Epaper – December 25 ISB 2020

PAKISTAN TODAY WISHES ITS READERS A

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Friday, 25 December, 2020 I 9 Jumada Al-Awwal, 1442 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XI No 176 I 12 Pages I Islamabad Edition

Civil-military leadership reiterate resolve to defend motherland 'at all Costs' g

PM IMran, arMy chIef, ISI DG DIScuSS InDIa'S ProvocatIve MeaSureS, IncluDInG ceaSefIre vIolatIonS alonG loc

ISLAMABAD

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STAFF REPORT

he country’s civil and military leadership, while taking note of ceasefire violations and frequent provocative measures from Indian forces along line of control (loc), resolved to ensure the defence of the motherland “at all costs” with nation’s support.

During a meeting between chief of army Staff (coaS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Prime Minister Imran Khan in the federal capital on thursday, which encompassed professional matters pertaining to Pakistan army and external and internal security situation, ceasefire violations and frequent provocative measures from Indian forces along line of control (loc) were discussed, a statement from the Prime Minister's office (PMo) read.

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director-General

(DG) lt General faiz hamid was also present during the meeting.

“It was resolved that defence of the motherland will be ensured with the support of the entire nation at all costs,” the statement read. they expressed concern over continuous human rights violation in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK). earlier in the day, the foreign office (fo) spokesperson, in his weekly press briefing, quoted the prime minister, who had “once again made it absolutely clear that if India were to be reckless enough to undertake any misadventure against Pakistan, it would confront a strong Pakistani national resolve and be given a befitting response at all levels of the threat.” the spokesperson urged the international community to advise India against any irresponsible act and to desist from any action that would jeopardise regional peace and stability.

Virgin Islands court approached for enforcement of Reko Diq award against Pakistan

NewS DeSk tethyan cooper company (tcc) has approached the British virgin Island’s high court for the enforcement of the $5.97 billion award against Pakistan by the International centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (IcSID) in the reko Diq case. earlier on november 20, the company had moved the high court for the enforcement of the award which includes attachment of the assets belonging to the Pakistan International airlines Investment ltd (PIaIl) — a company which is also incorporated in the British virgin Islands. then, on December 16, the virgin Islands high court passed an ex parte order regarding the attachment of Pakistani institutions’ assets, barring

Pakistan from selling these assets. however, the attorney General for Pakistan’s (aGP) office has assured that the country is vigorously contesting these proceedings using all available legal resources while the government is also working on settling the matter amicably.

“Without prejudice to such engagements, Pakistan has reiterated that the government will vigorously pursue proceedings initiated by the company in any jurisdiction and the government reaffirms its commitment to protecting national assets wherever they may be located,” a statement by the aGP’s office said.

In July 2019, an IcSID tribunal granted an award of nearly $6 billion against Pakistan for denying a mining lease to an australian company, tethyan copper company (tcc).

Immediately thereafter, tcc commenced proceedings for the enforcement of the award.

In november 2019, Pakistan challenged the penalty and initiated proceedings seeking its annulment. reko Diq town in Balochistan’s chagai district is famed for its mineral wealth, including gold and copper. the incumbent government considers it a strategic national asset, though instead of yielding a bonanza the reko Diq mining project may cost the country dearly. the World Bank’s IcSID is currently considering Pakistan’s appeal against enforcing the penalty over its cancellation of the reko Diq mining lease for tethyan copper corp, a 50-50 joint venture of Barrick Gold corp of australia and antofagasto Plc of chile.

Pakistan hits highest single-day death toll from virus during second wave g

111 DIe of coronavIruS-relateD coMPlIcatIonS aS PaKIStan recorDS 2,256 freSh caSeS ISLAMABAD/LAHORe STAFF REPORT

the government portal keeping track of the coronavirus outbreak in Pakistan on thursday posted 111 fatalities from covid-19-related complications in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day toll since the beginning of the second wave effectively in november.

Previously, the number of daily casualties crossed the milestone of 100 only once when the country witnessed 105 people pass away from the contagious disease on December 15. the highest single-day death toll was recorded on June 20 when 141 patients lost their lives while the country was in the midst of the first wave. So far, 9,668 people have lost

their lives to the virus.

Meanwhile, the nation recorded 2,256 fresh infections of the coronavirus after conducting 37,173 tests — a positivity ratio of 6.07 per cent. the rate is determined on the basis of positive cases per 100 samples for coronavirus.

During the last 24 hours, some 2,361 covid19 patients were found to be in critical condition across the country. the highest transmission rate was observed in Karachi standing at 12.45 per cent followed

by Peshawar at 10.96 percent and abbottabad 7.81 per cent, the latest data issued by the national command and operation centre (ncoc) said.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 05

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Friday, 25 December, 2020

NEWS

SHC orderS iMMediate releaSe of aCCuSed iN daNiel Pearl CaSe KARACHI

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STAFF REPORT

HE Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday declared “null and void” the detention of the prime suspect in the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002.

The SHC in April turned the death sentence awarded

Soldier martyred in North Waziristan convoy ambush; 2 terrorists killed RAWALPINDI: A soldier of the Pakistan Army embraced martyrdom and seven others got injured in a terrorist attack on the security forces in North Waziristan, said the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Thursday. According to the ISPR, “Terrorist fire raid on security forces’ convoy late last night in Mirali, North Wazirstan.” During the intense exchange of fire, Naik Yaseen, 34, a resident of Malakand, embraced martyrdom while seven others sustained injuries. The ISPR said that the security forces responded promptly and killed two terrorists in the retaliatory firing. Ten terrorists were also injured in the gunfight, said the military’s media wing. Earlier on August 30, at least three Pakistan Army soldiers had been martyred and four personnel wounded in firing opened by terrorists during a search operation in South Waziristan. The spokesperson of ISPR had said that terrorists attacked security forces during a search operation in South Waziristan where three soldiers were martyred and four sustained injuries. The martyred soldiers include Sepoy Salim, Subedar Nadeem and Lance Naik Mussavir. STAFF REPORT

‘No other option but to take to the streets’, says MQM-P leader after census approved by Centre Former federal minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication and Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has expressed his grievances over the Centre accepting the results of the Sixth Population and Housing Census 2017 report. Siddiqui said that the people of Sindh were highly upset by the government’s decision to accept the purportedly inaccurate results. "If they cannot count us correctly, who would they give us our rights," Siddiqui said. "It looks like we are left with no other option but to take to the streets.” These comments came after the cabinet also decided to bypass an agreement with the parliamentary leaders of the Senate to correct the highly controversial census 2017 results through a recount of the population in 5 per cent randomly selected population blocks. He said that the coalition with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had been formed on the basis of the census and that dispute the reservations of the MQM-P regarding the results, they have now been approved by the Centre. "Why are we even part of the government to begin with?” he asked, adding that Prime Minister Imran Khan did not fulfil any of his promises with the MQM-P. The MQM-P leader said that the party had gone to the courts before due to their doubts regarding the accuracy of the census, and those doubts have now been confirmed. “In Karachi, people younger than the age of 18 were not even counted,” he said. He said this census was a matter of life or death for the people of Sindh, and with this approval, there is no option for cooperation with the government. "We demand the govt form a judicial commission to probe the rigged census," he said. "Right now, we are standing with the government, but we also have the option to part ways because we cannot protest against the government while staying in a coalition with it."

However, he did say that his party was not going to join any alliances, likely hinting at the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

to Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh in a seven-year jail term in addition to acquitting other three suspects -- Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil -- earlier handed life sentences. However, the Sindh government has opposed Sheikh's release, saying it would endanger the public. He was to remain in custody until the separate appeals from the government and Pearl's parents in the Supreme Court are resolved.

Thursday's verdict was announced on an appeal from

the family of Sheikh against his detention despite the acquittal. In its verdict, the court ordered the immediate release of Sheikh and other suspects but said their names be added to the Exit Control List (ECL).

The men have been in rotting in jail for 18 years without committing any crime, the judge said.

Pearl, 38, the South Asia bureau chief for the publication, was abducted on January 23, 2002, in Karachi and beheaded the next month, reportedly by Al-

Qaeda. Sheikh had been convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in Karachi in which he was kidnapped.

Prior to his kidnapping, the journalist had been investigating the link between reportedly Pakistan-based militants and Richard Reid, the notorious “Shoe Bomber” who attempted to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.

In July 2002, following the hearings, an antiterrorism court (ATC) in Hyderabad had sentenced to death Sheikh and life term to other co-accused. However, all four convicts had moved the SHC in 2002 challenging their convictions.

In his autobiography, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, former president Pervaiz Musharraf had claimed that Sheikh, a British national and a student at the London School of Economics (reports claim that he did not graduate), was hired by MI6 to engage in “jihadi operations”, adding that “at some point, he probably became a rogue or a double agent”.

PM stresses need to revise master plans of major cities

Zardari invites Fazl for power show on Benazir death anniversary ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Co-chairperson and former president Asif Ali Zardari has invited Jamiat Ulema-eIslam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman to attend a meeting on the death anniversary of slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Larkana on December 27 (Sunday).

Last week, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari contacted the leaders of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the umbrella alliance of 11 opposition parties seeking to oust the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, and invited them on the 13th death anniversary of his mother.

The occasion is expected to turn into a political power show with local PPP leadership predicting huge public turnout.

In a tweet, the PPP said Zardari telephoned Fazl, who is also president of the PDM, and exchanged views on the current political condition in the country, including the ongoing anti-government protest movement from the alliance's platform.

During the call, the former president invited the JUIF chief to Larkana for the meeting, a subsequent tweet

said.

The PPP Sindh leadership remains confident about the meeting, expecting all key leaders of the PDM in Garhi Khuda Bux, a small village in Larkana and the final resting place of the Bhuttos.

PPP Sindh President Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz and other leaders of the PDM were expected to participate in the rally. Speaking at a press conference, he declared that “this year’s rally would be [a] massive one and we expect a huge turnout of people on the day.”

In its last meeting in Lahore earlier this month, the PDM leadership announced to move ahead with the second phase of its movement to oust the government. It has demanded the PTI-led federal government quit by January 31 or face an intensified opposition movement, including a long march to Islamabad and en masse resignations from the provincial and national assemblies.

The PDM, whose almost entire leadership is facing charges of graft and abuse of power, has been holding mammoth rallies since its inception in September to seek Prime Minister Imran Khan's ouster and an end to what it has dubbed as "political victimisation" through National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Prime Minister Imran Khan has stressed the need for revising the master plans of major cities to address the problems arising out of the growing urban population. The premier said this while chairing a weekly meeting of the National Coordination Committee on Housing, Construction and Development in Islamabad on Thursday. The PM Imran directed the committee to adopt modern and international standard methods for master plans, adding state-of-the-art technology should be used for revising the master plans of the cities. He said that a master plan will not only help provide better facilities to the citizens but will also prevent misuse of space allotted for civic amenities and other purposes. The meeting was informed that mapping is underway in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta and data has been collected from other small towns and rural areas which are being digitised.

Bilawal says Imran’s govt is ‘a joke with the people of Pakistan’ NEWS DESK Reacting to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement that the first year in power for the Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf (PTI) was “training”, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Thursday asked how the “22-year struggle” did not help the premier prepare.

"Now after [nearly] three years, you are saying it was the training? This is a joke with the people of Pakistan," Bilawal said during the ground-breaking ceremony of the Malir Expressway project in Karachi.

"What was he doing in KP for seven years if he wasn't preparing [for the Centre]?” the PPP chairman asked, adding that PM Imran had failed to fulfil his promise of eradicating corruption within 90 days.

Bilawal said that PM Imran has no way to deal with the problems of the people and that his only recourse is to go home. Similarly, Bilawal on Monday had said that Prime Minister Imran Khan has no solution for the people’s issues and as such he should resign from his post so that those with answers can step in.

“We have solutions for providing relief to the people,” he had added while talking to media persons in Lahore on Monday.

Reiterating that a long march would take place, Bilawal had said that there is no backdoor contact between the government and Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). He had said that PDM has made it clear that any further dialogue will only take place after the "puppet prime minister" has been ousted.

However, it should be noted that speaking on a

different occasion, Bilawal had admitted to the difficulties the PPP faced when they came into office.

According to Bilawal, it took three months to understand the issues as everything that the PPP had been looking at from outside was different once they came into power.

"I must also share, for one-and-a-half years we remained unable to even know the actual figures of different sectors, particularly the power sector. From one ministry at times the figures indicated we were performing very well and then sometimes some other figure showed we were not performing that well," he had said at an event in Islamabad.

Bilawal opined that if the PM had been even "mildly competent", the people would not be dealing with this economic hardship.

China warmly congragulates award-winning Pakistani CPEC staff members BEIJING APP

The Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson on Thursday warmly congratulated 18 Pakistani staffers on winning awards from China in recognition of their contributions towards China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects pertaining to Gwadar Port, energy, infrastructure and other fields. “An online ceremony was recently held to confer awards on the Pakistani staffers working on the CPEC projects. We express warm congratulations to them,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during his regular briefing. He said that the CPEC is an important pioneering project under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and it has maintained positive momentum since its launch in 2013, and had made solid contributions to Pakistan’s national development and regional connectivity. “We will work with Pakistani side to make greater contribution in order to deliver more benefits to the two people and people in rest of the region,” he added.

At an online award ceremony organised by Chinese

Embassy in Islamabad, China conferred awards to 18 Pakistani staffers working on CPEC projects recognizing their outstanding services, professional expertise and strenuous contribution in making CPEC a tangible reality and helping Pakistan-China relations stronger and sustainable despite all odds and challenges, especially the Covid-19 pandemic. Chinese Ambassador in Pakistan Nong Rong and CPEC Chairman Lt Gen (r) Asif Saleem Bajwa congratulated the award-winning staffers and urged them to keep anchoring their roles in perpetuity.

On the occasions, the Chinese ambassador remarked that in this year, the CPEC projects have achieved major progress despite the adversity challenge brought by the pandemic. He also thanked the CPEC Chairman for attending the ceremony and giving warm remarks.

Bajwa said that the CPEC has become a household name in Pakistan and all Pakistanis are in a romance with the concept of CPEC. In the first phase, energy and infrastructure projects were completed and we can see fruits and impacts. He said the Covid-19 could not affect CPEC progress. Phase II is going to meet the vision of both

country leadership. The 18 awardees are Adil Ashraf of Three Gorges Second Wing Power Project, Asdullah Larik of Thar Coal Block-1 Power Project, Asif Ali Unar of China Power Hub 2x66 MW Coal-Fired Power Project, Asif Majeed of Kohala Hydropower Project, Danish Haseeb Khan of Suki Kinari Hydropower Project, Faisal Bashir of Port Qasim 2x660 MW Coal-Fired Power Project, Girdhari of Thar Coal Block-II Mining Project Phase II Expansion, Hamid Ali of Karot Hydropower Project, Manzoor Ali of Khar Coal Block-II Power Project Phase I O&M and Phase II Expansion, Mohammad Nouman of Lahore Orange Line Project, Muhammad Muneeb of Sahiwal 2x600 MW Coal-Fired Power Project, Nadeem Ali of Thar Coal power Block-II project, Nirdosh Kumar of Thar Coal Block-II Power Project Phase II, Syed Muhammad Hussain Imam of Gwadar Port Project, Tasneem Hussain of Lahore Orange Line Project, Usman Riaz of Peshawar-Karachi Motorway (Multan Sukkur Section), Waseem Akram of Matiari to Lahore HVDC transmission Line Project and Ziauddin Memon of UEP 100MW Wind Power Project.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

SileNt CHriStMaS! i

SALMAN MuNIR

N December 1976 I was living in Ascot, England.

I was there for a few weeks as a paying guest of a charming old lady who owned an apartment on the High Street and had a couple of bedrooms to rent.

I occupied one of the rooms at the princely rent of 10 pounds per week. English Pound then had a lot of value or England was cheaper compared to the continentand 10 pounds could go a long way. I found the facility very nice with a shared kitchen and just one bathroom for three bedrooms. It beats me to this day why the English are so miserly on bathrooms. The bathroom had a tub but no shower or even a hand shower. So I bought a bucket and a mug to bathe and feel clean. The

apartment faced a pub anda nearby kind of supermarket, which meant I had all the things I needed at that time.

My landlady had a son who lived at a distance less travelled by him. Whenever I told the landlady, whose name I am sadly forgetting, that I was like her son she would say “do not be like my son, he is no good.” On December 25, 1976, I had no place to go to and she had no one coming over. There was no Covid-19 or Influenza-18 at that time but unfortunately she would celebrate Christmas all alone. She was happy to know that I would be spending Christmas with her. So she made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. She would make turkey and I will wash the dishes. I happily accepted the offer. We had a nice quiet lunch with Jingle Bells playing in the background. She seemed sad, I was too young and

naïve to understand her loneliness and the importance of being with the family over Christmas.

I recall this story because the years have made me wiser, more understanding and sensitive to others’ feelings.

This is 2020 and today is again Christmas, equally lonely for a lot of people around the world because of Covid-19 or because of other reasons. We do not celebrate our EIDs the way Christians celebrate Christmas. We lack the celebratory culture for many reasons, like we do not enjoy life or sing or dance and most of all the uncertainty surrounding the sighting of the moon. Imagine, in this day and age we cannot figure out the exact date the moon shall show. Sometimes I get the feeling that we deliberately and intentionally do not want to progress. This nuclearpowered state has been left way behind in this area by even

QUAID DAY 03

the backwater states of the Arabian Peninsula.

This Christmas will be different and I suspect all the subsequent Christmases will also be different. So will be the Eids. People will be vary of kissing, hugging and even handshaking. Such is the specter of Covid-19. People will still dress up, will still cook exotic meals, will decorate Christmas trees and give gifts.The families might still get together and enjoy because this is the most joyous time for them. But it will be different for years to come. It will be a little like the Christmas of my landlady in Ascot, England.

Today is 25 December and I wish all readers a Merry Christmas. It is a holiday in the Christian world. It is also a holiday in Pakistan because December 25 is the date of birth of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and the first Governor General of Pakistan.

A birthday gift: Striving for Jinnah’s Pakistan

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SARDAR T SHAHID

HE 25th December is knocking at our doors. So, what glittering, sparkling, inspiring and shining present-pack we have wrapped up to jubilate the 144th birthday of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, we revere as Quaide-Azam (the great leader), the father of the nation-state of Pakistan? What stock of our national triumphs, as a nation, we are proudly carrying to the founding father of the nationfamily of our homeland? Certainly, a lot to be proud of where we have spiraled up since September 11, 1948, the heartrending day baabaye-qom left us for the eternal abode.

He would be watching us from the galaxy of eminent, illuminating, bold, visionary spirits; he being distinct one in that cluster of the fraternity of world leaders. Being a man of intelligence, wit, courage, humane brilliance and political vision, a man of principles, our founding father would evaluate our performance-gift with the guiding vision, cardinal principles and political and social ideals he professed for his sons & daughters of coming generations.

What is our scorecard?

Let’s do some self-reflection.

It would broaden Quaid’s smiles to know how fervently Pakistan celebrates his birthday each year. He would recall stating his vision of Pakistan in Chittagong on March 26, 1948, and in Peshawar on April 12, 1948. His vision circumscribed a democratic state, an untheocratic one, which must reflect “the great ideals of human progress, liberty, equality, fraternity, and Islamic values of equality of manhood, fairplay, brotherhood and social justice… galvanizing not only (as) the state but also as a unified and strong nation... founded on patriotism, and not provincialism, religious and sectarian diversions, or racism”. He might ask how far we succeeded in manifesting his vision in the true sense. He in fact would desire to stand tall because of his nation amongst other leaders-galaxy up there boasting of theirs.

Hold on. Beware as we would stroll to Jinnah with our gift-pack; be warned that first thing he shall notice and be annoyed about our compliance of NCOCpromulgated COVID-SOPs. So, put on masks, keep the social distance, and sanitize your hands. He would not also like unnecessary people crowding up so stick to essentials. I say it because he would want us to be law-abiding citizens, compliant to the government, in all good faith, as they represent us. In a public gathering on February 14, 1948, he asserted that all Pakistanis ought to, “work honestly and sincerely, and be faithful and loyal to Pakistan Government…”

Quaid-e-Azam is going to be all-proud of his nation to have grown from around 33.7 Million in 1947 to 208 Million in 2020, making us the 5th largest in the world. He might ask about his 42 Million sons & daughters of East Pakistan; so, better have a good explanation for that – all those who chipped in their own fashion. The thing that may disturb him more would be our 154th ranking among 189 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) – indicating where we are struggling still in health, education, and standards of living, pollution and climate. More unnerving would be comparing Pakistan with other

South Asian countries. In UN HDI 2020, India ranks 131; Bangladesh 133rd; Sri Lanka 72nd; Maldives 95th; Nepal 142nd and Bhutan ranking 129. He would definitely remind us of his addresses to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in Karachi on August 11, 1947, and Dhaka address on March 21, 1948. Words would echo to him that he asked governments to act “so that the life, property, and religious beliefs of its subjects (masses) are fully protected by the State…wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of people…the government can only have for its aim one objective – how to serve people, devise ways and means for their welfare and their betterment…”

Jinnah’s joys would be visible to see us as a nuclear power, 6th largest military of the world, 33rd largest area (despite losing East Pakistan), 4th largest irrigated land, 1st in the sports and surgical industry, 5th largest human capital. Sadly, his joys are likely to fade to see we are still struggling with necessities – education, food, housing and the health of his children in Pakistan.

COVID-19 may be a pretext to round away as it is adding to the human predicament in the country. He may give a little credit to the government of handling it yet the overall status of his people would sadden him. Don’t let him know about Pakistan’s poverty statistics spelled by the Ministry of Planning & Development to be 29.5% translating as 55 Million people, which the UNDP and World Bank says rising to level of 40%.

Also, do not boast of your Langar-Khana, Ehsaas, loan schemes and Panah-gaah etc. for two reasons. Firstly, he would dislike the nomenclature you chose which imply negative, dejected, undignified, and begging connotations for own people, rather for humans; secondly, he wanted his sons & daughters of the nation to be honourable, self-sufficient and proud Pakistanis contributing to the affairs of the state rather than making them too dependent and needy.

Quaid would ask you to remember what he said during All Pakistan Educational Conference in Karachi on November 27, 1947, “…build up the character of our future generations which means highest sense of honour, integrity, and sense of responsibility,…fully qualified and equipped to play their part in…economic life… to do honour to Pakistan.” So, Quaid would be urged to advise to change the spirit and nomenclature of your otherwise commendable short-term initiatives; and focus on well-being and honourable living of Pakistani nation, exponentially improving HDI and lowering poverty levels until next 25th December.

Religious equality has been the hallmark of Quaid’s vision; so, it is important we tell him that we have been doing well in these areas. History reminds us that on 23 June 1947, the Hindu Unionist party was supported by 88 seats of the All India Congress; and All-India Muslim League also got 88 seats and it did not have enough Muslim majority territories in Punjab. So, it were the three deciding votes of the Christian politicians, Mr Dewan Bhadar, SP Singa, C E Gibbon and Choudhry Fazal Elahi, which realized the creation of West Punjab, Punjab of Pakistan. During a press conference in New Delhi on July 14, 1947, talking of Islamic brotherhood, he stressed, “Their religion of faith or belief will be secure.

There will be no interference… they will

have their protection to their religion, faith, life and culture. They will be all citizens of Pakistan without any distinction…” While talking in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, he stressed that one’s religion seizes to play when it comes to nationhood, “…You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state… With this fundamental principle, we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state…” Let’s not marginalize any religious faction adding any religious dimension to the criterion of any state business. He would advise us to cease isolating non-Muslim Pakistanis with the use of the word “minority or Aqliyyat”, Christian community, Hindu community, or Sikh community; rather, it is apt to adopt an inclusive approach and call them as Pakistani Christians, or Pakistani Hindus or Pakistani Sikhs. Disallow such words as we have been thoughtful and banned using the words “disabled”, “physically handicapped”, and “mentally retarded” in official correspondence, to prevent violation of a person’s dignity, using “persons with

want us to always remember his words he stated in Muslim University Union in Aligarh on March 10, 1944, “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses…I do not mean that we should imitate the evils of western life… raise the status of our women according to our own Islamic ideas and standards…take your women along with you as comrades in every sphere…”

Much of the debate today is about the functions of bureaucracy and our Armed Forces, of whom we all are proud of.

However, if we take this issue to him, the Quaid would reprimand us and question us that has not he chalked out his clear and cardinal principles for the role of both entities. Addressing civilian officers in Chittagong on March 25, 1948, he said, “Those days have gone when the country was ruled by the bureaucracy. It is people’s Government, responsible to the people more or less on democratic lines and

disabilities” or “persons with different abilities.” Baabay-e-Qom would be happy to further applaud you. He has already liked the government taking up the case of the killing of 11 Hindus in India, and allowing Hindu temple in Islamabad.

Quaid-e-Azam was a candid and genuine advocate of gender equality and the role of Pakistani women in national affairs and development, which make 49% of the Pakistani population. Imagine if this half of the nation does not contribute to the socioeconomic buildup of our nation. Quaid would be happy that to large extent his vision has manifested into affairs of the state.

Today Pakistani women have excelled in every dimension of life, and he would want to be physically here to further encourage and appreciate them; but the state and government officials symbolize his presence here within us. Jinnah would advise us to capitalise on this direction of growth and

parliamentary practices…make the people feel that you are their servants and friends.”

He further clarified to bureaucrats, “You have to do your duty as servants; you are not concerned with this or that political party; that is not your business…..You do not belong to the ruling class; you belong to the servants.” For Armed Forces too, addressing at Army Command & Staff College Quetta on June 14, 1948, he directed Armed Forces to “owe allegiance to the Constitution and the Dominion of Pakistan and… honestly and faithfully serve.” At another occasion, addressing to the troops in Malir, on February 21, 1948, the Quaid further define role of our bold, valiant and professional Armed Forces, “Stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.” Thus, Quaid was very succinct, clear and candid that center and origin of power

does lie in the people of Pakistan and their representatives; and not with bureaucrats or other servants of the state.

Looking above from the heavens, rallies, sit-ins, belittling, cheap slogans, and undignified personal attacks amongst the political parties would not be appearing and sounding well to the founding father. He would be certainly unhappy to see how political rivalries are being used to term fellow Pakistanis as traitors; and we amongst ourselves are stamping and maltreating each other, blaming, disparaging each other. It would certainly sadden him that despite travelling so ahead since 1947, we are seemingly failing to galvanize ourselves as a unified and strong nation, one nation. Our inability to resolve our political issues would give him pain. Let us not commit that undesirable act. Two wrongs do not make a right. Thus, a political party should not indulge in a debate of comparing its ills and wrongdoings with those of the other party, trying to prove to be a lesser evil rather a party. A party, especially one entrusted by the people of Pakistan in government, should evaluate it only and only with the ideals of Quaid-e-Azam, the Constitution of Pakistan and one’s own manifesto. Remember what he advised us, to both the treasury and opposition, to all provinces, all ethnicities.

On June 15, 1948, talking at Quetta Municipality, he outlined the code of conduct for any government, “Representative governments and representative institutions… when people want to reduce them merely to channels of personal aggrandizement, they not only lose their value but earn and bad name. We must subject our actions to perpetual security and test them with the touchstone, not of personal or sectional interest, but of the good of the State.” To opposition, he advised during a broadcast on Radio Pakistan, in Dacca on March 28, 1948, “Grave political issues cannot be settled by the cult of the knife, or by gangsterism. There are parties and parties, but the difference between them cannot be resolved by attacks on Party leaders. Nor can political views by altered by the threats of violence.” Unity and harmony is needed besides all the elements of national power, we have been bestowed with. As our Quaid always professed, “In Pakistan lies our deliverance, defence and honour…In our solidarity, unity and discipline lie the strength, power and sanction.” Commit to this fundamental principle – be it Government, opposition. Treat each other as fellow Pakistanis and debate politically within democratic and social norms, for nothing but the good of state.

So, make a gift-pack wisely this year.

And, we should aim to have a better one each succeeding year, truly glittering, sparkling, inspiring and shining. Do whatever it takes, as a government, as a bureaucrat, as a defender of the nation, as a student, as a jury, as a trader, as a Pakistani, in any form, to make Pakistan, as he envisioned. Follow his political ideals faith, unity and discipline, his values of social freedom, freeplay, fraternity, his cornerstone governance principles of social justice, welfare and equality founded on Islamic ideals, and the democratic creeds embedded in the Constitution of Pakistan. Continue our reverence and honour towards him as father of the nation-state of Pakistan. Let’s become one unified, strong, happy, congenial and progressive nation and walk with pride in the comity of nations. Truly walking faith, unity and discipline can make only one Pakistan, which must be purely Jinnah’s Pakistan – today, tomorrow and ever.

The writer, a security professional and a Ph.D. International Relations scholar at Bahria University, is a freelancer who analyses national and maritime security issues, foreign policy, and international diplomacy. He can be reached at teeshahid20@gmail.com.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

04 NEWS

SeCurIty SCenArIo CAllS For enHAnCed PArtnerSHIP oF PAk-CHInA ArMed ForCeS: PAF ISLAMABAD

P

staff report

AKISTAN Air Force (PAF) Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Mujahid Anwar Khan has said that the existing global security scenario, coupled with the evolving dynamics of air warfare, calls for enhanced partnership between the two armed forcesPakistan and China.

Addressing the participants of the Pakistan-China joint air exercise Shaheen-IX, which culminated at an operational air base

of the PAF on Thursday, Mujahid said: “It is heartening that with every passing year, Pakistan-China friendship is becoming stronger. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a game changer and manifestation of our common objectives and destiny.”

The air chief also expressed his gratitude to People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Commander General Ding Laihang for sending a large contingent to participate in the exercise despite Covid-19 pandemic. Mujahid was the chief guest at the closing ceremony. Chinese Ambassa-

dor to Pakistan Nong Rong also attended the ceremony as a guest of honour.

Expressing his views at the occasion, Nong said: "International and regional strategic situations are undergoing profound changes with growing complexity in the security environment. This calls for the collaboration of our two countries and two armed forces in maintaining peace and stability and to cope with shared challenges.

Both the air forces have achieved many breakthroughs and new heights in a diversified battlefield environment during this exercise." The exercise,which was ninth in

the series of bilateral air manoeuvres by the two friendly air forces, witnessed the participation of latest aircrafts and support elements from the PLAAF and PAF. It is conducted every year in both the countries on an alternate basis.

“The PAF regularly participates in similar operational exercises, both in and outside the country, to remain abreast of challenges and response strategies in the contemporary threat environment,” the PAF press release said. It added that the 10th round of the Shaheen Exercise is scheduled to take place in China next year.

Ministers to decide reopening of schools on Jan 4: Shafqat ISLAMABAD: Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday said that all the education ministers from across Pakistan will meet on January 4 next year to decide the reopening of schools, which were closed to contain the spread of coronavirus. "The IPEMC would meet on January 4 to review the pandemic situation in the country and make a decision about the reopening of educational institutions," Shafqat said while responding to the media queries about the government's future course of action regarding educational institutes after Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani had said that the reopening of schools is unlikely under the prevailing circumstances. Earlier on Wednesday, Saeed said that after evaluating the coronavirus situation, it seems impossible that the educational institutions would reopen in January, 2021. He reiterated his stance that unlike the last academic year, no student would be promoted to the next year without taking the examination. Meanwhile, the owners of private schools have threatened to hold a long march towards Islamabad, if the schools are not allowed to resume classes from January 11. The Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC) had earlier decided to shut all schools, colleges, and universities from November 26 and announced that a review meeting would be held in the first week of January next year. staff report

APPSF rejects further closure of schools, threatens with long march

LAHORE: Minister of Interior Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad meets Special Assistant to Chief Minister of Punjab on Information and Culture Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan. They discussed and shared views about prevailing issues in the country.

IHC issues notice to govt in Naeem Bukhari’s appointment case ISLAMABAD tLtp

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday issued a notice to the federal government in a case pertaining to the appointment of Pakistan Television Board Chairman Naeem Bukhari and managing director.

Chief Justice Athar Minallah presided over the hearing of the petition filed by Arslan Farrukh, who pleaded through his counsel that Bukhari’s appointment was not made according to the guidelines set by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP).

“What is illegal in the notification,” Justice Minal-

lah asked the counsel during the proceedings while referring to the notification issued by the government on November 24.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted to the court that the post was not advertised in any newspaper, which was mandatory. “Naeem Bukhari is 65-year old,” the counsel prayed. The petitioner's counsel also cited SCP’s judgement on the appointment of previous PTV Chairman Ata-Ul-Haq Qasmi.

“The decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan must be obeyed,” the justice remarked.

After hearing the arguments, the IHC issued a notice and directed the federal government to submit its

comments within two weeks. The court also summoned Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan for assistance in the matter.

Through the petition, the appointments of two PTV board members Syed Asghar Nadeem and Wasim Raza were also challenged along with Bukhari.

On November 24, the Information Ministry had issued a notification regarding Bukhari's appointment as PTV board member and managing director. According to the notification, the government had also approved the nomination of Bukhari as the PTV board chairman in line with the PTV’s Memorandum and Articles of Association.

Masood urges people to follow Jinnah’s footsteps MUZAFFARABAD staff report

Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan on Thursday said that callous and discriminatory treatment meted out to the Muslims in the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) on the basis of their faith has once again proved that Father of the Nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was right to demand a separate country for the Muslims of the subcontinent.

In his message on the eve of the 145th birth anniversary of Jinnah, the AJK president said: “At present, the Muslims of India and Kashmir are facing the worst prejudice and discrimination under Hindutva ideology.

The behaviour has once again justified Jinnah's demand for a separate homeland for Muslims on the basis of two- nation theory.”

He urged the people to follow Jinnah’s principles to take the country on the path of progress and prosperity and to liberate Kashmir from the brutal foreign occupation so that the dream of Jinnah could be materialized.

Paying homage to Jinnah, the AJK pres-

ident further said:“It was exemplary leadership, audacity, statesmanship, vision and perseverance to the cause of Muslims of the sub-continent that made it possible for us to be citizens of an independent and sovereign Islamic state. Jinnah liberated the Muslims of sub-continent after democratic and lawful struggle against the British rulers and Hindu leadership of Indian National Congress.

We need the same dedication and spirit to make the country strong and stable, liberate Kashmir from Indian occupation, and complete Pakistan.”

Jinnah faced numerous difficulties and went through severe trials. But his visionary and dynamic leadership stood firm against all odds and finally succeeded in achieving the destination in the shape of Pakistan.

Our elders realised the dream of a separate homeland. Their historic struggle and great sacrifices in this regard could never be forgotten. It is now our sacred duty to make the country stronger and prosperous and work for the liberation of Kashmir to complete their mission. The president also extended felicitations to the Christian community on the occasion of Christmas.

KARACHI: The All Pakistan Private School Federation (APPSF) on Thursday threatened to launch a protest campaign, if schools are not reopened in January according to earlier decisions of the education ministers. Talking to the media, APPSF President Kashif Mirza said that they reject the statement that schools may not be allowed to open considering the deteriorating situation of coronavirus. He was responding to a statement of Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani, who had said a day earlier that the government may not allow the educational institutes to reopen from January 11 due to the prevailing circumstances. Educational institutions in the country were closed by the government for the second time on November 26 due to the second wave of coronavirus.

They were supposed to reopen from January 11 as per the government’s last announcement.

The APPSF chief said that the owners would reject the decision of keeping the schools closed and hold a long march towards Islamabad. He maintained that the virus was not spread in the UK due to opening of schools and educational institutes in Europe. He also highlighted that only 14 per cent of Pakistani students have the internet facility. tLtp

People lack access to inexpensive, speedy justice: IHC ISLAMABAD: Pointing out flaws in the justice system of the country and the deplorable condition of the district and special courts, Islamabad High Court (IHC)Chief Justice Athar Minallah on Thursday said that the citizens do not have access to inexpensive and speedy justice. The IHC chief justice heard different cases relating to the rising number of crimes in Islamabad, obstacles in the delivery of justice, naval farms and housing societies. Advisor to the Prime Minister on Accountability and Interior Mirza Shahzad Akbar also appeared before the court in a hearing. "You are the advisor on accountability, so I suggest you to go to the accountability courts yourself and examine the conditions there," Justice Minallah said while pointing out the flaws in the justice system of the country and the deplorable condition of the district and special courts. "The judges in those courts do not even have staff for dictation. Despite a lot of pressure on those courts, there is an acute dearth of staff," the CJ said. The CJ directed the advisor to visit the accountability courts and brief Prime Minister Imran Khan about the situation. In response to CJ's remarks, the advisor said that he has been appearing in the same courts for quite some time. "The situation in courts did not worsen overnight, as it took 40 years of neglect to reach the current stage," he maintained. "As advisors do not have executive authority, we can only give suggestions.

We will do whatever we can to improve the conditions of special courts," he submitted to the court. The CJ also talked about several other issues, including property and encroachment related complaints that the court had received. tLtp

Friday, 25 December, 2020

IslAMoPhobIA: CAuses And ConsequenCes I

tALhA ASLAM

slamophobia, a term expressed to depict fear of Islam is widely used to connote indiscriminate attitudes, beliefs and emotions directed towards Islam or Muslims. In reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Islamophobia means “Intense dislike or fear of Islam”. It was first coined by French Scholar Alain Quellien, as ‘’Islamphobie” in 1910 to describe a prejudice against Islam that is rife among the people of west. Later, it was adopted by English Literature in 1923.

As a concept in practice, it is considered a new word of an old notion presented by Edward Said in his work on Orientalism where West has always been associating derogatory sentiments and stereotypes to the practices of Islam. The term Islamophobia developed in late 1990’s and early 2000’s by political activists, non-governmental organisations, commentators, international organisation to draw attention towards the evils of a rhetoric bringing harms directed towards Muslims and Islam.

Yet Islamophobia emerged on the plane of International discourse with the publication of a report by the Runnymede Trust in 1997 titled; ‘’Islamophobia: A Challenge for all of us’’. It laid down the concept of Islamophobia as a useful shorthand way of referring to dread or hatred of Islam – and therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.

In 2004 United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan opened a UN conference on “Confronting Islamophobia” with the lament, “When the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development.

Such is the case with Islamophobia.”

According to Imam Dr Abdul Jalil Sajid, chairman of the Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony UK, Islamophobia is “the fear and/or hatred of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture and history. Islamophobia can be characterised by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies towards non-Muslims, and reject as directly opposed to Islam such concepts as equality, tolerance, and democracy” (RISC 2011).

The Terrorist Attack of 9/11 provided an impetus

to the rise of Islamophobia. After the attack of Twin Towers, Islam was being viewed as a conservative, barbaric and intolerant perspective of life. Muslim was posited as blood thirsty savages under the banner of a monolithic religion. The West holding the power to Information Technology spread the acrimony, condemning Muslims to racial discrimination and ridiculed Muslim community as perpetrators of violence and unrest in society.

With the rise of Islamophobia across the board, the far-right political parties of liberal western communities gained momentum in exploiting the subjected minorities of Muslims to confer political gains.

Islamophobia became a subterfuge to add defamation to Islam by public commentators and political actors.

The 2016 presidential elections of America were one of the most acrimonious and confrontational campaigns in the history of America. Extraordinary political rhetoric, outbursts in distasteful discriminatory tones, and anti-Muslim invectives blemished the campaign of United States (US) Presidential Elections of 2016. To endorse his political agenda, Donald J Trump specifically focused upon Muslims as a grave issue, and likely toyed with the public pulses, which resulted in an unpredictable election result.

Mirroring the perceived reality, media as an invention of information shapes public opinion. Media reports after 9/11 specifically underrepresented Muslim views and negatively portrayed Islamic culture. Islam was painted as a religion of discrimination, radicalisation and regression by the western media. With the advent of digital media, providing a carte blanche demerited the situation further. The rhetoric of Islamophobia dispersed hatred speech and acts of defamation on social media websites backed by the freedom of speech narrative. Social Media being a personal medium of communication galvanised the connotations of Islamophobia and intimidated Muslim minorities living in liberal western communities.

Society deprived of inter-faith harmony glaringly promotes intolerance and rejection towards those who is considered other. European countries including America and Canada practiced anti-Semitism long before Islamophobia surfaced. The hate of Muslims towards Jews and

of Jews towards Muslims persists even in today’s scenario. Terrorist attack of 9/11 and shooting in Orlando’s night club reinforced the primitive visceral hatred towards Muslims and Islam, exacerbating the discriminative attitudes and tarnishing the fabric of freedom for all narrative of western society.

Islamophobia, a narrative delegated to hatred and intolerance took its toll on the Muslim minorities resided in Europe and America. Bin Laden became a schoolyard taunt and banning Muslim women from wearing hijab, a public policy. Implicating Muslims with discriminations in political, social and civic life became a normalized attitude by the authorities. Surveillance by security agencies in order to keep radicalisation at bay and interfering with practices of Islam demonstrated consequences far beyond the imagination.

In the wake of events like 9/11 and with the rise of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, West launched a military operation to quell the terrorism machinations. In quest to quash Taliban of Afghanistan, a full-fledged operation was launched by Western forces on September 16, 2001. Furtherance of the military operation was seen by the world as Operation Inherent Resolve to quash the ISIS in middle east. Fallouts by use of cogency to suppress the militancy had adversarial effects. It led to displacement of indigenous innocents and anarchy for the state structures.

The aftermath of Islamophobia’s notion was evidently witnessed during the refugee crisis resulting from Arab Spring specifically during and after civil war of Syria. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and was seeking refuge in the modernised western states.

Engulfed by the fear of Islam and hatred rooted deep in conscience towards Muslims, the European countries demurred the refugees entering their premises. The farright political parties of the west depicted the war-torn refugees as invaders of freedom to culture and western values. Rallies and protests were carried out extensively against the refugee situation and the debate of Us verses Them surfaced in the legislative bodies of the western societies.

The provocative phobia of Islam, hurtling in the western society presents itself as propensity of vio-

EU provides WFP with funds to support flood affectees in Sindh

NEWS

05

lence and vandalism. The antipathy of westerners towards followers of Islam turned out as harrowing for Muslims in West. A report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (US) states that more than two thousand anti-Muslim offenses have been perpetuated in United States alone. The Kingston mosque incident where English vandalised the holy premises of worship and attack of violent mobs in Hamilton city of Canada on Muslim Education centers and mosques is another story of the liberal region. One major incident reported as a backlash of Islamophobia was shootings in New Zealand, where 51 Muslims were subjected to death.

The pretext of ‘national security’ in a post-9/11 world is particularly useful, being an amorphous concept that can be made to fit any inconvenient truth and throttle indicted to discriminatory shenanigans. Alienation of Muslims from political and civic life in upgraded societies of west is an epitome of Islamophobia. The unemployment rate for followers of Islam was seen at pinnacle specially in United States and European countries. Subjected to discrimination in education sectors, the repugnancy of Islamic views with the values of West was deplored on behest of Islamophobia. Travesties of Muslims as subjugators, discriminatory attitudes of authorities were considered just.

Irreverent attitudes of the West towards the diaspora of the east proved to be harrowing for Muslim Women and children. The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ in California surveyed 11 to 18 years old Muslim students to examine their experiences in school and reported that 50 per cent American Muslim students were bullied based by the hatred towards Islam. In France, incidents of pulling scarfs of Muslim women in public was highly reported. Islamophobia, as a just reason of hatred provided abyss for the most vulnerable community of Muslims minority residing in the West.

As a principle, it is the duty of United Nations and its law enforcing organs to maintain International Peace and protect its subjects from Human Rights violations.

The world post 9/11 witnessed the failure of United Nations and its law enforcing organs. A research conducted

by Brown University states 200,000 & 40,000 civilian causalities in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 that had died in the civil war. The supreme of all states and International protector of civil rights was proved as a fiasco. The on-going atrocities of Indian Military on the besieged Kashmiri’s resulted in 51,000 civilian casualties from 1989-2018 but as the Guardian Angel of Human Rights, United Nations neutrality to the conflict is questionable for the supremacy of International Humanitarian Law. The author is an academician and teaches in Pakistan's top varsities. His area of interest is international politics and foreign Affairs.

PPP MnA Pir noor Muhammad Jeelani dies of Covid-19 KArAChI

ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday announced that to provide Rs15,000 in cash for each family affected in the recent floods in Sindh to help them meet their food and other essential requirements.

The funds are being dispersed as part of the WFP’s second phase of aid to counter the floods and aim to support 117,000 affected families.

Support from committed donors like the European Union (EU) allowed WFP to reach over 71,000 people,

who were most affected by the disaster, with in-kind food assistance by early September.

A contribution of 500,000 euros from the EU has helped tens of thousands of families in Sindh who have received food and cash assistance from WFP in the aftermath of the devastating floods that hit the country in August.

“The unconditional cash support from the EU has enabled the most vulnerable families to cover their essential food and non-food needs such as medicine, water and shelter repairs,” WFP Pakistan Representative and Country Director Chris Kaye said.

Apart from food and cash assistance, the EU’s

support has allowed WFP to produce and disseminate information packages on nutrition and hygiene among mothers and children across Sindh province.

Another awareness-raising initiative has sensitised communities to the importance of precautionary measures preventing the spread of Covid-19 and dengue.

WFP’s emergency response has been coordinated with the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) of Sindh, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and implementing partners including ACTED and Secours Islamique France (SIF).

Pakistan hits highest single-day toll from virus during second wave ContInueD froM pAge 01 The positivity rate in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was 6.17 per cent, Balochistan 5.64 per cent, GilgitBaltistan (GB) 1.54 per cent, Islamabad 5.08 per cent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 8.46 per cent, Punjab 4.49 per cent and Sindh 7.88 per cent.

The province-wise breakdown of the numbers showed a 7.29 per cent positivity rate in Lahore, 6.46 per cent in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad 2.7 per cent, Multan 3.24 per cent and Gujranwala with 5.62 per cent.

In Sindh, Karachi recorded a 12.45 per cent rate, Hyderabad 6.4 per cent, whereas, in KP, Peshawar posted a 10.96 per cent transmission ratio, Abbottabad 7.81 per cent and Swat 1.49 per cent.

Quetta witnessed a 2.99 per cent positivity ratio, Islamabad 5.08 per cent Mirpur,

AJK 5.36 per cent, Muzaffarabad 4.83 per cent and GB 2.48 per cent. So far, 417,134 people have recovered from the disease nationwide with over 86 per cent recovery rate.

Since the outbreak in March, a total of 465,070 cases have been detected including the perished, recovered and under-treatment patients. The numbers are as following: AJK 8,065; Balochistan 18,005; GB 4,838; Islamabad 36,721; KP 56,160; Punjab 133,874 and Sindh 207,407.

About 9,668 people have died from the disease and related complications: 3,419 in Sindh, 3,783 in Punjab, 1,577 in KP, 398 in Islamabad, 181 in Balochistan, 99 in GB and 211 in AJK. GOVT IN CONTACT WITH PRODUCERS FOR EARLY VACCINE DOSES: Meanwhile, the NCOC has been informed the govern-

ment was “in close liaison” with leading international manufacturers of coronavirus vaccines to secure early doses of the antidote.

The government earlier this month announced it had begun the vaccine procurement process. The government has approved $150 million in funding to buy the vaccines, initially to cover the most vulnerable 5 percent of the population.

The amount was later increased to $250 million following a surge in the cases. The initial phase of vaccinations would focus on providing free shots for frontline health workers and people above the age of 65 years, Dr Faisal Sultan, the prime minister’s special adviser on health, had announced.

A panel of experts was compiling a list of recommendations on how to pro-

CMYK

cure the vaccine, Dr Faisal said. “We will see whether we need to tap more than one source, including some Western manufacturers or some Chinese, so we will move forward with all these options.”

Pakistan has launched Phase III clinical trials for CanSino Biologics’ vaccine candidate, Ad5-nCoV, led by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and pharmaceutical company AJM Pharma — the local representative of CanSino.

Another Chinese candidate, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has also developed a vaccine which was found to be safe and triggered immune responses in early and midstage trials. A late-stage trial of the ZF2001 vaccine began last month in China and aims to recruit 29,000 people from Pakistan among other countries.

TLTP

Pakistan People's Party (PPP) MNA Pir Noor Muhammad Jeelani on Thursday lost his life in the fight against coronavirus. According to details, Jeelani was admitted to Karachi’s private hospital where he breathed his last and was pronounced dead by the hospital administration due to coronavirus-related complications. Born on September 15, 1951, Jeelani was a senior politician and was elected as MNA from Sindh’s constituency of NA-221, Chachro, Tharparkar, in the 2018 general elections by beating the incumbent Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Jeelani previously remained a member of the National Assembly from June 2013 to May 2018. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of several Pakistanis including politicians, journalists, businessmen and people belonging to various walks of life. On December 10, Advisor to CM Sindh, Syed Aijaz Ali Shah Shirazi was pronounced dead due to Covid-19.

PM for steps to regain PIA’s lost glory ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed for taking allout steps to regain the lost glory of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). Chairing a session over PIA's performance here on Thursday, the PM was briefed him on the transformation model of the national flag carrier by his aide on institutional reforms Ishrat Hussain. Hussain said that the transformational reforms will improve the financial status of PIA, underscoring that with increasing operations on profitable routes, and improved international service can be ensured.

PIA CEO Arshad Malik elaborated the steps considered for improved operations of the national airlines.

“In order to turn the service into a profitable one, we will have to meet global standards of aviation services,” the prime minister noted.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

06 COMMENT

Nowhere to be seen

Need for immediate relief Social justice cannot be put on backburner

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RIMe MInISTeR Imran Khan’s presence at the passing-out parade of Islamabad police was an occasion when one least expected him to devote a good part of his speech to berating the leadership of the PML(n) and the PPP. At a time when the country’s economy is under severe pressure while Pakistan is also in the grip of the coronavirus’ second wave and its student community has already lost months of instruction, there is a need on the part of the PM to pay undivided attention to these grave national issues. It was natural on this occasion for the Islamabad police to ask the PM to bring their pays at the level of their colleagues in Punjab. Telling them that the expenditure of the PM House had been reduced by 6070 percent would hardly satisfy them, or for that matter the man in the street when the PM himself acknowledges that the people of the country are facing unprecedented inflation. While it is good to tell the police to reform their conduct, become people-friendly and perform their duties to protect the life and property of the people, it is equally necessary to remove their genuine grievances related to salary structure.

Telling people to wait patiently till the national wealth increases would not satisfy those finding it already difficult to make ends meet. PM Khan’s ideal, Ayub Khan, tried to sell the trickle-down theory which requires accumulation of wealth in the hands of the industrialists and businessmen as a precondition for the common man’s prosperity. While the proverbial 21 families flourished under Ayub, the people suffered from rising prices, unemployment and rampant corruption which led to the mass movement that overthrew him. There is a need on the part of the PM to follow instead in the footsteps of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah who had serious concern for the economic and social uplift of the masses.

The Quaid visualized a major role of the public sector in fair distribution of the resources between the haves and have-nots, advocated social justice and a democratic welfare state.

Islamic countries showed up nowhere in responding to the pandemic At Penpoint M A NIAZI

O

ne of the more interesting features of the world’s response to the covid-19 pandemic has been the extent to which it has confirmed Samuel Huntington’s 1992 thesis of a ‘clash of civilisations’. Huntington had posited three civilisations, which he predicted would clash: the Western, the Confucian and the Islamic.

The response to the pandemic shows the first two competing, but the third being absent, following one or the other in its attempt to deal with the unexpected challenge of the pandemic.

It is something of a stretch, but not too much, to see the conflation of communism with Confucianism, mainly through the medium of the Communist Party of China. It is important to remember, at this point, that Huntington’s thesis was a response to Francis Fukuyama’s proposal of The End of History, according to which he proposed that history had come to an end, and the West had won. This thesis had come at the end of the Cold War, when communism had lost, what with the Berlin Wall coming down and the USSR collapsing.

Huntington saw history as still not being predictable, and that the West had not finally won.

While he saw more civilisations in the world than the ones he saw as competitors, he saw non-Western civilisations as the Hindu or Sub-Saharan African, as subordinated to the Western. Fukuyama postulated that history had ended in the Hegelian sense of opposing ideas, not that there would no longer be a competition among nations, but there would be more ideological competition.

Huntington saw civilisations merely as providing identity markers, even where they agreed with Western capitalism. It is possible to see the modern American fascination with hyphenation (and race), with origin, in those terms. Huntington saw Western civilization in a clash with Confucian cultures, which is playing out in the current clash with China, with trade as well as the South China Sea representing different aspects of the clash. He also saw a clash with Islam. This has been fiercely denied by many Muslims, who insist that Islam is a peaceable religion, and the ‘clash of civilisations’ is merely being used to justify the War on Terror. It is worth noting that

Preparing for a vaccine Preempting potential problems at home

A

S the news kept coming of the current wave of covid-19 infections continuing, the national Command and Operations Centre (nCOC) was told that Pakistan was in touch with both Chinese and Western manufacturers of vaccines for Pakistan to obtain a vaccine. While more than one vaccine has been approved in the USA and UK, where manufactures have managed to obtain approval for their formulations, Pakistan seems likely to depend on the Chinese vaccines, one developed by its national Institute of Health, the other by the Academy of Sciences, one of which is undergoing trials in Pakistan also. Initially $150 million were approved for obtaining the vaccine, but now the amount has been increased to Rs 250 million. That does not seem sufficient to take into the marketplace, especially since pharmaceutical companies are doing their best to make a profit on their investment. The government must be clear that even $250 million, inadequate as it is, is still an attractive target for the kind of scam artist that thrives under such conditions.

Apart from other considerations, Pakistan should remember that it is joining the queue too late. Western countries have already locked into production for vaccines, by having paid on speculation, paying for huge orders at a time when trials were not yet complete.

Pakistan is part of the Un’s VAXX project, which seeks to produce a vaccine, or negotiate with makers for an affordable one, but it does not seem something to depend on.

At the same time, Pakistan must also be prepared for pushback against the vaccine by the kind of religious circles which were such a hurdle in the polio vaccination campaign. The spectre of pig gelatin being used to make the vaccines has already been raised in Indonesia and Singapore, and the government must ensure that such tactics are not used against whichever vaccine is adopted.

The message of getting vaccinated must be put across effectively, and the means to make this meaningful must be ensured along with obtaining a vaccine. The government must realize that its problems have not been solved by the development of several vaccines, they have just become different.

Christian conservatives are still Zionists Washington Watch

O

Editor Umar Aziz

Asher John

Executive Editor

Deputy Editor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965

Dr JAMes J Zogby

n Christmas, my thoughts turn to Bethlehem, its struggling people, and the shocking disregard for them by many Christians in the West. not that they don’t love Bethlehem. But the city they love is that of the 2000-year-old story.

The reality of contemporary Bethlehem is ignored.

Today, Bethlehem is surrounded by dozens of Israeli settlements, many built on land confiscated from Bethlehemites. It is cut off from much of the West Bank by two Israeli bypasses and a massive concrete wall. And just this month, Israeli PM Benjamin netanyahu announced plans to advance a new settlement that would completely sever Bethlehem from nearby Jerusalem.

The resultant loss of land, the growing impoverishment of its citizens, and the hostile actions of Israeli occupation forces and settlers have forced many Bethlehemites to leave their beloved city and homeland. Given these accumulated violations of human rights and their impact on Christians and Muslims alike, one might expect the West’s Christians to speak out for the little town they celebrate annually. That, sadly, is not to be– most especially among powerful Christian conservative groups in the USA which claim to defend co-religionists worldwide.

To most in the West, Palestinian Christians are simply invisible. To conservative Christians, they are at best a nuisance in the way of unquestioning ideological attachment to Israel.

I saw this up close during my four-year tenure as a Presidential appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. As a Lebanese Maronite Catholic, who had traveled throughout the Middle east, I was aware of concerns of Christian communities in the region and I was excited to play a role in protecting their rights.

Despite having been charged by the White House to “push back” on the hold that conservatives had over the commission, because I was the newest commissioner, I thought it best to spend months learning the ropes, before raising any concerns of my own. I learned

Arif Nizami

Joint Editor

The writer is a member of staff.

Conservative Christians remain silent about suffering Bethlehem

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

Huntington’s thesis was propounded before 9/11, but that event has been pressed into the service of Huntington’s thesis. It should be noted that Huntington, even before 9/11, had named Islamic extremism, symbolized by the Iranian Revolution, as the main manifestation of the potential of the Islamic civilization to pose a challenge.

It is to be noted that Huntington did not see Communism as a competitor any longer, with Russia being classified as the core of eastern Orthodox civilization.

That would leave it was an outlier of Western civilization. China, on the other hand, he saw as the core of the Confucian civilization. If one looks at it more closely, one would see the rule of the Communist Party of China, directed since Deng Xiao-Ping in capitalist paths. Therefore China is not only the core of the Confucian civilization, but also the main representative of the one-party model. Another representative of both communism and Confucianism is north Korea. The other Confucian countries border China, and have historically looked to it for cultural influence. One of them, Japan, even invaded it in the last century. However, all of them are now in the Western camp, as firm allies of its core state, the USA. At the same time, the difference between capitalism and communism is not that great, though it loomed large over the world during the Cold War. Communism is actually the result of a humanist critique of capitalism, and thus both originated in the 18th century enlightenment. It thus has a certain logic to uphold China as representing Marxism as well.

That the east Asian (or Confucian) states handled the pandemic better than the USA or europe, is supposed to have led to the impression that the Confucian model, based on cooperation and a state more ready to act coercively, has been more successful.

However, the real inflection point is supposed to have come with the preparation of a vaccine, with China claiming to have beaten the USA to one. The USA has got more than one, and the superiority of Western medicine (and thus of its civilization?) will be shown by the way the world lines up to obtain Western vaccines. It should be noted that the UK rolled out its vaccine a tad earlier, but instead of standing out as the British vaccine, it is being categorized as one among several Western vaccines, and is thus lumped with those developed by US firms. Russia has developed a vaccine, and is thus holding up the flag of the Orthodox civilization, but the other civilizations are left out, except as recipients. And because they are all

in the Third-World, they will probably only got the vaccines later, when the firms concerned fulfill their and european orders.

While the Confucian civilization (represented by China) has marked its presence, and Western civilization (in the shape of the USA) has as usual led the field, Islamic civilization is virtually unrepresented, except as a recipient, during this great global crisis.

The worst affected was probably Iran, but it did not work towards a vaccine, and like other Muslim countries, was content to let the West or China to work towards a vaccine. It is not that any Muslim country is at the cutting edge of any technology, including pharmaceuticals, but most of its countries include a large number of expert health professionals who would have been more than capable of developing a vaccine if put together. The crisis also marked the uselessness of the OIC. The OIC does have certain potentially relevant subsidiary organisations, but they did not play any role. There is no OIC equivalent of the WHO, but there is an ISeSCO, the equivalent of UneSCO, headquartered in Rabat, and an STIO, headquartered in Islamabad. neither of these organisations seized this moment to make their presence felt.

It seems that an OIC-style organization must face the problem of all coalitions: joint action is not possible without everyone agreeing. A single state overcomes that by having a final single decisionmaker. Coalition armies have depended on having a decisive commander who was all sensitive to all governments, not just his own. Successful coalition commanders in recent times have been American: eisenhower during World War II, Macarthur during the Korean War, and Schwarzkopf during the first Iraq War. Though the OIC was created against Israeli aggression in east Jerusalem, the recent rash of peace accords with Israel have exposed its ability, and its irrelevance during the pandemic has surprised no one.

There was an attempt at relevance, in the claims for the preventive effects of ablutions, but those were soon rubbished when it was pointed out that ablutions were not as common as suggested.

It is also probably of significance that OIC members are looking at core states of other civilisations for el during the pandemic. While Saudi Arabia and the other states of Arabian Peninsula are looking to the USA for help, others, like Syria, are looking to Russia, while Pakistan is looking to China. It seems that the Western and Confucian civilisations have an advantage in hiving states at the centre which can mobilize the resources needed to solve this problem.

The solution involved two components: stopping the spread of the disease and coming up with a vaccine. The Islamic civilization did not have a state which could do either; and credit is given to the Confucian for showing it could do both.

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Karachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9

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early I wasn’t going to have the luxury of waiting.

In December of 2013, my third month, the staff circulated a draft opinion piece for newspapers authored by the commission’s Chair and Vice Chair.

It began: “As we enter the Christmas season, Christians look joyously ahead to celebrating Christ’s birth in a manger. But across parts of the Middle east, the cradle of Christianity, followers of Jesus are under siege and live in fear, facing a rising tide of repression, intimidation, and violence...Unless circumstances change, some are pondering the unthinkable: will Christianity survive in the area of its origin?”

The piece went on to devote full paragraphs to the plight of Christians in each of the following countries: egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, nigeria, and Pakistan.

Soon my inbox began to fill with notes of approval from my fellow members. I had to act quickly before a majority approved and the article would be sent out. I, therefore, wrote in response: “How on earth can we publish an article about the plight of Christians in the Holy Land without even a mention of the concerns of the Christians in Bethlehem...and Jerusalem, etc. They too are suffering– losing their lands and ability to survive under harsh occupation. The wall, the settlement construction on confiscated Bethlehem land, and the closure of Jerusalem are choking these cities and forcing their residents to leave.”

The response from some colleagues was one of indignation. How dare I criticize Israel? Didn’t I know that Israel protects Christians and allows them to prosper? And didn’t I know that the problems facing Christians in the Holy Land are the result of Muslims?

After a number of further exchanges, they agreed to add a single disturbingly “no fault” sentence: “In Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus, many Palestinian Christians, who are part of a small and diminishing minority, feel marginalized and insecure.”

This was not the last time I was to witness the gross insensitivity of my colleagues to the plight of the Christians in Palestine.

The next year, I invited the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem to address the commission. He had come to

Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545

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Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk

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Washington seeking help on a number of issues, including stopping Israeli plans to confiscate church lands for the barrier wall. Its route separated a monastery from its vineyards and a convent and Christian children from their school. not only did his appeal fall on deaf ears, but he and I were both shocked when two commissioners upbraided him for not using his position to challenge Hamas! The following year, my conservative fellow commissioners wanted to issue a statement denouncing UneSCO for honoring a Palestinian request to declare Bethlehem a World Historical Site.

In my final year, the commission received two appeals: one from a liberal Jewish group and the other from the heads of all the Christian churches in the Holy Land– accompanied by a 192 page report compiled by a group of Palestinian lawyers arguing the case for why the commission should address Israel’s violations of the religious rights of Christians, Muslims, and non-Orthodox Jews.

When a liberal Jewish colleague and I introduced a motion to consider both the requests and the report, the reaction from our conservative Christian and Jewish colleagues was near hysteria. They had two major objections: Why were we singling Israel out for criticism? And didn’t we realize that if the commission were to act on this request it would lose its Congressional funding?

Deeming the latter challenge insulting, I focused only on the former and responded that we were not singling Israel out for criticism, since we had in fact joined with our colleagues in challenging violations of religious freedom in dozens of countries worldwide. In fact, it was the conservatives on the commissions who were singling Israel as the one country that could never be criticized.

Our motion was defeated.

This shocking disregard for human rights and religious freedoms is what allows Israel’s behaviour toward Palestinian Christians to continue. As a result, Bethlehem is being strangled and its people are in pain.

This shameful silence continues. On this Christmas Day, the very conservative Christians who will sing of Bethlehem and tell the story of what happened in that city long ago will remain willfully blind to its current reality.

The writer is President of the Arab American Institute

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Friday, 25 December, 2020

COMMENT 07 Editor’s mail Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan. e-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively

No power in Hub despite Hub power plant HUB power plant is one of the biggest plants in Pakistan. It is situated in the river of Hub city Baluchistan. That operates only one percent of its capacity in the whole year and other 99% are directly sending electricity to Punjab province of Pakistan, but the people of Hub city are facing noise pollution, sound pollution, and there is no electricity in Hub city.

However the Hub power plant is providing electricity to others. It is the humble request to the government of Pakistan to provide electricity in Hub city Baluchistan.

Haneef BalucH Sajidi awaran

Political game

A role model for all ridors were jampacked as the public and advocates desired to see and hear Mr. Jinnah. When Chief Justice Davis and Justice Weston entered, 1896. The wheels of fortune took the young Jin- seeing the huge crowd the Chief Justice ordered AkhtAr Aly kureshy nah in a different direction, in early days of his the doors of courtroom be closed. Mr. Jinnah got legal practice, Quaid joined the chamber of John up and smilingly said that the door of justice M. Macpherson, Acting must always remain OW lucky we are to live in a peaceful Advocate General of open, the judges agreed and independent society where every- Bombay, whose efforts to the suggestion. thing is being managed and con- assisted the Quaid to However at Mr Jintrolled by ourselves. We can live apply for a temporary Today we are celebrating the nah’s behest the crowd without feeling some sort of inferior- post of Presidency remained quiet. special event of Quaid-iity complex or fear of any pressure of some Magistrate of Bombay.

When Mr. Jinnah diehard religious group, and this is all because Mr. Jinnah officiated as appeared in any case Azam’s Day with national of the greatest personality of the Subcontinent. Presidency Magistrate either in the High Court Our youth has little knowledge about how this for only six months and zeal and dignity, and should or in the Privy Council, country was achieved by the Quaid-i-Azam. His soon after the expiry of judges would show renew the commitment of competence, dedication, sincerity and leadership this tenure, Sir Charles great respect for his arwere aboveboard and recognized by the entire was so impressed by his making Pakistan as Quaid-i- guments. His compeworld. He was a man of great integrity and he performance that he oftence was outstanding Azam wanted it to be. was absolutely impeccable in his professional fered him a permanent and remarkable and he etiquettes, having a dynamic approach and vi- appointment on a salary would secure a fair Pakistan needs to be sion of high values. He was a leader with the po- of Rs 1500 per month. judgment. It is on tr The Quaid confitential to change the world. record of various judgstrengthened and In the early days of the Quaid’s life the Gen- dently refused the offer ments that judges regmodernized by securing its eral Manager of a leading Trading Company of by politely saying that istered their Karachi, who was a friend of Jinnah’s father, his ambition was to appreciation of his arsolidarity and advancement willingly offered an apprenticeship to Jinnah in earn Rs 1500 per day. guments and the valuhis company in London in 1892. The offer was Mr. Jinnah’s confidence able assistance he reasonable, therefore Jinnah’s father, Jinahbhai proved well founded as afforded them Lord Poonja, accepted this offer because it would he did start earning Rs Denning, the Master of teach his son the practical experience of business 1500 per day, which was a huge amount in those Rolls, who was also known as the Master of Ruladministration and thereby train him to join his days, and he became a renowned lawyer with a ings, recalled with great pleasure that Mr Jinnah firm when he (Jinnah) would return from Lon- lucrative practice in a few years. These expo- had been a member of Lincoln’s Inn. edgar don. The young Jinnah accepted the task and sures built the personality of Quaid as a great Snow, a famous American writer, acknowledged leader who made his- the competence of Mr Jinnah by saying that he sailed to england in tory by giving voice to had won the most monumental judgments in the January 1893. Just after the suppressed Mus- history of the Indian Bar. A letter written to Lord working for three lims of the Subconti- Birkenhead by Mahatama Gandhi, admitted that months in the British In the early days of the nent. company, the young Mr Jinnah is one of the cleverest lawyers of The former US India and this was not less than a moral victory.

Jinnah happened to see Quaid’s life the General President Clinton dura barrister robed in a It was noticed by everybody that Mr. Jinblack gown with collars Manager of a leading Trading ing his official visit to nah had some extraordinary features and prinPakistan in 2000 at a ciples which distinguished him from all his and bands and wearing Company of Karachi, who lunch hosted in his contemporaries. even his opponents, both in a wig, and that very honor, surprised the in- the legal field or political arena, acknowledge moment he was inwas a friend of Jinnah’s vitees by paying tribute his competence and prudence. His multi-dispired to be a barrister. father, willingly offered an to Quaid-i-Azam say- mensional charismatic personality is a source Due to his motivation, ing that Mr. Jinnah was of inspiration for generations of all times and he easily passed the apprenticeship to Jinnah in the greatest constitu- particularly for our youth who are the future of preliminary examinational lawyer of the Pakistan. Though he was a physically thin pertion for the study of his company in London in Commonwealth. Sir son, suffering from serious deceases, he was law, Bar-at-Law, to join 1892. The offer was Stafford Cripps while considered to be an un-breakable man whose Lincoln’s Inn. speaking on the BBC immaculate handling of his mission to gain a While addressing reasonable, therefore remarked, “(Mr. Jinnah homeland for the Muslim’s of the subcontithe Karachi Bar AssociJinnah’s father, Jinahbhai is) a most accom- nent, wrested victory from the British and outation in January 1948, plished lawyer, out- witted the narrow-minded Hindus. His efforts the Quaid-i-Azam was Poonja, accepted this offer standing amongst changed the map of the world by adding a new pleased to disclose the Indian lawyers and a country for Muslims. It is the need of the hour reason he joined Linbecause it would teach his fine constitutionalist.” to strictly follow the footsteps of the Quaid-icoln’s Inn: that in the son the practical experience While arguing a case in Azam main hall of Lincoln’s to reach our ultimate destiny of peace the Bombay High and prosperity and build a nation according to Inn there was a grand of business administration Court, Mr Justice Mar- his vision. Today we are celebrating the special fresco in which the and thereby train him to join tin angrily shouted at event of Quaid-i-Azam’s Day with national name of the Holy Mr. Jinnah, “You are zeal and dignity, and should renew the comProphet Muhammad his firm when he (Jinnah) not addressing a third mitment of making Pakistan as Quaid-i-Azam (PBUH) was promiclass magistrate,” and wanted it to be. Pakistan needs to be strengthnently mentioned would return from London.

Jinnah spontaneously ened and modernized by securing its solidarity among the lawgivers of replied, “There is not a and advancement. the world. third class counsel beAfter completing fore your Lordship.” In his legal education The writer is an Advocate of the Supreme Quaid decided to return to his homeland to start 1941 Mr. Jinnah appeared before the Sindh Court of Pakistan, Law Professor, member of his career as a barrister and got enrolled in the Chief Court in a case of Bisham Bardas & Co International Bar Association and former Bombay High Court as an advocate in August versus Sachoo Mal. The Court room and its cor- Assistant Attorney General for Pakistan.

The real lawyer who create the nation

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CARD players usually come across a peculiar type of ‘stubborn and obstinate player’ especially someone who is unwilling to accept his defeat.

He will keep on insisting to reshuffle the cards during the game believing that something is wrong with them but forgets to realize that each reshuffling is limited to the same set of 52 cards. Still then reshuffling in a cards game proves slightly effective sometimes as there is an embedded luck element called probability of a favorable outcome, however, reshuffling of cabinet ministries brings no such hope.

Imran Khan’s prior reshuffling of cabinet portfolios several times during a short period of two years since his incumbency has always met with constant failures. This indicates that the deck of cabinet portfolios is nothing more than an amalgam of corrupt, incompetent, irresponsible and inept ministries. ergo it is the time to change the deck itself.

Political parties while selecting their candidates should look for ideal capabilities required to deal with potential governance tasks, otherwise if you are appointing an arts graduate as a Minister of Science and Technology, what miracles do you expect from him? raja amin afzal muzaffaraBad

Madrassahs still open IT was decided by all education ministers (Federal and Provincial) to keep all educational institutions, including schools, colleges, universities, Madressahs and tuition centres closed across the country until January 10, 2021, in the wake of the surge in coronavirus cases. A month is supposed to be completed but madressahs are still open for education activities, despite the government’s clear directives to educational institutions to remain closed.

According to a report Prime Minister Imran Khan has taken notice of madressahs remaining open during the coronavirus pandemic, despite the government’s clear directives to educational institutions to remain closed. The news report further disclosed that the Ministry of education (Shafqat Mahmood) has contacted all madressahs that are still open and holding classes. However, the education minister has issued directives to close all madressahs that are open across the country, confirmed sources, adding that the minister will apprise PM Imran Khan of his decision as well. Well, I am not going to criticize the representative of Madressahs that why they have students for education activities despite the announcement, but I want to ask the respected ministers and authorities do they have any specific or particular reason or answer? Why did they take a complete month to know that the Madressahs are open? If they were aware about it so why didn’t they take any notice to close them for the safety of students? As they always cry that health is the first priority for them. Here, I would like to urge the government, education ministers and authorities please resume the educational activities in the country with strict SOPs rather than closing them. muHammad BakHtiyar kecH, turBat

Avoiding speculation I was writing/preparing this serious and sincere letter on the present COVID conundrum even as I was celebrating my birthday on December 22 - when I am becoming one year older. My existence in this world means a lot and even a lot more involving health care, family background, status, hard work and so on. So is the case of everyone out there in the universe. There have been so many things, both negative and positive taking place across the world back to back. For example, a beautiful Asian nation called nepal has now been facing a new political challenge due to a possible election ahead. Incidentally, the coronavirus relating to our health care system has been grabbing all those headlines almost year-round up till now. Does it mean that ours has been a failed health care system? Have we all been unhygienic all along compared to the Homo sapiens and the past civilization? These are all serious-minded questions now. After the corona second wave and some great breakthroughs like COVID vaccination, vaccine shots, the evil and unexpected things like new corona variant, new COVID strain, virus mutation have been now rocking the whole world like anything. especially, there have been continuous reports of the new corona strain in the european region. And countries like the UK are hell-bent on tightening lockdown measures all in the wake of Xmas and new Year. enough is enough. People and countries have been grappling with the corona crisis, enough to remember forever. As a serious matter of fact, most Asian nations have been limping back to normalcy after having gone through tremendous hardship from COVID. now people in my native areas like Korkai, Tuticorin, Tiruchendur, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari in Tamil nadu have started organizing functions in their families after a long hiatus. Regarding the new virus variant, the WHO and the media have a huge role up ahead, focussing only on nothing but truth about the virus disease. Say Big no To Over-The-Top Stories! Yet again, agriculture and industrial activities must go on unhampered with the full federal support. As for the COVID new strain in the West, the powers that be especially in the Oval Office and at Downing Street must gear up to nip the new variant in the bud using superb medical technological advances available out there and killing the so-called causative agent. Though the human behavior in terms of following health care guidelines like wearing a mask - I have been doing wherever necessary - has been widely discussed, all the people want is to see the Zero COVID Case worldwide soon through much greater efforts and much more powerful medical systems.

P SentHil Saravana durai mumBai

Friday, 25 December, 2020

08 WORLD VIEW

WHAT is driving AsiA’s TecHnologicAl rise?

HOW DID ASIA GET HERE, AND WHAT LESSONS DOES ITS SUCCESS HOLD FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?

projEcT syndIcaTE

A

Jonathan woetzeL and JeongMinSeong

SIA is a technological force to be reckoned with. Over the last decade, the region has accounted for 52 per cent of global growth in tech-company revenues, 43 per cent of startup funding, 51 per cent of spending on research and development and 87 per cent of patents filed, according to new research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). how did Asia get here, and what lessons does its success hold for the rest of the world?

Of course, Asia is not a monolith, and technology gaps within the region remain significant. India, for example, has fewer large tech companies than other major economies. Still, four of the world’s top ten technology companies by market capitalisation are Asian.

China, home to 26 per cent of the world’s unicorns (startups valued at $1 billion or more), leads the way in tech entrepreneurship in Asia, though it still relies on foreign inputs in core technologies. By contrast, advanced Asian economies like Japan and South Korea have large tech firms and a significant knowledge base, but relatively few unicorns. Asia’s emerging economies still invest relatively little in innovation, but they do provide

growing markets for the goods and services produced by Asia’s tech leaders.

Against this background, Asian countries have had to make a virtue out of collaborating to overcome fragmentation and close technology gaps. And they have made considerable progress in recent years. Notably, they have invested heavily in regional tech startups, about 70 per cent of such investment comes from within Asia, and robust regional technology supply chains.

While Asia’s technology supply chains continue to be reconfigured as they develop, the shifts have occurred largely within the region. (For example, the region’s developed economies and China have expanded investment in emerging economies’ manufacturing sectors.)

This went a long way toward supporting Asia’s relative resilience during the COVID-19 crisis. The just-signed Regional Comprehensive economic Partnership could foster even closer intraregional ties.

Collaboration among countries is only part of the equation. Asian governments have also worked with local tech companies to advance goals in domains like renewable energy and artificial intelligence. During the pandemic, such partnerships have been essential to South Korea’s track-and-trace strategy, and to national health QR-code programmes in China and Singapore.

Asia is also developing new models for collaboration across digital ecosystems to help enterprises and societies share resources and information more effectively.

To be sure, Asian economies may find it difficult to catch up and compete in some well-established technology sectors, such as semiconductor design or operating system software, where others have a commanding mar-

The fading light of liberal democracy

FInancIal TImEs MaRtin woLF

“F

OR the first time this century, among countries with more than 1m people, there are now fewer democracies than there are non-democratic regimes.” This sobering sentence is by the Oxford university historian Timothy Garton Ash in an essay on “The Future of Liberalism”. The observation reflects what Stanford University’s Larry Diamond labels the “democratic recession”. The election of Joe Biden as US president is a relief. But this story is not yet over.

To understand what is happening, one must connect politics to economics. BrankoMilanovic, an expert on inequality, did this in Capitalism Alone, published last year. Capitalism has triumphed, he argues. he is right: the market economy is indeed triumphant.

But, he adds, capitalist economies go with two distinct political systems in leading economies: the “liberal” model of the US and its allies, which is the concern of Messrs Garton Ash and Diamond, and China’s “political” model.

Mr Milanovic argues correctly that liberal democracy is a good in itself and also allows peaceful selfcorrection. People do desire freedom and US voters have disposed of Donald Trump. The Chinese cannot do the same with President Xi Jinping. The argument for “political capitalism” is instrumental: it works. The rise of China has indeed been extraordinary. Many

have noticed, too.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that far more europeans now think China is the leading economy than believe the US is, though the Japanese and South Koreans disagree.

Mr Milanovic’s dichotomy is useful but simplistic. A third political version of capitalism exists: demagogic authoritarian capitalism. This can arise out of collapsed communism, as in today’s Russia, or out of enfeebled democracy, as in Brazil or Turkey. Demagogic authoritarian capitalism is a hybrid.

Often the core consists of the family members, viewed as most trustworthy of all. This is the political system Mr Trump wished to install in the US. Such rulers are like wasp larvae that eat the spider from within.

They manage to win an election and then erode the institutional and political bulwarks against indefinite personal rule. Mr Trump has all the relevant characteristics: the truth is what he says it is; a fair election is one he wins; and a good official is one who is loyal. he wants to be an autocrat. This is distinct from saying that he wants to govern. Nero was not very interested in governing either. But he definitely was tyrannical. events in the US have shown two crucial things. First, core American institutions including the courts have resisted his effort to overthrow the elections. Second, a huge proportion of the Republican party has abetted his lie that the election was rigged. This has underlined another reality of the past four years: the Republican leadership showed absolute obedience to their leader, almost to the last gasp.

This is no accident. It is the logical outcome of the political and economic strategy of the “plutopopulist”. Mr Trump is a natural outcome of the strategic goal of the donor class — tax cuts and deregulation. To achieve this end, they have to convince a large proportion of the population to vote against its economic interests by focusing on culture and identity. This strategy has worked and will continue to work: Mr Trump may have gone;

Trumpism has not. Not entirely dissimilar patterns can be seen in Brexit Britain.

The focus of the university-educated left on their form of identity politics plays into the hands of their rightwing counterpart.

Mr Biden is a decent man.

What he wants to do domestically and internationally makes evident sense. But he will confront an opposition determined to make him fail. Indeed, making government fail is the core of rightwing politics — that and stoking the rage of the base. One has to be blind not to see where this is leading. The donors would not be the first rich and powerful people to believe, mistakenly, that they can control demagogic demons they have helped create.

As the Pew survey shows, the reality of Mr Trump’s US has eroded the world’s confidence in its competence and decency. Mr Biden will find it very hard to regain that trust, not because people do not believe in him, but because they do not believe in his country. And, with the US’s future as a liberal democracy still uncertain, the cause remains in grave trouble worldwide.

Liberal democracy does have one big advantage: its main opponent. As harvard’s Samantha Power notes, China’s approval rating in Gallup polling is a median of 32 per cent among over 130 countries. It has hardly budged in 10 years. People respect China, but do not like it.

China also confronts the challenge of sustaining economic dynamism without a credible rule of law.

None of today’s dominant systems is working well. Capitalism is innovative, but creates huge social, political and environmental challenges. Liberal democracy is corroded, even at its core. But the authoritarian politics that challenge it are vastly worse. Unaccountable rule is deeply depressing, even if the latter are much less incompetent. Those of us who continue to believe in freedom and democracy hope Mr Trump was the warning we all needed. But I doubt it. There is none so blind as rich egotists who will not see.

ket position. But there is no denying Asia’s tremendous progress in new technologies, often facilitated by its existing strengths in manufacturing and infrastructure.

For example, more than 90 per cent of the world’s smartphones are made in Asia. So, the region’s economies have focused significant innovative capacity in this area, such as to design mobile application processors and develop new types of hardware. Last year, the Chinese company Royole released the world’s first flexible smartphone. early this year, Samsung went a step further, launching the first foldable smartphone with a foldable glass screen.

Similarly, Asian firms have capitalised on the region’s well-developed infrastructure to establish themselves at the cutting edge of 5G development and deployment. Of the five companies that hold the majority of 5G patents, four are Asian. Likewise, the region’s strong position in next-generation electric-vehicle batteries, more than half the world’s patents for solid-state batteries were filed in Asia, resulted from leveraging its existing strengths.

New opportunities are also opening up for Asia.

While the region’s consumer markets are expanding and digitising rapidly, there is still a great deal of room for growth and innovation in consumer-facing technologies.

Similarly, Asia can expand its role in the growing market for digital information-technology services, such as big data and analytics, digital legacy modernisation, and “Internet of Things” system design. After all, the region has a huge pool of tech talent: India alone produced three-quarters of the world’s science, technology engineering, and mathematics (STeM) graduates between

2016 and 2018.

Vulnerability to the effects of climate change, from deadly heatwaves to large-scale flooding, is also driving progress in the region. Asia already has the largest share of installed renewable capacity — 45 per cent — compared to 25 per cent in europe and 16 per cent in North America. The International energy Agency expects that share to rise to 56 per cent in 2040. With the support of investments in R&D and new infrastructure, Asia stands to make its mark on the world with technological solutions to climate risk.

Asia’s rapid development as a global technological leader over the last decade is a testament to the power of collaboration. And yet, in much of the world, the tide is turning toward isolationism and protectionism.

Indeed, after years of relative openness, rising trade barriers threaten to disrupt global flows of technology and intellectual property.

This will sap potential in many frontier sectors.

According to MGI’s simulation, $8-12 trillion of economic value could be at stake by 2040, depending on the quality and level of technology flows between China and the rest of the world. Many high-tech markets, including electric vehicles, battery storage, and advanced displays, depend on Asian investment and market growth to achieve global scale.

Asia is likely to continue to forge ahead with its technological development. But to make the most of its progress, and the strides that have been made elsewhere, enhancing technological collaboration within, and among regions, remains a priority for Asia and the rest of the world.

Jonathan Woetzel, a McKinsey senior partner, is director of the McKinsey Global Institute and co-author of “No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends”. JeongminSeong is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute in Shanghai.

Anti-conversion law will push women in interfaith marriages to discard Hindu identity THE MANNER OF THE LAW’S IMPLEMENTATION COULD ALSO LEAD TO AN OUTCOME THAT GOES AGAINST HINDUTVA’S AIMS. THOSE FOR WHOM RELIGIOUS IDENTITY NEVER MEANT MUCH WILL NOW BE FORCED TO ADOPT A MUSLIM IDENTITY IndIan ExprEss

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Jyoti Punwani

he development comes in the backdrop of the Uttar Pradesh government notifying an ordinance last month against forcible or fraudulent religious conversion that provides for imprisonment of up to 10 years and a maximum fine of Rs 50,000 under different categories. even as hindutva groups rejoice at the most efficient implementation ever seen of any law in Uttar Pradesh, their joy might just be sullied by an unexpected fallout.

The hindu women “rescued” by the UP police from their Muslim husbands are boldly speaking up for Muslims. even more striking is the way they are publicly rejecting their parents. These are not sophisticated urbanites used to living independent lives. hailing from small towns, where their movements must have been monitored closely, they fell in love — a disgrace for most families — and were courageous enough to take the next step of eloping.

Be it in Mumbai or Meerut, such decisions are not easy.

Marrying outside one’s faith can become a matter of life and death, so most youngsters simply drop the idea. Yet, such marriages are increasing. For the brave couples, living away from wrathful parents and keeping a low profile is the safest method of survival. That’s been made impossible by the way the UP police are swooping down on couples hunted out by vigilantes. Since the enactment of the UP law criminalising marriages between hindu women and Muslim men — both in intent and action, the law is just that — the police have barged into homes where weddings were taking place; they have separated couples in registrars’ offices and courts. Thanks to the ubiquitous mobile camera, videos of these invasions of privacy have gone viral. But what’s shone through these painful, violent scenes has been the courage of the hindu women. In one video, the woman, held back by cops, pleads with them not to separate her from her partner. Oblivious of the crowds around, she declares that she loves him very much, that he’s her life. This could have been a hindi film scene — it played out in Aligarh. In the shameful Moradabad case, which resulted in the death of the unborn child, videos showed the hindu wife angrily telling the Bajrang Dal bullies who encircled her that she had married of her own will. It requires a special kind of guts to do that, especially when cops are mere

spectators. Later, she insisted on going to her in-laws’ home, and turned her back on her mother, who had been brought to the police station by the vigilantes.

In Meerut, a hindu woman living with a Muslim told the police to back off: She knew her partner was Muslim; there was neither conversion nor coercion involved in their relationship. One hindu mother was so furious at the way the police interrupted her daughter’s wedding to a Muslim that she lashed out against such unwarranted interference to the media. In other cases, parents knew that their daughters had eloped, but preferred to stay quiet for fear of embarrassment. The zeal of the police-backed vigilantes dragged these hindu families into the limelight. Forced to file complaints, their daughters’ actions will now be argued in courts in full media glare. One wonders whether the UP CM had anticipated such a fallout on small-town, lowermiddle-class hindu families. his stated intention to bring in this new law was to “protect our (hindu) daughters”.

Did he anticipate that these very “daughters” would so determinedly refuse “protection”?

The manner of the law’s implementation could also lead to an outcome that goes against hindutva’s aims.

Those for whom religious identity never meant much will now be forced to adopt a Muslim identity. The number of hindu-Muslim unions the UP police have targeted in the last month shows that despite all the hate propagated over the last six years, young hindus and Muslims do not see each other as enemies. even more importantly, their willingness to build a life together indicates that faith is not their primary identity. A woman who can declare to a hostile mob that as a hindu, she has chosen to marry a Muslim, is one confident of her religious identity, not bound by it. But the new law does not allow for such fluid identities. Pushed by a ruthless police-vigilante nexus, hindu women in inter-faith marriages may have to discard their hindu identity. A couple that “looks obviously Muslim” is unlikely to be harassed; by the same logic, a Muslim ghetto would be the safest space for them. But such an environment could force the hindu wife to become more Muslim than she may want to, and the Muslim husband to conform to community diktats. Children of mixed marriages are moulded by exposure to different customs. But UP’s new law could result in their being moulded by just one faith, and it won’t be hinduism.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

BUSINESS 09

ECC AppRovES $500m EURoBoNDS To fINANCE DIAmER BASHA, moHmAND DAmS ISLAMABAD

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sHaHzaD ParaCHa

HE Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Thursday approved the Ministry of Water Resources’ proposal in principle for the issuance of WAPDA’s debut $500 million Eurobonds to arrange finances for Diamer Basha and Mohmand dams. In this regard, the ECC, with Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh in the chair, directed for working out modalities for the issuance of the bonds in consultation with the Finance Division and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

Minister for Privatisation Mohammad Mian Soomro, Minister for Energy Omar Ayub, Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar, Adviser to the PM on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood, Minister for Railways Azam Khan Swati, Special Assis-

SNGPL ALLOWED DISPOSING OF THREE LNG AIR MIX PROJECTS BY SUI COMPANIES INCLUDING DROSH, AYUN AND CHITRAL TOWN tant to the PM (SAPM) on Petroleum Nadeem Babar, SAPM on Power Tabish Gauhar, Minister for Maritime Affairs Ali Haider Zaidi, Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda and SBP Governor Reza Baqir participated in the meeting.

The ECC also approved amendments in the master plan for establishing five terminals, including two LNG terminals, two multipurpose cargo terminals and one integrated container terminal on build–operate–transfer (BOT) basis. Regarding the shelving of LNG air mix projects by Sui companies, the ECC decided that SNGPL may abandon three projects namely Drosh, Ayun and Chitral Town and dispose of the land and equipment with minimal loss possible through an open transparent process.

CORPORATE CORNER

The Ministry of Energy also presented a summary regarding repayment of GHPL loan and future funding requirements for expenditure in relation to ISGSL gas import and infrastructure projects. GHPL had funded all the expenses of ISGSL through medium-term loan as per ECC’s earlier decision dated December 15, 2016.

Various proposals were presented before the forum. The ECC approved the proposals in principle subject to clearance by the High Power Board.

Further, the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives presented a detailed presentation on KTP before ECC. The committee was informed about five Karachi infrastructure-related projects pertaining to water, railway and green bus

services. These projects will be completed in the next three years under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), public-private partnership (PPP), Supreme Court (SC) fund and financing from foreign institutes.

The forum discussed the plan thoroughly and endorsed, in principle, with the direction to secure approval from all relevant quarters before submission to Cabinet.

Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh directed to follow all codal formalities with reference to various components of KTP. The meeting also approved a summary by the Ministry of Industries and Production regarding duty and tax-free import of cryogenic oxygen tanks to ensure uninterrupted supply of oxygen gas at competitive rates during the Covid19 pandemic.

Similarly, the forum also approved the change in the shareholding structure of the Pakistan Credit Guarantee Company (PCGC). According to the new structure, the

Lahore IP Tribunal absolves PTC of infringing intellectual property rights AFTER APPROACHING LHC, THE TOBACCO MANUFACTURING COMPANY MANAGED TO SUSPEND INTERIM STAY ORDER OF IP TRIBUNAL LAHORE

Top officials of Sarsabz Fertilizer award the last performing dealers of Pakistan at the Sarsabz Royals award cermony.

SIUT pays tributes to late professor Noor Ahmed Baloch KarachI: Rich tributes were paid to late professor Noor Ahmed Baloch a former Principal of Chandka Medical College Larkana at a memorial meeting organised by Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) here on Thursday. Professor Baloch passed away in Toronto (Canada) in recent days. The memorial meeting was presided by SIUT Director Professor Adib Rizvi while speakers who paid tributes and recalled the services included the faculty members of the Institute. Other speakers who addressed the meeting included Dr Zafar Husain, Dr Altaf Hashmi, Dr Murli Lal and Dr Buksh Ali. "Baloch Sahib as he was fondly addressed left an unparalleled legacy of serving patients teaching and both to students and residents. He accomplished the challenging task of setting up specialty of Urology in Chandka Medical College which was the first of its kind in the interior of Sindh and also a Centre of Urology in Larkana equipped with lithotripters which again happened to be the first such facility in the interior of the province,” Professor Adib Rizvi said. Professor Baloch served at Chandka as Principal from 1983 to 1984 and Medical Superintendent from 1989 to 1990 and as Professor of Urology in subsequent years till his retirement 2001. He also served SIUT as the chief controller examinations and later as a trustee till his passing. Press release

shareholding of the Government of Pakistan in the Company has been reduced to 49pc from the earlier 70pc. Any dividends announced by PCGC against shares held by the SBP or any proceeds from the sale of shares in PCGC, held by the SBP, shall be remitted in the government treasury.

Moreover, the ECC also approved a number of TSGs, including Rs757.100 million under Sustainable Goals Achievement Program (SAP), Rs500m for reimbursement of the fee for less developed areas as requested by the HEC, Rs500m for the Ministry of Housing and Works to provide interest-free loans to borrowers under the Prime Minister’s Low-Cost Housing Scheme, Rs4,189 million for the execution of development schemes for Sindh and Balochistan provinces under PSDP and Rs327 million for the AGP to sustain the World Bank’s public financial management and accountability service delivery project during FY21.

BaBar KHaN JaVeD

Following a year-long legal battle, the Intellectual Property (IP) Tribunal in Lahore has concluded that the Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) Limited did not infringe any intellectual property rights.

As reported by Profit, the verdict pertains to a case wherein creative agency Giraffe Pvt. Limited claimed that PTC used ideas and concepts presented during a creative pitch and executed them in the music platform Velo Sound Station without credit or compensation.

The IP Tribunal accepted arguments presented by PTC and dismissed the application of Giraffe being devoid of any merit, adding that the creative agency failed to establish a prima facie case against PTC. In an order dated for the November 27, the IP Tribunal stated that Giraffe failed to provide any strong evidence to suggest that they have any copyrights over the alleged terms or ideas, adding that the claims with regards to ownership of copyright have no legal force

while no documentary evidence has been provided to substantiate the claim either.

In a twist, the order from the IP Tribunal states that PTC shared ideas and concepts with Giraffe and not the other way around, which the creative agency claimed to do so. In a press release from PTC, they acknowledged that the Pakistani tobacco manufacturing company did in fact shortlist Giraffe as a potential vendor while stating that other agencies were being considered as well.

PTC claims that after having Giraffe sign a non-disclosure agreement, it has shared creative directional material with the agency. The creative directional material, PTC claims, was provided by an international creative agency that has thus been unnamed.

In a LinkedIn post, Transmedia Founder Umair Anwar claims to have created the branding and visual design for Velo Sound Station.

PTC claims that amongst other nomenclature, the material consisted of the terms “Unstoppable” and “Velocity”, both of which Giraffe claimed to have conceptualised for Velo Sound Station.

“Thus, the very terms over which Giraffe is asserting its rights were handed over to them by PTC under a formally executed NDA,” said a release from PTC. “Thus, all allegations levelled against the Company and its employees are baseless.” PTC also approached the Lahore High Court (LHC), who after considering arguments from PTC, suspended the interim stay order of the IP Tribunal against the Velo Sound Station. It is worth noting that despite the aforementioned stay order, PTC published content on YouTube and Facebook pages for Velo Sound Station, in contempt of court.

Speaking with Profit, Giraffe co-founder Muhammed Ibrahim stated that he would challenge the verdict in the Lahore High Court adding that as issues are getting framed, all relevant parties will be required to come to court in order to give their testimony.

Shortly after Profit reported on the case between Giraffe and PTC in November, advertising industry pundit Ad Mad Dude published a video showing the similarities between songs on Velo Sound Station to songs by the Muse and Michael Bublé, while also insinuating that promotional material mirrored Coke Studio.

The revelation and subsequent debate were further fueled on private WhatsApp and Facebook groups when commentators pointed out that Ogilvy Pakistan is the creative agency for both PTC and Coca-Cola Pakistan.

Brexit deal anticipation fuels stocks and sterling LONDON aGeNCIes

Stocks rallied and the British pound gained on Thursday as Britain and the European Union closed in on a free-trade deal and investors wagered on a global economic recovery.

Britain and the European Union were hammering out the final details of a narrow trade deal on Thursday with an announcement expected imminently, adding to an optimistic mood in the final trading session before the Christmas break.

While a last-minute deal has long been expected, finally removing the

possibility of a no-deal outcome 4-1/2 years after Britain voted to leave the trading bloc will come as a relief to markets.

The FTSE 100 rose 0.07% while the more domestically-focused British midcap FTSE 250 index hit its highest levels since February, and UK small caps a record high. The STOXX 50 added 0.17% while Germany’s DAX gained 1.26%.

The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 49 countries, rose 0.16% after solid gains in Asia.

The Brexit deal adds to an end-ofyear bullish mood in markets, where investors have looked beyond a spike in

new COVID-19 cases globally and rising unemployment to the hope that vaccines and more fiscal spending will help spur an economic recovery in 2021.

High on record sums of central bank stimulus, investors have pushed stock markets to new peaks.

Mizuho analysts dubbed it the “mistletoe effect”, whereby anticipation of a trade accord meant that “despite being subject to the approval of PM Johnson and EU governments the outline deal was enough” to stoke a rally in markets.

“While the pandemic meant lost lives and lost jobs in 2020, a successful vaccine

rollout during 2021 is set to be a gamechanger: governments will gradually lift mobility restrictions and societies will return to most pre-pandemic habits,” Candriam told clients.

“The swift recovery during the third quarter in the Western hemisphere and the ongoing expansion in Asia, where a second infection wave has mostly been avoided, serve as a template for the near future.”

Brent crude futures rose 37 cents to $51.57 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude increased 34 cents to $48.46, buoyed by a drawdown in U.S. stockpiles and the potential Brexit trade deal.

Gold prices rose, with the spot price of the precious metal at $1,878, 0.3% higher on the day.

Diyar Homes appoints chief development officer for Islamabad Hills

AirSial to start domestic flights from December 25

Top performing dealers get recognized at Sarsabz Royals award ceremony

ISLaMaBaD: Leading international real estate development group Diyar Homes, who recently announced their first foray into the capital, have appointed Atif Masood Malik as Islamabad Hills Chief Development Officer (CDO), Pakistan’s first resort community. After news leaked in the media regarding the groups mega 27 million square feet land acquisition earlier this year, Diyar subsequently brought to Pakistan an array of world leading consultants including WATG, Aralia and Szczepaniak Astridge. Keeping in line with being the regions first, the master plan of Islamabad Hills sets a new precedent in the sector with over 78pc of the total land area at dedicated to open areas and entertainment at par with the world’s most luxurious resorts. Diyar Homes are an international real estate developer with offices in Dubai, London and New York and a development pipeline exceeding $1.5 billion. Press release

Lahore: Sialkot based airline, AirSial, is all set to launch its domestic flight operations from 25th December 2020. The airline, which is a Rs.3.5 billion project of the members of Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is Pakistan’s third privately owned airline. Initially AirSial will be relying on three Airbus A320-200s which have been leased from AerCap in Dublin. The carrier, which aims to become the leading airline of the region, will be running scheduled flights between Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Sialkot and Peshawar in the first phase but plans to extend operations to the Middle East in two years. Press release

Lahore: Sarsabz Fertiliser organised a special awards ceremony in Multan on Wednesday, as part of its loyalty programme ‘Sarsabz Royals’, to reward and recognise its top performing and long standing dealers from around the country. Around 2800 active dealers from all over Pakistan enthusiastically registered to participate in these annual performance awards while the most performing dealers were recognized with special achievement gifts and prizes. Top officials from Fatima Group attended the event including Director Marketing and Sales Khurram Javed Maqbool, Fatima Group National Marketing Manager Rabel Sadozai, Senior Brand Manager Muhammad Mobeen, Channel Manager Hafsa Alqai, and Channel Manager Zile-Ali. Press release

Friday, 25 December, 2020

10 FOREIGN NEWS

DefyIng Congress, Trump veToes DefenCe bIll, ThreATens governmenT shuTDown WASHINGTON

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AGENCIES

S President Donald Trump vetoed a bipartisan defence policy bill on Wednesday and raised the prospect that the United States could face a government shutdown during a pandemic, stirring new turmoil in Washington as he headed to Florida for Christmas.

Angry at his fellow Republicans in Congress, Trump sought to refashion two complex pieces of legislation that passed Congress by wide, bipartisan margins after months of negotiation.

Trump followed through on a threat to veto the defence bill and demanded dramatic changes to a $2.3 trillion package that funds the federal government and provides nearly $900 billion in coronavirus aid.

If Trump blocks the spending package, large parts of the US government could start to shut down next week for lack of funds at a time when officials are distributing two coronavirus vaccines and working to respond to a massive hacking attack.

With less than a month left in office, Trump is angry that some Republicans have acknowledged his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the November 3 election. Biden will be sworn in as president on January 20.

Trump said he vetoed the defence policy bill, which has passed every year since 1961, because he

objected to liability protections for social media companies unrelated to national security and did not want to rename military bases that are currently named for generals who fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the Civil War. Democrats and Republicans objected to Trump’s veto of the National Defence Authorization Act. “I look forward to overriding the president’s fruitless and ridiculous attempt to undermine our national security,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, a Republican, also blasted Trump’s veto.

“The NDAA has become law every year for 59 years straight because it’s absolutely vital to our national security and our troops,” Inhofe said. “This year must not be an exception.”

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday the House would return on December 28 to vote on whether to override Trump’s veto. That is the same day government funding is due to expire. A Senate vote is expected shortly thereafter.

In a video posted to social media on Tuesday evening, Trump surprised some of his closest officials by demanding lawmakers change the coronavirus aid part of the spending bill to include $2,000 payments to each American, more than triple the $600 per person provided.

A source familiar with the situation said aides thought they had talked Trump out of the $2,000 demand last week. The video surprised even Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who took part in the talks and backed the $600 figure.

Members of Congress had been discussing the $600 figure for almost a week before voting to approve it late on Monday night.

Trump did not explicitly say he would veto the bill, apparently holding out hope Congress would modify a package that took months to negotiate. The White House had said on Sunday that Trump would sign it into law.

Trump has 10 days, not counting Sundays, to veto the bill once he receives it from Congress, which is still processing the massive legislation.

If he vetoes it, Congress can promptly vote to override him. If Trump takes no action within 10 days of receipt, excluding Sundays, it would automatically become law unless Congress is adjourned. If no action occurs by January 3 when the new Congress is sworn in, the bill would die.

Trump sparked a record 35-day government shutdown two years ago when he rejected a federal spending bill over what he said was insufficient funding for building a US-Mexico border wall.

Trump also demanded the bill be stripped of foreign aid, which is included in every annual federal spending bill - and was requested by his own administration last

Ethiopian troops kill 42 armed men accused of deadly village attack: report ADDIS ABABA AGENCIES

Ethiopia’s military killed 42 armed men accused of attacking a village in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, state-affiliated Fana TV reported on Thursday, as the government sent in more troops to contain ethnic tensions.

Government forces seized bows and arrows and other weapons from the armed men, Fana said in its report that cited unnamed regional officials. It did not say when the clash took place or which group was involved.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday he was sending forces to Benishangul-Gumuz, which borders Sudan, the day after unidentified attackers torched homes and killed more than 100 people in a village there. Ethiopia has been grappling with outbreaks of deadly violence since Abiy was appointed in 2018 and accelerated political reforms that loosened the state’s iron grip on regional rivalries.

Elections due next year have further inflamed rivalries over land, power and resources.

The latest violence comes as Ethiopia’s military has been battling a rebellious force in the separate northern Tigray region, with a mass deployment of troops that has raised fears of a security vacuum in other areas.

“The massacre of civilians in Benishangul-Gumuz region is very tragic,” Abiy said on Twitter. “The government, to solve the root causes of the problem, has deployed a necessary force.”

Wednesday’s dawn raid on the village of Bekoji in Bulen County killed more than 100 people, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said.

Thousands of people fled the village and slept in the forest or in schools, Ethiopian Red Cross volunteer Mesfin Mesele said on Thursday.

“There are mothers who lost their husbands and children who lost their parents,” he said. “We have nothing to feed them. They walked 25 kilometres.”

Mesele said he went with soldiers to collect bodies late on Wednesday and found 93 corpses on one road into the village. “There are still bodies to be collected,” he said. Two medics in the area told they had heard reports of fresh clashes in two other nearby areas, but had no details. They said they treated people with gunshot and knife wounds.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for Wednesday’s attack or who was targeted.

The region is home to several ethnic groups. In recent years, people from the neighbouring Amhara region have started moving into the area, prompting some ethnic Gumuz to complain that fertile land is being taken away, experts say.

Some Amhara leaders have said publicly that some of the land - especially in the area where the violence occurred - historically belongs to them, which the Gumuz dispute. The human rights commission said survivors it spoke to believed most of the victims were from the Shinasha group. Survivors were interviewed, one was Shinasha and one was Amhara.

State-run Ethiopian News Agency reported that five senior officials, including a state minister of the federal government, have been arrested in connection with security issues in Benishangul-Gumuz. It did not go into further detail on specific accusations or charges.

Trump gives awards to top aides for Arab-Israeli deals WASHINGTON AGENCIES

President Donald Trump gave national security awards on Wednesday to several top advisers for their role in helping broker agreements aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and four countries in the Arab world.

Trump awarded the National Security Medal to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, senior adviser Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and John Rakolta, US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

At least 20 die as migrant boat sinks off Tunisia TUNIS AGENCIES

At least 20 African migrants died when their boat sank off Tunisia on Thursday as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa, a Tunisian security official said. The coastguard rescued five people and was searching for about 20 others who were still unaccounted for, the official said. The coastline near the Tunisian port city of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and searching for a better life in Europe. “The boat sank about six miles from the coast of Sfax. Twenty bodies were recovered, five others were rescued, and all are from subSaharan Africa,” the security official, Ali Ayari, said. Around 45 people were on the boat when it sank, he added.

“Thanks to the efforts of these individuals, the region will never be the same as it finally moves beyond the conflicts of the past,” the White House said in a statement.

In the past four months, Israel reached deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco as part of what the United States calls “the

Abraham Accords.”

Senior US officials are hoping to seal one more agreement before Trump’s term expires on January 20.

The president’s authority to award the National Security Medal dates to 1953, under an executive order that allows for recognition for major contributions in the field of national security.

year. He objected to other government activities funded by the 5,500-page bill, such as fish breeding and funding for the Smithsonian museums.

Some congressional Democrats - who had viewed the relief package as too small a response to a crisis that has killed more than 320,000 Americans and thrown millions of people out of work - welcomed Trump’s call for larger payments.

Pelosi said the House could vote to raise the payments on Thursday if House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy agreed.

McCarthy aides did not respond to a request for comment.

The disagreement over the amount of stimulus payments have put Republicans in an awkward position.

Many of them opposed$2,000 as too expensive, and they would have to either defy their party’s leader or change their position on those payments.

“Let’s get this into law, and we can have an ongoing discussion about whether there should be additional direct payments or not,” Republican Senator Pat Toomey said on Fox News.

In Georgia, where control of the US Senate hangs on a pair of Jan. 5 runoff elections, Democrats pressed incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler to say whether they agreed with Trump that the $600 payments were too low. Neither campaign responded to a request for comment.

Indian opposition demands repeal of farm laws after protests NEW DELHI AGENCIES

India’s main opposition party pressed the government on Thursday to call a special parliamentary session to withdraw new agricultural laws that farmers say will leave them at the mercy of big corporations. Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader from the opposition Congress party, handed the president a copy of a petition that he said had attracted 20 million signatures online. “The prime minister wants to help two, three busine s people” by introducing the farm laws, said Gandhi, the great-grandson of India’s founding Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The government says the reforms passed in September are meant to overhaul antiquated procurement procedures and open up the market. Tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on national highways for weeks demanding the government withdraw the laws that they fear will eventually dismantle regulated markets and stop the government buying wheat and rice at guaranteed prices.

Six rounds of talks between government officials and farmer union leaders have failed to resolve the deadlock. Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week offered to “very humbly” hold further discussions.

On Thursday, the government again invited protesting farmers to further talks. Farmers union leaders have accused the government of trying to weaken and discredit them by describing protesting farmers as “anti-nationals”. “You are dealing with protesting farmers in a manner as if they are not aggrieved citizens but political rivals,” Samyukta Kisan Morcha, or United Farmers’ Front, a coalition of farmers unions, said in a letter addressed to the farm ministry on Thursday. “Farmers would be compelled to intensify their agitation further for their survival if the government continued to treat them in this manner,” the letter said.

A Brexit trade deal at last: EU and UK clinch narrow accord LONDON AGENCIES

Britain clinched a Brexit trade deal with the European Union on Thursday, just seven days before it exits one of the world’s biggest trading blocs in its most significant global shift since the loss of empire.

“Deal is done,” a Downing Street source said. “We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters.”

“The deal is fantastic news for families and businesses in every part of the UK. We have signed the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved with the

EU,” the source said.

“We have delivered this great deal for the entire United Kingdom in record time, and under extremely challenging conditions, which protects the integrity of our internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it,” the source said.

The deal guarantees Britain is no longer in the lunar pull of the EU and will not be bound by EU rules, the source said.

“There is no role for the European Court of Justice and all of our key red lines about returning sovereignty have been achieved,” the source said.

Trade worth 668 billion pounds ($909 billion) in 2019 is covered by the deal, the source said.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

SPORTS 11

NATIoNAL PLAyers’ cATegorIes reNewed, TrANsfer wINdow oPeNed for PsL 2021 LAHORE

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APP

HE categories of national players, who took part in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2020, has been finalised for the 2021 edition, a statement from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said Thursday.

Pakistan captain Babar Azam, who was the Player of the Tournament in the 2020 edition after scoring 473 runs in 12 matches, has been joined by Karachi Kings teammates Imad Wasim and Mohammad Amir in the Platinum category.

Islamabad United captain Shadab Khan has been again placed in the Platinum cate-

gory and his teammate Faheem Ashraf has been moved down to the Diamond category.

Peshawar Zalmi’s trio of Kamran Akmal, Shoaib Malik and Wahab Riaz have been placed in the Platinum category while fast bowler Hasan Ali has been moved to the Diamond category.

Multan Sultans captain Shan Masood has moved up to the Diamond category with his impressive performance across the PSL 2020 and National T20 Cup. Shan’s teammates Shahid Afridi and Sohail Tanvir have been placed in the Platinum category.

Quetta Gladiators captain Sarfaraz Ahmed has been placed in the Platinum category while fast bowler Mohammad Hasnain has been moved up from Gold to

Islamabad United, Misbah part ways

Diamond category, as he ended as Quetta’s leading wicket-taker in the 2020 addition with 15 wickets.

Fakhar Zaman, who ended up as the second highest scorer in the 2020 season with 325 runs in 12 matches for Lahore Qalandars, has been again placed in the Platinum category, where he will be joined by teammates Mohammad Hafeez and Shaheen Shah Afridi, the highest wicket-taker of 2020 edition. Qalandars’ pacer Haris Rauf’s meteoric rise continued, as the fast bowler moved up from Gold to Diamond category.

He was the leading wicket-taker in the last edition with 57 scalps.

“With the finalisation of category renewal and pick order process, the transfer

AGENCIES

Indian board approves two new IPL franchises from 2022 NEW DELHI: The Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to become a 10-team affair from 2022 after the Indian cricket board on Thursday approved a proposal to add two more franchises to the world’s richest Twenty20 competition. The eight-team league, with an estimated brand value of $6.8 billion, drew record television and digital viewership this year despite being staged in the United Arab Emirates following the Covid-19 surge in India. “We have received an in-principle approval to add two more teams after talking to all the stakeholders,” Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) treasurer Arun Singh Dhumal said after the AGM in Ahmedabad.

“Now the issue will be discussed in the IPL Governing Council - how and when to add the teams.” Local media has reported in the past that Indian conglomerates Adani Group and RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which owned the now-defunct Pune franchise for two IPL seasons, have shown interest in buying new teams. The board also discussed the possible inclusion of cricket in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, something the game’s governing International Cricket Council (ICC) is very keen on, but did not specify its stance. “That still needs to be discussed. We need some more clarity on this issue (from ICC),” Dhumal said.

Another vexed issue that came up at the meeting was securing tax exemptions, as demanded by the ICC from host nations, for the 2021 Twenty20 World Cup and the 50-over World Cup in 2023. AGENCIES

South Africa return to the Test arena for the first time in 11 months on Saturday (tomorrow) hoping to arrest a dismal slide in the five-day game and with revenge on their minds as they host Sri Lanka in the first of a two-Test series at Centurion Park.

They have lost eight of their last nine Tests, a run that began in February 2019 with a shock 2-0 home defeat by Sri Lanka who became the first Asian side to win a series in the country.

They have slipped to number six in the world, behind fifth-placed Sri Lanka, and have a host of questions to answer, not least around a brittle top six and the balance of the side.

“We have got a young team,” captain Quinton de Kock said this week. “We need our younger guys to come through and learn fast so we can have a structured team. “That is what I would hope for from this season, for the new guys to come in and start scoring runs and putting up their hands.”

They start the first Test without key fast bowler Kagiso Rabada, who has a groin problem, but will be buoyed by the fact both matches will be played on fast, bouncy Highveld pitches.

Left-arm seamer Beuran Hendricks has been

the local players is a key step towards the delivery of the PSL 2021. I am sure that we will see top-quality performance from our local players like the previous five seasons.

A lot of young players will get a wonderful opportunity of showcasing their talents and progressing to the international stage by their exposure to a platform like the PSL.” The category renewals did not apply to those players, who were drafted in PSL 2020 Playoffs in November. Those players will be part of the overall player pool, which will be available for selection at the PSL Player Draft.

The teams can send relegation requests for the players before finalising retentions.

The list of players, who were not in the 2020 season, will be released separately.

Australia unlikely to be changed for second India Test: Langer

South Africa seek red ball revenge in first Test against Sri Lanka PRETORIA

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad United (IU) on Thursday announced that it is parting ways with head coach Misbah-ul- Haq, as the team will be under a new head coach in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2021. In a statement, the franchise confirmed that it will not renew the contract with Misbah as head coach due to his commitment with the national side and Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) new conflict of interest rules. “Islamabad United [...] has announced that the already expired contract of Misbah-ul-Haq as its head coach will not be renewed, given Misbah’s commitment with the national side and the new conflict of interest rules of the PCB,” the franchise said in a statement. "But with back to back World T20s coming up, I want to focus on the PSL from a purely neutral perspective. For anyone involved in Pakistani cricket, their national commitments should always be the priority, and for that I believe I will have to sacrifice my franchise commitments," Misbah said. "I wish the best of luck to Islamabad United for PSL 6, and the foundation we have built in that franchise will hopefully be a ladder to success for them for this year and future PSLs to come.” STAFF REPORT

and retention window has been opened officially,” the statement said.

“As part of the category renewal process, the franchise representatives were required to vote for every player. The teams were not allowed to vote for their own players, but to submit review requests at the end of the voting stage,” it added.

The list was then reviewed by PCB Director High Performance Nadeem Khan and General Manager Commercial Imran Ahmed Khan. Factors, including national team performance, domestic performance and perceived T20 brand value, were considered while finalising the local players’ categories.

PCB Director Commercial Babar Hamid said: “The process of category renewals for

withdrawn from the squad along with batsman Keegan Petersen. Neither player entered the tour bubble when the players gathered on Saturday, after two positive Covid-19 results were detected last week. Hendricks’ absence means Glenton Stuurman is almost certain to make his Test debut at the age of 29, with his ability to move the ball both ways off the pitch and his excellent recent domestic form putting him ahead of rivals.

The retirement of Vernon Philander suggests Wiaan Mulder or Dwaine Pretorius are likely to play in an all-rounder role.

The make-up of Sri Lanka’s side is much harder to predict after they brought a squad of 21 players “to cover all positions”, according to coach Mickey Arthur. They are missing injured stalwart Angelo Mathews and Oshada Fernando in their top-six batting lineup, but Arthur is upbeat about their ability to cope with South Africa’s quicks.

“We have had camps and intra-squad games and have tried to keep the players as sharp as they can be,” he said.

“We have got good seam bowling, good spin bowling and I am confident our top six batsmen can handle the conditions.” Sri Lanka have not played any Tests since a victorious tour to Zimbabwe that ended in late January.

MELBOURNE: Australia coach Justin Langer has all but confirmed his side will be unchanged for their second Test against India, which starts at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday (tomorrow). Australia completed an eight-wicket victory over the tourists in the first Test in Adelaide after they dismissed Virat Kohli’s team for a record low score of 36 in their second innings.

“I would be a pretty courageous man to change the XI for this Test match after the last one,” Langer told reporters on Thursday.

“At this stage, unless something happens over the next few days– and things can happen in the world we live in–we will go in with the same XI, I would say.” Opening batsman David Warner, who missed the first Test because of a groin injury, had already been ruled out of the match and was likely the only player to have been in contention to force his way into the side. Langer, however, added while Warner was back batting in the nets and he was likely to return for the third Test in Sydney, there were still concerns over his injury. “We are very hopeful,” Langer said when asked if Warner would be fit for the third Test. “He batted very well yesterday (Wednesday) in the nets. He is having a bit of trouble running at full speed. When he gets back and feels confident with it, of course he will come back into our team. We will just monitor him, and fingers crossed he will be back.” Langer added with Warner’s possible return there was likely to be a less than easy selection decision for the third Test with makeshift opener Matthew Wade expected to drop back down into the middle order. That could cause some concerns for Travis Head and all-rounder Cameron Green, although Langer said the competition was what was expected at international level. “You are literally under the pump every time you play for Australia. Every player is, that is how it should be. It is so healthy for Australian cricket.” AGENCIES

Manchester United seal League Cup semi-final against Manchester City LIVERPOOL AGENCIES

Edinson Cavani and Anthony Martial struck late goals as Manchester United claimed a scrappy 2-0 victory over Everton at a bitterly cold Goodison Park on Wednesday to set up a League Cup semi-final with rivals Manchester City.

United wasted numerous opportunities in the opening stages and at times the play was dire from both sides as the game appeared to be heading for penalties before Cavani collected the ball on the right wing, skipped inside onto his left foot and fired past Everton goalkeeper Robin Olsen.

Martial added a second with virtually the last kick of the game as the visitors now meet City for a place in the April 25 final, while Championship side Brentford take on Tottenham Hotspur in the other lastfour clash. “It was an excellent performance and we should have been out of sight, we had three or four great chances. We need to be more clinical,” United captain Harry Maguire told Sky Sports “We are expected to win trophies. It is important to reach these big games but we have to start winning them and lift some trophies for this club. Everton will feel aggrieved that the influential Cavani was still on the pitch after receiving only a verbal warning from referee Bobby Madley when he shoved Yerry Mina to the ground with his hands close to the Everton defender’s throat in an off-the-ball incident in the first half.

But with the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) absent in this competition until the semi-final stage, there was no further action taken when replays showed Cavani was lucky to escape sanction.

His quality proved the difference in opening up the tight Everton defence though, with Martial’s insurance goal coming in the dying seconds as the home side pushed bodies forward in search of an equaliser. United keep up their excellent record away from Old Trafford and are now unbeaten in 20 domestic games in all

CMYK

competitions, winning 18 of those.

The visitors dominated the early exchanges and put Everton under pressure with a succession of chances that were wasted, Cavani coming close twice.

Everton finally woke from their slumber as, roared on by 2,000 fans in Goodison Park, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and

Gylfi Sigurdsson both had efforts on goal that needed saving by United keeper Dean Henderson. The second half had little of the spark of the first, both sides misplacing passes in the attacking third and neither keeper having a serious save to make until Olsen was picking the ball out of his net for Cavani’s opener.

Friday, 25 December, 2020

PRAyER TimingS

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PAkISTAn ConDeMnS InDIAn STATe TeRRoRISM In Iok ISLAMABAD

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STAFF REPORT

AKISTAN has urged the international community to take a serious look into the malicious Indian propaganda that not only aims to defame Pakistan but also politicises international forums and imperils peace and security.

Addressing a weekly news conference on Thursday, Foreign Office (FO) Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said that the global exposes of India’s anti-Pakistan propaganda and disinformation campaign continue, to the embarrassment of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. He said that imposition of a fine on Republic Bharat TV by the British media regulator Ofcom, on account of anti-Pakistan hate show by Arnab Goswami, is yet another manifestation of the BJP government’s well-known smear campaign against Pakistan through statecontrolled media.

He also said that the action taken by Ofcom, along with the report by EU-based DisinfoLab, corroborates our long-held position about India’s incurable obsession

with Pakistan. Zahid urged the Indian government to eschew the use of false propaganda as an instrument of state policy. He said that by now India must have realized that such ploys of spreading misinformation are doomed to fail.

Strongly condemning the unabated Indian state-terrorism and extra-judicial killings of innocent Kashmiris, the FO spokesperson called upon the international community to take immediate cognizance of the aggravating situation in Indian Oc-

InDIA beCoMeS hub of TeRRoRISM, exTReMISM, SAyS fARAz ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Senator Shibli Faraz has said that India has become a hub of terrorism and extremism. In a tweet on Thursday, the information minister said that the notice of Ofcom, a United Kingdom-based regulator for communications services, is a manifestation of India’s disgrace at the global level. He said that Ofcom has exposed Indian’s Republic TV’s hate-mongering narrative against Pakistan. He said that Brusselbased Disinfo Lab earlier unmasked the Indian business of lies. In another tweet, Faraz said that Maryam Nawaz’s journey from public gatherings to rallies and then corner meetings foretell her gloomy political future. He said that people stand with a cause and they do not want to become fuel for the politics of vested interests. He said their politics has ended without even its beginning. Separately in an interview with a private news channel, Faraz said that there is no restriction on holding Senate elections before the time under the Constitution. He said that it is the duty of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to announce the schedule for the elections while the government is seeking the apex court’s guidance regarding the early Senate elections with show of hands. STAFF REPORT

CJCSC discusses bilateral ties with Qatar’s officials NEWS DESK Chief Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Nadeem Raza during an official visit to Qatar called on Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defense Affairs Dr Khalid Bin Mohammad Al Attiyah to discuss matters of mutual interest. During the meetings, both sides deliberated upon various areas of interest, bilateral cooperation including security, counter-terrorism and the prevailing regional environment, particularly with a focus on Kashmir and Afghanistan. The dignitaries also discussed measures to enhance the level and scope of military engagements between both countries and reaffirmed their desire to forge deeper strategic ties.

The CCJCS also held separate meetings with Qatar Armed Forces Chief of Staff Staff Lieutenant General Ghanim Bin Shaheen Al Ghanim and all chiefs of tri-services. CJCSC Raza also visited National Security Academy and witnessed various facets of ongoing training. The chairman appreciated the high standards of training and skills being attained. Earlier upon arrival at Qatar’s general headquarters, the CJCSC was given a Guard of Honour by a smartly turned out contingent of the armed forces of Qatar.

cupied Kashmir (IOK).

He said that in attempts to divert world attention from its internal failings and grave human rights violations in occupied Kashmir, India continues to escalate tensions along the Line of Control (LoC).

He also said that the international community must advise India against any irresponsible act and to desist from any action that would jeopardise regional peace and stability. Zahid said that despite Pakistan’s repeated calls, the Indian government has failed to provide a satisfactory response with regard to the death of 11 Pakistani Hindus under mysterious circumstances in Jodhpur, India on 9 August this year.

Reminding the Indian government of its obligations, he urged Modi’s government to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the tragic incident and inform us of the progress. To a query, Zahid said that Indian military buildup under the BJP regime is a threat to regional peace. He said that Pakistani forces are fully ready to deal with any misadventure by the Indian side.

To another question, he said that recognition of Israel is not under consideration and all speculations in this regard are baseless. He also said that for Pakistan recognition of Israel is impossible without the resolution of the Palestine issue.

Answering a question, the spokesperson said that Pakistan’s relations with Russia remain an important priority for Pakistan’s foreign policy. He said that the two countries have made important progress in the development of strong bilateral relations covering various important fields including economy and trade.

PM lauds expats as Roshan Digital Account achieve $200m mark ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that funds sent by overseas Pakistanis through Roshan Digital Accounts created by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) have crossed the $200 million mark.

In a tweet on Thursday, the premier said that the pace has begun accelerating, as the first $100 million came in 76 days and the next $100 million came in only 28 days. Lauding the ex-pats for support and positive response to the Roshan Digital Account, he said, “I want to thank our great asset, overseas Pakistanis.” Roshan Digital Pakistan initiative enables Pakistani ex-pats to operate digital accounts in Pakistan while sitting abroad. With this new facility, the Pakistani government aims to attract investment from the diaspora to bolster foreign exchange reserves from this initiative. Earlier, SBP Governor Dr Reza Baqir had said the initiative will be available to nine million non-resident Pakistanis, allowing them to invest money in local stock markets, buy government bonds and securities, and avail of basic banking services. Presently, at least eight Pakistani banks will facilitate the Roshan Digital Accounts and allow overseas Pakistanis to deposit funds in either US dollars or Pakistani rupees, the SBP chief had maintained. STAFF REPORT

PR to sign trilateral accord with Afghanistan, Uzbekistan: minister ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Minister for Railways Azam Khan Swati has announced to sign a trilateral project connecting Pakistan Railways with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

During a media talk on Thursday, the minister said Prime Minister Imran Khan will soon sign the project which was conceived in 2018 and included both passenger and cargo trains going between the three countries. He further said the project was made possible through a $4.5 billion initiative and received assistance from the World Bank.

In 2017, landlocked Uzbekistan and Afghanistan signed an agreement to extend a railroad connecting the two countries in a move which may eventually give the former a direct link to sea ports. Tashkent’s access to marine shipping is very limited.

“Prime Minister [Imran] will sign the project in a day or two during the visit of a delegation from Uzbekistan, which will include either the deputy prime minister or the transport minister,” Swati said.

Swati termed the announced signing of the agreement the “best news of 2020” for the three countries because

of the opportunities it would provide for transport, trade, and cargo.

In August, the National Economic Council (NEC) approved the country’s costliest project to date as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), giving the go-ahead for the $6.8 billion Mainline-1 (ML1) project to upgrade the railway lines.

Under the project, the existing 2,655-kilometre tracks will be upgraded to allow trains to move up to 165-kilometre per hour — twice as fast as they currently do — while the line capacity will increase from 34 to over 150 trains each way per day.

With the signing of the trilateral agreement, “a whole corridor to the Central Asian republics will be opened up,” said Swati, highlighting that the potential connections with parts of Russia also constituted an important aspect of the rail linkages.

Speaking on the routes in which Pakistan would operate, the minister said: “Pakistan will do its job from Peshawar to Torkham. Afghanistan and Uzbekistan will operate the project beyond Torkham.”

Swati said both passenger and cargo trains would operate, and emphasised that the project would deploy “high-speed trains” only.

Meanwhile, the move ahead on ML-1, which has been on hold for years, will also dispel the notion, fueled in part by Western media, that the government of Prime Minister Khan is seeking to roll back some of the mega projects.

At $6.8 billion, the ML-1 project alone is almost equal to the country’s entire development budget for the fiscal year 2020-21, which stands at Rs1.32 trillion ($7.9 billion).

Published by Arif Nizami at Plot # 7, Al-Baber Centre, F/8 Markaz, Islamabad, for PT Print (Pvt) Limited. Ph: 051-2204545. Email: newsroom@pakistantoday.com.pk

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Turkey shuts down Indian anti-Pakistan propaganda website NEWS DESK The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) of Turkey has shut down a website found to be a part of the Indian disinformation network against Pakistan exposed by the EU Disinfo Lab earlier this month. The report, deepdiving into a 15-year covert campaign, highlighted an organised network of hundreds of fake media outlets and resurrected NGOs pushing a pro-India agenda in the European Union and United Nations bodies to discredit Pakistan. In a tweet, a Pakistan diplomat in Ankara, Abdul Akbar, confirmed “Hamsvasser”, a Turkeybased Indian propaganda website, was taken down by the Turkish internet regulator.

“Named after defunct Hamevasser Hebrew weekly published from Constantinople during 1909-1911, the website was part of #IndianChronicles [title of the EU Disinfo Lab report], resurrected by India to defame Pakistan in Turkey,” Akbar tweeted. In 2019, EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based group, uncovered a vast network of 265 coordinated fake local media outlets in 65 countries serving Indian interests through reproducing “negative content” about Pakistan online. The network was traced back to a New Delhi-based holding company, Srivastava Group.