Ch Parvez Elahi Address at Enthusiastic PML Workers Convention 2017

Entire nation should offer collective prayer like for rain for ouster of the rulers, patients are told to come to hospital bringing cot, bed, medicine from home: Address at enthusiastic workers convention

Pakistan Muslim League (PML) senior central leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Ch Parvez Elahi has said the nation will get riddance of incompetent rulers if whole of opposition is united, for their ouster entire nation needs to arrange for offering collective “dua” like was done for rain. Addressing a very big quite enthusiastic Workers Convention in Gujranwala today, he said that during our tenure even poor patient was taken to the hospital on ambulance where free medicines were provided to him even injecting costing up to Rs 10 thousand was also given free, but now the patient is told to come to the hospital along with cot, bed and medicines from home. He said that there are neither beds nor medicines in the hospitals now, patients are breathing last lying on cold floor, Shehbaz Sharif has not been able to start our established 1122 Service even after ruling the Punjab for 15 years, we had provided free education up to matric, undertaken unparalleled works for welfare and well-being of the people of all fields including farmers and workers and provided revolutionary facilities, our established Wazirabad Cardiology Hospital is not being allowed to become functional due to personal ego by Shehbaz Sharif due to which so far more than 8 thousand persons hailing from Gujranwala and adjoining areas have died due to heart attacks, Shehbaz Sharif “suffers from blood pressure on seeing plaques of my tenure, he should remove plaques of my name but should not block projects of peoples’ welfare because our plaque is in the heart of the people”, if overhead bridge was being constructed in Lahore instead of Gujranwala it would have been completed long ago, Punjab allocated budget is being spent on show off and dollars making projects in Lahore.   Continuing, he said that N-League has the greatest enmity with the farmers, Kisan Package was announced in the name of Patwari Package, “I earnestly appeal to every Pakistan to stay away from N-League in the next election otherwise even future generations will not forgive them.” Ch Parvez Elahi asked the opposition to brush aside personal ego and go together unitedly and Almighty Allah will bless them with “barkat in their work”, N-League will run away and prestige of opposition will be enhanced. He pointedly stated that whichever scheme was started during our tenure is still functional, we were providing job opportunities to ten lakhs people every year, Shehbaz Sharif had started 9 schemes all of which have failed, Nandipur power Project, Bahawalpur Solar Power Project and Sahiwal projects all have failed, what other cities of Punjab will get from Orange Line, people do not need show off projects like jangla bus, they need medicines in hospitals and education in schools, N-League people are involved in Panama Case, all those who were mentioned in this case had resigned but they are sticking to the chair for last six months. He said that we had started Sialkot-Lahore Motorway on which two foreign universities were also to be established which were shifted to India because of their incompetency, incompetent Chief Minister has put Punjab under heavy debt of Rs 2000 billion. Paying rich tributes to active colleagues, he said that our party needs workers like Zain Ali Bhatti. The Convention was also addressed by Tariq Bashir Cheema, Ch Zaheeruddin and Khawaja Waqarul Hassan while those seated on the stage on this occasion included Muhammad Basharat Raja, Zain Ali Bhatti, Bao Rizwan, Mian Imran Masood, Tanveer Azam Cheema, Col (R) Abbas, Hussain Elahi, Zubeida Ehsan, Irfan Ehsan, Ch Zulfiqar Pappan, Haji Shakir Mobeen, Ch Nasir Inayat Sira advocate, Engineer Shehzad Ali and other party leaders. Earlier on arrival at the venue Ch Parvez Elahi was enthusiastically welcome by chanting of loud slogans and showering on flower petals. Convention participants kept raising repeatedly slogans of Ch Shujat Hussain, Moonis Elahi, Pakistan Muslim League Zindabad and Go Nawaz Go. Venue of the convention was packed to capacity and large number of women were also seated on nearby houses roofs

It is unfortunate that the Sino-Pak friendship is being questioned

If the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) wasn’t already an enigma, the recent debates regarding its pros and cons have muddled this into an even bigger mess. On one hand, there are the knockers who didn’t shy away from labelling it as the future East India Company (EIC), and on the other, we have the blind patriots – the ones that hold CPEC at the highest level of sanctity, that merely questioning the transparency regarding CPEC’s projects amounts to treason for them.

Undoubtedly, these directionless debates have a lot to do with the suspicion and political sensitivity created by the government around the CPEC framework. However, to me, both prevalent views are far-fetched and perilous to national interests.

At first, to equate China’s role, within the context of the CPEC project, with that of EIC is simply an embellishment. Such an over-statement has been countered by various writers in recent days, rather successfully. And quiet evidently, a strict comparison of both is fallacious and misplaced for the simple reason that the days of claiming ‘EIC is like colonialism’ are long gone. Since Pakistan was in a weak state, China’s investment should have been welcomed. China already has deep pockets, thus one should not expect the country to take anything away from us, the way the EIC robbed the subcontinent of its resources.


However, the EIC analogy cannot be completely disregarded. The days of colonialism might be past us, yet, states no longer employ the weapons of the colonial era to subjugate other states, as capitalism now does it for them. In the words of Kwame Nkrumah,


“Capitalism is but the gentlemen’s way of slavery.”

For a state to thrive in this era of capitalism, its financial independence is integral. When a state is financially dependent on another, the way our country was on Saudi Arabia and the United States, that is when a phenomena like that of the EIC in the subcontinent occurs.

Nevertheless, it is the second view that seems more precarious. Nonsensical patriots, who are trying to make CPEC a sacred cow, are forgetting that it is not China’s gift via the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government to the people of Pakistan. If that were the case, then there would be nothing to ponder over. But to our dismay, most of the projects under CPEC are loans which we, the public exchequer, will have to pay back. Unfortunately, the mysterious CPEC framework agreement has not been revealed yet, thereby, we do not know about the terms and conditions encircling the proposed $51 billion investment. In the words of the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan,


“I don’t know out of $46 billion [in CPEC deals] how much is debt, how much is in equity, and how much is in kind.”

Thus, turning a blind eye to the whole thing is not patriotism, but on a very conservative scale, it is imprudence.

Both the views advanced in the CPEC debate have been poles apart. Ignoring the fact that we as a nation are currently facing a paradox – where on one hand, there is the necessity for such an extravagant investment in our country and on the other, the fear of subjugation at the expense of such an investment.

The antidote for this problem lies with the government, who is primarily responsible for the smooth and uncontroversial functioning of the corridor projects. Unfortunately, the PML-N government has made this matter more ambiguous by building a smokescreen around the CPEC framework agreement. Secondly, and more recently, the ignorance towards Public Procurement Rules in CPEC projects means that the impetus for speculations has been renewed. There is an inherent need for the government to step up and put an end to all the speculations by implying transparency in the CPEC projects.

It is unfortunate that the Sino-Pak friendship is being questioned at a time where a collaboration between the two friendly states is at an unprecedented high – the reason being the lack of transparency around this collaboration. Thus, an onus also lies on the Chinese counterparts as well; they must realise that giving loans through backdoor channels won’t help their cause. For the success of their ‘One Belt One Road’ plan, of which CPEC is an integral part, they need to make sure that the people of Pakistan are engaged and given a sense of ownership in the corridor. The US-Pakistan relationship must serve as a lesson to be learnt – despite the fact that the US injected billions of dollars into Pakistan over the last decade, they were still disliked as a country.

For now, as a nation, we have to redeem ourselves from this state of disunity and realise that by labelling CPEC as a form of colonialism, or making it contentious, might dissuade our foreign investors. Similarly, turning a blind eye to accountability would mean renting Pakistan out on the terms and conditions of investors. Therefore, positive criticism and calculated pressure must be exerted on the authorities to ensure that we are provided with the chance to utilise our strategic location. Firstly, to warrant a profit out of the loans we are availing, and secondly, to result in economic prosperity rather than a burden of unpayable debts.

Source: The Express Tribune

Unnecessary hyped of land allotment

LAHORE: Defence analysts are of the view that there is nothing unusual about the 90 acres of land allotted to Gen (retd) Raheel Sharif, saying ‘some elements’ have leaked the information with the intention defaming him.

Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, an analyst, while talking to The Express Tribune, said: “Apparently, this information has been leaked to tarnish his image which he had gained throughout his service and during his tenure as chief of the army staff.”

No one has magic wand to solve Pakistan’s problems, says General Raheel



He said the British had adopted the policy of granting agricultural land to military personnel in Punjab in order to encourage recruitment to the army. “This [step] helped improve the socioeconomic status of army personnel in an agricultural society.”

He said in the post-independence period, land in Thal desert was assigned to the military for allotting to former military personnel.

“The provincial assembly was informed in January 1988 that the Punjab government had allotted about 450,000 acres of land to 5,538 military personnel between 1977 and 1985,” he said.

However, a retired military man, on the condition of anonymity, said: “He [Sharif] is awarded [land] out of the way,” adding, “At the maximum a retired military officer is allotted 50 acres (400 kanal) of land, while Gen (retd) Raheel Sharif is given 90 acres which is an exception.”

“Moreover, this is a prime piece of land located near Lahore. Otherwise, officers of lower ranks are given land in far-off areas which are not in the reach of a common man,” he said while talking to The Express Tribune on telephone. He spoke on record for about 10 minutes till the end of the conversation, but later ringed back to request not to be named.

“To the best of my knowledge, I cannot find a single example of awarding this much land to any general — at least in the air force or the navy,” he went on to say.

He said: “It makes no sense that Raheel Sharif has been allotted 50 acres of land under his prerogative as a four-star general, and another 40 acres as the chief of army staff,” adding, “Every army chief is a four-star general.”

He said officers of lower ranks (subedar and naib-subedar) are given 25 acres (200 kanal) of land — at most — and added that it was also not necessary that they were allotted land soon after their retirement.

“They are allotted land on the basis of its availability,” adding, “Many retired officers have to wait for years to get the land.”

“If a retired officer dies without getting land, he loses his right over the land and his children also cannot get it.” He added that if a serving military officer of the rank of brigadier or lieutenant-general gets land, he would not be allotted more land even if he gets promoted to the rank of a general.

Ex-Indian army chief praises Gen Qamar Jawed Bajwa

Meanwhile, military sources, on the condition of anonymity, said: “Gen (retd) Raheel Sharif is given land strictly in accordance with the relevant rules and provisions.”

They said it was agricultural land and added that it could not be used for commercial or some other purposes. They said in case of any emergency, this land could be taken back.

Lt-Gen (retd) Talat Masood while talking to The Express Tribune, said: “I am not sure but [Gen Raheel] Sharif must be given land in accordance with the available provisions,” adding, “It is necessary to have information about the record of land given to other generals so that a comparison can be made.”

Source: The Express Tribune

Reshape of Article 62 and 63

The government has started deliberations on Wednesday to reshape Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution that deals with eligibility and disqualification of parliamentarians, it has been learnt.

State Minister on Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rehman told reporters that the sub-committee on electoral reforms, headed by Zahid Hamid, in its meeting at the parliament house in Islamabad, started discussions on the Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution.

She said that political parties have submitted their suggestions on the issue. The state minister added that the committee was deliberating on restoring the Articles 62 and 63 into their original forms as per the Constitution of 1973, further amending the Articles or to keep them as they are.

"In its initial form, the Articles 62 and 63 of the 1973’s Constitution had not made it mandatory for a legislator to be ‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’. Later, in the tenure of Ziaul Haq, the terms were made part of the Articles. So, if the Articles were reshaped to their original form, legislators could not be prosecuted for not being ‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’," she said.

The committee also discussed the format of Senate elections and agreed to keep dual nationals out of the Senate. It also considered the suggestion that Senators be selected, instead of elected.

If the suggestion is approved, political parties would submit respective priority lists of senators, on the pattern of special seats, before the Election Commission of Pakistan and the commission would announce the selection of senators as per the lists, provided by political parties.

The minister further said that the committee would take Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani and senate secretariat onboard in connection with the issue.

The subcommittee was formed by the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms, headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.
Echo of Articles 62 and 63 in SC

The applicability of Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has largely been discussed in connection with the Panamagate case, being heard in the country's top court.

Petitioners in the case wanted the Supreme Court to dislodge the prime minister under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution, where as the premier's lawyers argued that the Articles need scrutiny and that disqualification of the premier under these Articles is not possible.

Source: The Dawn News

The pop sensation's daughter thinks her father's murder was a conspiracy.

2011 witnessed a historic moment when singing sensation Michael Jackson lost his life due to heart failure. Seven years later, his daughter Paris Jackson opens up about his death in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone.

"They always say, 'Time heals,'" she says. "But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it."

The 18-year-old has inked herself with memories of her father; nine of her 50+ tattoos are devoted to Michael Jackson. "He's brought me nothing but joy. So why not have constant reminders of joy?"

Paris was 11 when she and her older brother Prince Michael Jackson lost their father. "I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy," she says. "We didn't really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world."

Jackson's life was a tumultuous one, he was indicted for conspiracy to commit child abduction, false imprisonment, extortion, child molestation, among other things. Added to that, his personal life was always under scrutiny.

"My dad would cry to me at night," she adds.

"Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'"

Speaking on her father's death she said, "He would drop hints about people being out to get him. And at some point he was like, 'They're gonna kill me one day.'"

Michael Jackson's death was speculated to be murder and his doctor Dr. Conrad Murray was a suspect in the investigation. He was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to jail for two years of a four-year ruling, with reports stating that "Murray's negligence led to Jackson's death from an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol."

Paris firmly believes that there's a conspiracy theory at hand.

"Absolutely," she says of her father's death being murder. "Because it's obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit."

When asked who would've wanted the singer dead she replies, "A lot of people." And she's looking for revenge, or at least justice. "Of course. I definitely do, but it's a chess game. And I am trying to play the chess game the right way. And that's all I can say about that right now."

Source: The Dawn

Future of Gujrati Language

The Gujarati language is facing an uncertain future in this country, to put it mildly. At least its written form is in danger of a slow death. Although a living and vibrant language in India, Gujarati is suffering from an apparent indifference from the very people who speak it as their native language in Pakistan.

A recent decision by the National Database and Registration Authority sums up the plight this language now finds itself in. Nadra has omitted Gujarati from the column asking the applicant about his mother tongue.


Interestingly enough, both Quad-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi spoke Gujarati. Mr Jinnah, by the way, knew Persian as well because his mother spoke the language.

Spoken by over 50 million people, Gujarati is the 26th most widely spoken language in the world. The majority of native speakers of Gujarati lives in the Indian state of Gujarat. Apart from Gujarat, the regions where the language is spoken as first language include some area of Maharashtra (like Mumbai), Pakistan (especially Karachi), Bangladesh, a few African countries — where Gujarati-speaking Indians had settled centuries ago — and, of course, countries where Gujarati-speaking immigrants live in large numbers, such as the United Kingdom and the United States.

A branch of the Indo-Aryan family of languages, Gujarati evolved from Sanskrit and Prakrit, according to linguists. But modern Gujarati took shape in the early 19th century. It has its own script that has evolved from Sanskrit and Hindi scripts and many letters in the Gujarati alphabet are almost like the ones in Hindi’s Devanagari script. However, the Gujarati script does not have a horizontal line that is put above every word in Hindi.

The Gujarati literature’s oldest written record dates back to the 17th century. But it was Alexander Kinloch Forbes, a British officer and scholar in the government of British India, who gave a fillip to the language and literature of Gujarati by encouraging local writers.

Forbes was instrumental in getting the first Gujarati play written, the first Gujarati newspaper and literary magazine published. He also established a library in Surat in 1850 and Gujarati Sabha in Mumbai in 1865.

The number of Gujarati speakers in Pakistan is declining fast and one of the reasons is that the new generation of Gujarati-speaking does not use it. The few who do so speak it strictly within the family or community. Since most of the youth, the descendants of Gujarati-speaking communities, cannot read the script, Gujarati-language publications in Pakistan face an imminent death.

Gujarati is spoken in Pakistan by those who migrated from present-day India after the creation of this country. Some of the communities that had settled here before 1947 and did not migrate to India after Partition, still speak Gujarati. The communities that still speak Gujarati are the Bohras, Parsis, Hindus, Ismailis, Kutchi Memon and Kathiawari Memon. They are mainly settled in Karachi, adding colour to the city’s multi-lingual, multi-ethnic scene.

Although a minority language in Pakistan, Gujarati is the official language of India’s Gujarat state, where Hindi is the “additional official language”.

Many senior citizens would recall that Gujarati was taught at many schools in Karachi. There used to be Gujarati-medium schools and students were allowed to use it as the medium of answer in secondary and higher secondary examinations. Special arrangements were made to assess such answer scripts. This was in vogue from independence till the early 1970s, when schools were nationalised.

In those days Gujarati journalism in Karachi was doing well. At least two daily news papers, Millat and Dawn Gujarati, were brought out from this city. In addition, there used to be an evening newspaper, Vatan.

Daily Millat and Vatan are still alive, but face a bleak future as the number of readers is falling steadily .

‘Millat’, launched by Fakhr Matri in 1948, added a few pages in Urdu about 20 years ago to win over younger readers, but the experiment does not seem to have paid off.

A few Gujarati magazines, too, appeared from this city till the 1990s. Newspapers, magazines and books were imported from India and some of them enjoyed immense popularity.

For instance, many people (this writer among them) would recall that their elders used to read Chakram and Chitralekha, magazines imported form Indian Gujarat. These were very popular among Gujaratis in India and Pakistan. N.J. Golibar, the editor of Chakram, was a well-known figure among Gujaratis of Karachi back in the 1960s. Some columnists of Chitralekha were household names.
Mushaeras

Gujarati ‘mushaeras’ were a regular feature in Karachi. And attendance at such events used to be good. But with the passage of time, all this seems a distant memory.

The second generation of Gujarati-speaking migrants from India, who settled in Karachi, knew Gujarati and were able to read and write it.

The later generations, however, lost interest in this language as they did not see any prospect while the Urdu and English languages offered lucrative jobs and were useful in education as well as for everyday communication in society.

Nowadays only the elderly read and write Gujarati while most of the younger ones (young only in a relative sense) cannot even speak it fluently.

The loss of a language is indeed a matter of concern — not for linguists or anthropologists alone but also for anyone interested in culture.

Pakistan E-commerce: Fastest growing market

Chief Executive Officer of eBay, an American Inc and e-commerce company, has termed Pakistan among the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world.

In a Facebook Live session on the page of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Devin Wenig was asked a question regarding his thoughts on Pakistan and emerging markets.


“It's the fastest growing markets we have around the world. Anywhere where wealth is growing and technology is being adopted, e-commerce is being adopted like crazy,” said Wenig in his remarks also carried by a section of media here.

The eBay CEO said that the perfect opportunity for e-commerce was in countries where people were growing in wealth and do not have access to goods.

“People use e-commerce to get access to those goods”.

When asked as to why eBay was not in Pakistan, Devin Wenig said eBay did not have a local Pakistani version, however, there were customers shopping from the country on various eBay sites.

“We absolutely encourage you to shop, and we will get our goods and services in Pakistan for sure. Go and use eBay in Pakistan,” Wenig said.

Source: The Dawn News