Category Archives: Politics

Where political parties failed

Politics

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

The Speaker of the West Bengal Assembly, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, who is also acting chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, had a brief stopover in Karachi on his way to Islamabad.

He is a suave man, a competent parliamentarian and has been the Speaker for 23 years. He says he wants to step down and resume his legal ractice but his party, the CPI-M, would not let him go. The party itself has been in power in Kolkata for 24 years.
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The battle against backwardness

Politics, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

President Pervez Musharraf got it right when he told the inaugural session of a security conference in Islamabad the other day that the world was in a turmoil because of inequalities in economic development. He pointed out that the world was divided between the haves and the have-nots and that there was need to wage a war against illiteracy, hunger, sickness, backwardness, poverty, and social injustice.

This might appear to be stating the obvious. This has been iterated so very often that now it fails to make an impact. The fact is that the gulf between the rich and the poor of the world is so great today that it is difficult to fully comprehend its implications.
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The death of two little girls

Politics, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

About four weeks ago, two little girls – Hajra (8) and Sassi (5) – went missing in Murad Memon Goth on the outskirts of Karachi. They had gone to gather firewood for their homes. Two days later their mutilated bodies were recovered from the premises of a veterinary hospital in the possession of the Gadap police station.

This heinous crime, which sent a shiver down most people’s spine, was not the first one of its kind in this megacity which has become so unsafe and insecure not just for our children but for all of us as well.

What is shocking is that the incident failed to overly shock the people of Karachi, so desensitized have they become to violence. The kidnapping and killing seemed such a routine affair that no paper reported it until the bodies were found two days later and the people of Memon Goth attacked the police station in anger. The attack on the thana, rather than the killings, made news.
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What women MPs can do

Politics, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

The controversy surrounding the Legal Framework Order, the elections of October 2002 and the recent accord between the government and the MMA notwithstanding, one positive feature has emerged under the present political dispensation. This is the induction of women on a relatively large scale in the assemblies and thus, by implication, their enhanced role in politics.
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