative that other than state-controlled disciplined militia, nobody should be allowed to form private militias. On the day when PTI activists were being hounded under the umbrella of Section 144, extremist organizations, some of them proscribed, were allowed to hold a rally in Islamabad. My question is whether this policy conforms to the Quaid’s and Allama Iqbal’s vision?
The manner in which Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari, Musharraf, Zia, Yahya and Ayub have abused, plundered and tormented this country is there for all of us to see and make amends. NS and AZ must be made accountable for institutionalized corruption, but so must Musharraf and his likes, who lead lives of luxury. Can anybody explain that other than petty political exigencies, what has prevented Musharraf from condemning Altaf Hussain when he made that hate speech in a seminar conducted by an Indian media outlet at Delhi in 2005, where he termed the creation of Pakistan the biggest mistake in history.
Tariq Ali,
Lahore.
Tears
Sir,
This refers to the photograph of Bilawal Bhutto, the PPP chairman, talking to journalists after visiting the injured in the gun-suicide attack on a police training college in Quetta, when he couldn’t control his emotions and burst into tears while remembering his mother Benazir Bhutto, who became a victim of terrorists in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. The tears of the young PPP leader were not for her martyred mother only, but for thousands of those how have lost their lives due to the madness of a few fanatic extremists. By showing his emotions and shedding tears, Bilawal Bhutto very bravely has conveyed a message to the world and to terrorists that the loving memory of those who became victims of their brutality and barbaric acts shall always remain alive in our hearts and minds, and the time is not very far when these terrorists will have to repay every drop of blood of our loved ones. In clear words, the tears of Bilawal told the world that we the citizens of Pakistan are peace loving people with soft hearts and love for our fellow human beings. Like his grandfather ZAB and mother BB, he too didn’t try to hide his emotions and sentiments, being a human being he must have felt deep grief after visiting the young cadets of the police training college and the memory of the daughter of the East, his mother, must have revisited him. I wish our leaders show courage like Bilawal and instead of issuing mere statement.
Aamir Aqil,
Lahore.
Renewable energy
Sir,
Pakistan has been facing power shortage for the last many years. Kalabagh Dam was a proposed hydroelectric dam with a capacity of 3,600MW and could have minimized the energy crisis. Unfortunately, it was not constructed due to political conflict and opposition from smaller provinces. The present PML-N government has been working on small, medium and long-term projects to meet the country’s energy requirement. We hope and pray for the success of the government with regards to fulfilling their promise to the nation to overcome the energy shortage.
Renewable energy is collected from resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy technologies are getting cheaper through technological change, the benefits of mass production and market competition. Developed countries have already made immense progress to get clean energy from the renewable energy sector. Under developed countries have also started different projects to promote the usage of environment friendly energy for the survival of mankind. The renewable energy sector is a relatively underdeveloped sector in Pakistan. There have been some efforts to build solar power, wind power and tidal power plants. There is a dire need to launch more projects to tap the renewable energy potential in Pakistan.
Mansoor Ahmed,
Faisalabad.
PSL 2.0
Sir,
After the success first edition, the second edition of HBL Pakistan Super League (PSL) is going to be held in Dubai and Sharjah from February 9, 2017. This time again five teams will battle for the winner’s trophy. And the number of matches has been increased from 16 to 18; the grand opening ceremony will be on February 9, 2017 followed by the first match of the season. PSL Chairman Najam Sethi has declared that this year the final will be played in Lahore on March 7, 2017, which can pave the way for the return of international cricket to the country. With the exception of the Zimbabwean team’s visit last year, all other international teams have refused to visit Pakistan. Sethi ‘s plan is appreciable as this would help promote a positive image of the country that could clear the way for the return of international cricket in Pakistan.
Sanaullah Samad,
Turbat.