Sounds too good to be true!
Now, thankfully, positive change is in the air. Nawaz Sharif was
handpicked and nurtured by the military three decades ago to do its
bidding. He duly became the nemesis of the PPP, in the bargain getting
into bed with the religious parties, passing Islamic laws and promoting
jihad against India. Now he is all for peace with India, wants to stop
all jihad across borders, is waking up to action against sectarian
parties and religious terrorists and is embarrassed and hampered by the
Islamic laws passed on his watch. The military, no less, sees the
primary and immediate national security threat as emanating from
internal religious extremism and not externally from archenemy India.
Unfortunately, however, Imran Khan’s PTI is still muddying the waters by
continuing to resist the development of a new national narrative of
state and society based on modern notions of liberal and secular
democracy.
The Express Tribune reports:
LAHORE:
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) is caught between a rock and a hard place. Despite its eagerness to reap political dividends from holding the long-delayed sixth census, the ruling party has decided against conducting the population count for fear of unrest following its results. The country’s fifth and last census was carried out in 1998.
Sources privy to the February 10 meeting of the Council of Common Interests revealed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dropped the most critical feature of the council’s agenda after consultation with stakeholders.
It was learnt by The Express Tribune that no major political party expressed willingness to have the population census. The ruling party asked Nawaz to defer the exercise to avoid ‘negative repercussions’.
The statistics division put the population census on the CCI’s agenda, but Nawaz issued directions to drop it for an indefinite period when almost all participants of the meeting requested a postponement to avoid political and national turmoil till a new mechanism is developed.
