Politics

On Saturday, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary took suo motu notice against President Asif Ali Zardari’s decision to elevate Lahore High Court Justice Khwaja Sharif to the Supreme Court bench. The Chief Justice had earlier recommended that Justice Saqib Nisar be made a judge of the Supreme Court, and so convened a three-member committee to hear why the government has made different appointments. What impact will another judicial crisis...

Since violence flared in Karachi on Friday, 41 people have died as a result of targeted killings. The upsurge in violence has been attributed to a turf war between rival political parties in the wake of an announcement that local government elections would be held in Sindh within four months. Instead of calling for peace and urging their activists to refrain from violence, the leadership of the three main political parties – the MQM, PPP, and...

US president Barack Hussein Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize 2009, just nine months into his first term in office. As US troops shift gear from action in war-ravaged Iraq to an expected surge in war-torn Afghanistan, questions are being raised whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee has rushed in its praise for Obama’s foreign policy that is yet to be termed a success. While the committee pays tribute to the first black US president for ‘his...

The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) has given the Pakistan People’s Party 48 hours to stop what it describes as a a ‘smear campaign’ against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. With this ultimatum, the tensions between the government and opposition party have come to a head. In recent weeks, the PPP and PMLN have disagreed on the issue of whether Pervez Musharraf should be tried for his actions on November 3, 2007. ‘Revelations’...

On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned convictions against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for plane hijacking and terrorism. ‘Looking at the case from any angle — the charge of hijacking, attempt to hijack or terrorism does not stand established against the petitioner,’ the Supreme Court ruled on a petition filed by Sharif. The PML-N has welcomed the decision and party spokesman Siddiqul Farooq has already announced that the party will...