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Arifa NoorDawn |
A CLIP from a recent television talk show is doing the rounds on the banned platform, X. In it, a journalist/ commentator discusses how rumours of a...
THE Punjab information minister was on television the evening ‘fee-gate’ blew up. For those unaware of this great Lahori scandal, it erupted when...
LETTERS are the new black in Pakistani politics. If the week before it was about the letters related to Aitchison College, more recently, pen was put...
MAHWISH works at Dawn News in Islamabad. She stands out in a large room full of people, not because she is a woman surrounded by men but because she...
“A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad” — Albert Camus LAST Saturday,...
NOW that the people have voted and been outwitted, a new parliament is in place, and a new president and prime minister have reached Constitution...
SHEHBAZ Sharif is the new prime minister of Pakistan and the first one to sit in this chair for consecutive terms; he is also the second to get here...
THE election is over, government formation underway and the uncertainty of who will govern is coming to an end. But unlike a short Hollywood film, our...
IT’S time to be worried. Really worried for Pakistan. Our political engineering formula has come undone. The hawa which was clearly blowing hard...
THE people of Pakistan waited long enough for this election, part of which should have happened early last year — in KP and Punjab — and part of...
THIS is one election where it has been more difficult than usual to keep track of candidates switching sides and parties. Even so, a recent induction...
A DECADE ago, in the course of election day in 2013, I, along with colleagues visited a polling station in Rawalpindi. Established in a government...
THE Supreme Court maintained its time-honoured tradition of doling out justice on the eve of an election, which will eventually affect the entire...
ELECTIONS in Pakistan have become a thriller film, where the clichéd twists just never stop, and those watching do not know whether to be scared or...
SHAKESPEARE may have come up with a line for all times when he wrote “to be or not to be”, but in Pakistan we have found a dilemma just as...
EARLY on Sunday, there were few people in the green areas in front of the Islamabad Press Club. The rows of quietly seated protesters were missing as...
IN recent years, the Charter of Democracy has become the holy grail of our politics — perhaps even a term that, Camelot-like, denotes nostalgia for...
ELECTIONS and the desired results (the musbat or positive kind) are absorbing all the oxygen in town. Every discussion in the capital (and its...
THE security situation in Pakistan continues to be of concern. And the decision to repatriate illegal migrants has done little to stem the tide. That...
FINALLY, there is a twist in the tale and we have some new political stuff to discuss. And for this, one has to thank Asif Ali Zardari (AAZ), whose...
THE ongoing deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan has stirred a debate, within and without. But this is a debate which involves little nuance....
IN a recent interaction, someone commented that none of the political parties had any plans to fix the economy. This is a common refrain; many of us...
THE election has been announced, once again. Between the Supreme Court and the general pressure from the press and political parties, the ECP has...
THERE is a conflict going on in the Middle East, which continues to occupy centre stage in global politics. Every headline and news story, every...
DO stories of martyrdom and suffering still resonate? The question came to mind as the daylong transmission of the Lahore jalsa proceeded; especially...
THE husband and wife woke up to a comfortably cool room in a well-off but not so central part of Lahore. But as they stepped out, they discovered that...
“In that shame, still live my sorrow’s rage” — Shakespeare TELEVISION’S prime is over. News channels that is. But in Pakistan, like many...
AS we obsess about the economy and the past mistakes which led to the economic crisis, the saga of Reko Diq comes up frequently. The story is brought...
FINANCE ministers in Pakistan are familiar faces, as familiar as SRK was to those who were young in the 1990s, and Bachchan to those who grew up in...
THERE is a new chief justice in town. And as with any transition at the big white building of justice, much is usually written about the old and new...
FREE of the burden of defending and explaining government policies and actions, Khawaja Asif spoke candidly about his own party. In a recent...