The New Bedfellows

Zeemax, Dawa, and others, you can badmouth India as much as you want, I do not care because I am just too happy at the news that...

Mian Mushy is coughing up mian Dawood!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Dawood_Tiger_Memon_in_ISI_cust ody/ rssarticleshow/2260818.cms

If true, here is a great big thank you to...

The only person in the world with the courage and ability to make it happen...

GWB

Thank you, Mr. President! Bravo!

Let me try that one more time!

Zeemax, Dawa, and others, you can badmouth India as much as you want, I do not care because I am just too happy at the news that...

Mian Mushy is coughing up mian Dawood!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Dawood_Tiger_Memon_in_ISI_cust ody/rssarticleshow/2260818.cms

If true, here is a great big thank you to...

The only person in the world with the courage and ability to make it happen...

GWB

Thank you, Mr. President! Bravo!

(PS to chowk-staff: Dear chowkstaff, please bring back the Preview ability!)

Okay the link is...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Dawood_Tiger_Memon_in_ISI_custody/rssarticl eshow/2260818.cms

I wish chowk had not screwed up the interface so bad!

#35 (add-on)

The last part of the URL is "rssarticleshow/2260818.cms", the extra white space (which messes it up if you copy and paste from #35) comes courtesy of chowk's "brilliant" programmers! Do not thank me for it.

August 6, 2007
The Editor,
Daily Dawn,
Lahore


Dear Sir;
In the year 1967, King Faisal of KSA on a state visit to United States when he arrived in New York to attend a reception to be given in his honour by the Mayor of New York. On his arrival in the city a team of Journalists visited him to interview him before the reception. A question was put to him by one of the Journalists as to what he thought of the country Israel. King Faisal without any hesitation abruptly replied that to his country Israel was an “enemy” country. There was such a big uproar against his remarks in the Jewish controlled press and media that the Mayor of New York cancelled the invitation given to King Faisal earlier. King Faisal immediately cancelled his rest of the tour of United States and returned to KSA. According to the AP news agency report, the other day the Republican presidential candidate of United States Mr. Tom Tancredo addressing a town hall meeting in the state of Iowa, in reference to the possible terrorist attack on United States is believed to have said that “if it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites of Makkah and Madina”. It is very sad to see that no leader among the Muslim countries of the world has so far been able to respond to Mr. Tancredo’s savage threat to the most sacred and dear places of over a billion Muslims in the world, the way King Faisal had.

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#37 Boomer

You are talking 1967.

Need I remind you, that was two whole generations ago. The world has gotten a lot further since then.

Let me provide the following lines of a poem by H. R. Bachchan (the poet):

Jo beet gayi, so baat gayi
Maana ki ek sitaara tha
Teri aankhoN ka pyara tha
Per bolo toote taaroN per
Kab ambaar shoak manaata hai?!
Jo beet gayi, so baat gayi!

In other words, the Saudi way is history!

Gone with the wind!

(So, hold your own, please! :) )

#39 (add-on)

And don't worry Boomer, life will become a lot simpler.

Just learn to love our President.

The one, the only!

The G.W.B.!

Make him the new sitaara of your eyes, and you will feel a LOT better! :)

DUMP THE WIERDOS!
THE BEARDOS!

If free and fair elections are held, I see Pakistan going pretty much the same way as India- hung parliament with no clear majority to a single party (as opposed to a group). The 2004 general elctions in India didn't see any clear trend although it was made out to be a vote against "Shining India" or pro "Aam Aadmi" as the INC spindoctors had it. Rather it was a series of almost completely unrelated trends in different states.

Same I think wud get repeated here with each major region- Rural Punjab, Urban Punjab, NWFP, B'stan, Rural Sindh and Urban Sindh each showing a different preference altogether. I am sure Pakistanis on the ground wud have a better idea so I will not hazard who wins in what province.

Having said that, a hung parliament may prove no worse than it has in India. We have had no single party majority since 1989 and no one has been worse for that.

Regards



Tahmed sahib,

(In India, Gandhi refused any official position, preferring to apply moral pressure. )

Wait till Manto mian reads this.

anil #: ...your analysis is correct .....if your target audience is barrack obama!!......however, it is quite incorrect, if the target audience is the pakistani public......

....musharraf and bb have spent around eight years in power....even if jinnah were to spend eight years in power, he would become redundant and a, "chala huwa sikka..".....

.....however, they both need each other personally, at the same time they want to kick each other out......the day musharraf takes off his uniform, he is a nobody.....he has no constituency, no political support, and will have no guns at his disposal.....retired generals are a sad lot, in pakistan.....they live in the glory of their past powers, with nothing new to offer....at best, the grovel at the feet of the executive, for govt. jobs......

.......similarly the day some other member of the ppp - other than benazir - becomes pm of pakistan, or head of the party, benazir is finished also.....she is nothing without being the head of her party.....she is a bigger dictator in her party than musharraf is in the army......so benazir's optoins are - either she becomes pm or no one from ppp becomes pm......as they say in punjabi, "na khaidaan gae, na khaidun dayaan gae.."

....then there is the usa, which holds views similar to yours.....

somewhere in there is the pakistani awam.......which is now moving in a totally different direction.....they are fed up with musharraf, bb, nawaz and the usa.......which is why, they came out in droves to support the cj, but have never come out to support musharraf, bb etc......

this leaves us with the mma.....which by the way, is a different group than the, "extremists.." they are well-established political group with religion as the basis of their politics, i.e. they don't kill people.......however, they are somewhat discredited also......

mqm?......discredited, as well.....not to mention the only fascist mainstream party in pakistan.....secular extremists and fascists.......

this leaves imran khan as the only non-discredited politcal personality.......however, he is like a shepherd without a flock......he can barely get elected himself......

so what are the options, as i always say.......none.....due to this, i will have to go back to my old theory....i think urstruly and/or hamidm2 will have to return to pakistan to save the country and provide it with genuine leadership, as highlighted by their various passionate discourses on this site.....

..i have returned to make an attempt, but have been unsuccessful....and am, thus, thinking of moving to bangalore.....where i will apply for a congress ticket to compete against Kumaraswamy....i think i have more of a chance there than in pakistan....even though bangalore still has a long way to go to get to the same level as islamabad in quality of living......however, my popularity seems to growing, day by day, in the karnataka IT circles.....while no one in pakistan can understand what i say.....

!!!!!Hamid2/Urstruly should be allowed by the supreme court of pakistan to return to pakistan.....!!!...we all must rise up to ensure their return........

“It is not going to be smooth sailing for Benazir. We are living in difficult times. Her hard line stance against the Islamists would keep her on her toes, and would require military support all the time.”

Babar Mufti obviously has some better knowledge about what is going on in Pakistan than the clowns posting on this thread.

We are entering the Danse Macabre stage of the game in Pakistan. La Danse Macabre has all the characters: the king, the commanders, the slaves and a pretty woman.

When the dance of death starts many unlikely characters join together. That is what is happening in Pakistan. Musharaf is dancing his way to death (metaphor) and he will take many down with him. But Benazir for sure would not be one of them.

Benazir is the only player in town; all others are either the cheerleaders or the pallbearers.

She is the only pro-west politician in Pakistan, she is the only politician in Pakistan who has a certain aura and she is the only politician in Pakistan who has a better chance of winning a majority of seats in elections. She may not win an absolute majority but her party will win more seats than any other party. She has a core group of 30% Pakistanis who would vote for her no matter what and all she has to now do is find another 10%. With advisers like me helping her, she is not going to lose this battle.

Posters here are talking about Nawaz Sharif and his politics. Nawaz has learned a lot. He knows what is going on and he has agreed as Benazir had already said, to give Benazir the first opportunity. And why he did that?

Benazir is the consensus choice of the West. The US admin and both parties(Dems &Repbs) feel comfortable to work with Benazir. Nawaz Sharif is still unknown and he is the person who despite the US admin(Clinton) pressure held on to the Nuke tests. That is his big negative and he will have to redeem himself. So Benazir and Nawaz agree to play the good cop and bad cop routine. Nawaz will not talk to Musharaf and will take the hard-line and Benazir would take the risk because she can as I stated above, she has a solid 30% support in Pakistan and Nawaz Sharif does not.

The last question in this equation is how would the army respond. Benazir is unpopular in the army. If we today give five names to the army officers to elect the PM, Nawaz would get 80% of the vote and Benazir would not get 2% of the army officers including the Generals and corps(Karoor (as in 100 lakh) ) commanders would not vote for her. That is a big negative. Nawaz can help her out here but when push comes to shove the Army would defy Benazir. There is no doubt in my mind that the last clash will be between the army and the Benazir supporters. She can only compensate for that with the US help. As long as long the US keeps control over the Pak army, she will rule without any problems.

Baber (see above) is pointing to something very important. The Islamists or the Jihadis in Pakistan (outside of the tribal areas) are nothing without the army’s help. As soon as Benazir takes over, the Islamists will become the biggest vehicle for the army to pressure Benazir. The army will not help Benazir in quashing the Islamists. I hope the US helps out (With the screwed up Bush admin, that is only a forlorn hope.) otherwise we are looking at a prolonged civil war in Pakistan.

Benazir needs to take a risk and should try to break up the Pak army. Can the US help her out in this task? A phenomenal question mark!

Here is something more for the idiots here to ponder. I am not going to name the triumvirate of Idiots on this thread. (One Pakistan and two Indians).

Benazir has no support from the liberals and the left in Pakistan. Even the nationalist including the Baloch nationalist don’t support her. Nawaz is being supported by the left, the nationalists and the liberals in Pakistan. The only legitimate left is also supporting Nawaz (Read Zahida Hinna, my old friend not necessarily ideological, in Daily Express). Zahida is the spokesperson for the left in Pakistan.

Why is that so? Nawaz is working with the MMA and still the liberals support him? What is the equation here? Elementary! Nawaz has a program, an economic program. He supports industrialization of Pakistan; he takes a progressive attitude towards the economic well being of the country. Benazir knows squat about the economic side of the politics. She is still stuck in her father’s program and that makes her unattractive for the liberals and the others in Pakistan. But in today’s context, she is the only alternate to the army in Pakistan.

HP sain,

(She has a core group of 30% Pakistanis who would vote for her no matter what )

That is a huge number in a multi-cornered contest I presume a four cornered contest between PPP, PML-Q + allies, PML-N + allies, MMA. I dont think any Indian party gets that kind of votes in national level elections.

Even in some states for eg Bihar and UP, 30% votes wud bring u very close 2 victory.

Regards

majumdar #46: "She has a core group of 30% Pakistanis who would vote for her no matter what"

....no political party in pakistan can claim that 30% of the pakistanis will vote for them, "no matter what"....it is quite an incorrect assumption, with no merit in statistics.....

.....if for no other reason, because only roughly 40% of the total registered pakistani voters actually vote......so 30% of total pakistani elgible voters would be 3/4th of the total individuals who actually vote....meaning 75% of the individuals who actually vote will vote for ppp, "no matter what!"...obviously no party in any country can claim that......

.....if we take the 30% to mean 30% of the total registered voters who actually vote, then this would amount to 30% of the 40% who vote.......this would equal 13.33% of the total pakistanis.....

......however, even looking at 30% in this manner is not an accurate analysis......in the 2002 legislative elections, 41.80% of the eligible pakistanis voted......out of this, ppp got 28.42% of the votes......this includes all voters, who normally sit on the fence and are not in the, "no matter what" category......even this figure is less than the 30% who would vote for her, "no matter what".......

.....in the elections before that, in 1997, only 35.2% of the registered voters voted......and ppp was swept away by pml.......ppp got 18 seats, pml got 137!......hence the 30% theory - of total pakistani voters or of total voters who actually voted - fails again......for ppp, miserably, in this case......

......in 1990, only 40% of the registered voters voted......ppp won, and got 86 seats, while pml got 73......however, once again 30% of, "no matter what" theory fails......

hence, no party in pakistan is even close to claiming that 30% of pakistanis will vote for it, "no matter what"........the only party that can claim even coming close to that, even as a % of actual voters who do vote, is a joint pml, with all factions on one platform......which is what happened in the 1997 elections......

what ppp and a joint pml can claim, is that if all goes well for them, and those who sit on the fence fall their way also, they should be able to get around 30% of the voters who actually vote.....this would include their, "no matter what" voters plus those who sit on the fence......this is the best case scenario; not a worst case scenario (worst case = no one besides the, "no matter what" voters vote for the ppp)

i can only think of the 1970 elections, where awami party won 38% of the seats, and perhaps it could claim that 30% of pakistanis (that too, of those who vote) would vote for it, "no matter what"......as all the bengali voters were supporting it.......

Who i this guy? I know who is getting my vote.