Taal Matol
Music and masti!
By Shoaib Hashmi
It seems I am not the only one who thinks seriously about stuff. For instance I have been thinking about how music has changed within our generation. A whole new genre, which might be called the music of the next generation has come into being. Most of it has a distinct Punjabi colour, because it got a jump start with Sufi music at the hands of Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the newer generation has taken it to heart and has created a sizeable body of work. The only thing left to do was to find a home for it. A place it could identify with!

controversy
Dam with water
Millions of acres of crops in Punjab have been badly affected by India's move to block Chenab river to fill up their newly built Baglihar Dam
By Aoun Sahi
Tanvir Kahloon is a 35 years old farmer who lives in chak no. 169-7R in Fort Abbas Tehsil of Bahawalnagr district. He depends totally on canal water to cultivate his 50 acres of agricultural land as the water under the ground in his village is not fit for crops. He mainly grows cotton in Kharif season which is about to ripe. The cotton crop needs to be irrigated after almost every eight to ten days at this point but 6R and 7R distributaries that bring canal water to his land are dry for many days. "The irrigation department has released water in 7R today (Oct 28) after 15 days but we have been told that water will be available only until Nov 3. The department has also decreased the original quota of water from 300 cusec to 200 cusec in 7R while 6R is closed for the last 35 days," says Tanvir. He is afraid that scarcity of water at this crucial stage will result in a 15-20 percent decrease in the cotton yield.

On the first anniversary of the Emergency declared by Pervez Musharraf, it is important to highlight, once again, the constitutional process through which a judge of the Supreme Court can be removed. The Constitution of Pakistan, in the Article 209(5), lays down the procedure through which a president or Supreme Judicial Council can remove a judge of the Supreme Court. According to the procedural rules laid down in the Constitution, if the president considers a judge "incapable of properly performing the duties of his office," the president can only "direct the (Supreme Judicial) Council to inquire into the matter." If the Council concludes that the judge is not suitable to stay in the office, only then the president can remove a Judge.

In the light of the Constitution, what Musharraf attempted in his camp office on March 9, 2007, by pressing the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was illegal. The illegality of the situation was further compounded because the president was dressed in full military uniform. In other words, the illegal occupant of the highest public office was performing another illegal action by pressurising a legally appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court to submit his resignation. The audacity of the brute force was simply scandalous. And that is what it became. The refusal of the chief justice to submit to the logic of "political power flows from barrel of a gun" transformed the nation into an angry, pulsating and very popular movement for the primacy of constitutionalism. People were on the side of justice instead of raw power. The popular rebuke was daunting for someone who had occupied the office after removing a democratically elected government.

After deliberating the matter for several months, the Supreme Court (a 13 member bench) reinstated the chief justice into office on July 21, 2007. The rebukes for Musharraf were compounding rapidly. In the immediate "public" reaction to the decision, Musharraf announced that he would respect the decision of the Supreme Court. But that was part of the "image surgery" or "damage control" Musharraf needed because he wanted to continue to occupy the post of the president while he was still wearing a uniform. But the pro-constitution mask of the dictator came off on Nov 3, 2007, when he declared emergency and dismissed majority of the judges from the higher judiciary of the country. The word "emergency" was also deceptive because it was essentially an imposition of martial law. It was also described as Musharraf's "second coup." Ironically, the second coup was also against Musharraf the President (a civilian office) by Musharraf the General (the imposer of the Emergency). In the struggle between the sword and the pen, the sword had asserted its power. After the death of the dialogue, the monologue of power was asking the nation to shut up and listen. All the basic rights were suspended. The barbed wire cut short all popular paths -- both metaphorically and literally. Almost all those who protested against the Emergency, including hundreds of lawyers, were arrested. Because the Constitution was in abeyance, there was no hope for any due process for the incarcerated.

Students of elite institutions turned to the internet and started blogging against the Emergency. LUMS students started a clandestine online newsletter The Emergency Times. FAST National University followed suit with a blog called FAST Rising with others (Teeth Maestro, Pakistaniat.com, bloggers.pk etc) supporting. Soon there was a Student Action Committee. Writers developed new war names (noms de guerre) and started contributing to online blogs. A Critique Aggregator (a programme for presenting summaries of the most notable news items) appeared online and started disseminating the news directly submitted by the protesting lawyers. As popular TV Channels were taken off air by the government, people started relying on short text messages and the internet TV. The prices of dish antennae and satellite receivers increased manifold. The popular will tried all means possible to not submit to the gun.

The international community (except the United States of America) was on the side of the people of Pakistan. Netherlands froze all development aid to Pakistan and called the Emergency Rule as a "dramatic power grab." The governments of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway expressed serious concerns about the suspension of basic rights and democratic and institutional processes. Musharraf also was rebuked by the Commonwealth as Pakistan's membership was suspended. In a rare laudatory move, Harvard Law School announced Medal of Freedom, its highest award, for the chief justice. Because previous recipients of the award included Nelson Mandela, Iftikhar Chaudhry was also being called "our Nelson Mandela" by some writers. The issue was galvanising democratic forces against the jackbooted trampling of popular will and it became difficult for Musharraf to continue the Emergency. On Nov 28, 2007, Musharraf removed his military uniform and on the 15th of Dec he lifted the Emergency Rule as the President of Pakistan.

One year onwards, many people are of the opinion that democracy is back in Pakistan because of the "No" of the chief justice of Pakistan, who still has not been able to return to his office. The recent overwhelming victory of Ali Ahmad Kurd in the elections for the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association against the government-backed candidate Muhammad Zafar indicates that the issue of justice versus raw power is still simmering in the minds of many and will continue to haunt the politics of Pakistan for many years to come. The image of a policeman pulling at the hair of the chief justice, the barricaded Constitution Avenue in Islamabad, the fiery speeches of the lawyers who have kept the movement alive and the tear-gas shells landing in the building of the Supreme Court are not easy to erase from the popular memory.

Intimately linked with all these images is the issue of the supremacy of the law and the proper functioning of public institutions. If democracy and prosperity are desired, rational transactions and trust have to be made more readily available to all.

As many as 15 condemned prisoners have been hanged in Pakistan since June 21 this year when Prime Minister Gilani proposed to commute death sentences in honour of the memory of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has records of these hanged men, who are among the 35 prisoners executed in Pakistan so far this year.

Thousands of prisoners continue to languish on death row -- over 7,000 at last count -- although several hundred have been shifted to ordinary barracks pending the long-awaited legal reforms package that the law ministry has yet to finalise and present to the president. These condemned prisoners continue to cling to the hope that Pakistan will issue a general amnesty for all those on death row, as promised by the prime minister -- or that some other kind of pardon or compromise will save their lives.

Among them is 38--year--old Zulfiqar Ali, who was snatched back from the gallows literally at the last minute before his execution scheduled for Oct. 8. Late at night on Oct. 7, Interior Minister Rehman Malik himself telephoned Ali's younger brother Abdul Qayyum, 31, to tell him that President Asif Ali Zardari had granted Ali a 14-day stay of execution in order to allow time for his family to negotiate a pardon from the families of the two shot dead during a violent dispute ten years ago. As the two-week deadline came to an end on Oct 23, the president granted a further temporary reprieve, extending the stay of execution for 60 more days.

Qayyum says that they initially needed more time because "at first we did not even know where those families lived. We lost some time because of that."

Negotiations are being carried out through intermediaries from Narowal, the condemned man's home district. "They are acting out of the kindness of their hearts," says Qayyum, who is grateful for the help.

"Now contact has been established but we need to proceed slowly. These things do not happen in a hurry. Those families have also suffered a loss and have to be handled delicately. We are hopeful that they will agree to a compromise but I cannot say at this point what it will involve," he adds. "I do not want to get into whether my brother is guilty or not. We are only begging forgiveness for him on humanitarian grounds from the affected families, from the government, from God."

Ali, a former Pakistan navy physical training instructor, was arrested in 1998 for the death of two passers-by, killed when he used his licensed revolver during a quarrel with a bus-driver on the Islamabad-Muree Road. He has been in prison since then. A district court sentenced him to death in April 1998. Two years ago, a story in an Urdu newspaper highlighting his case prompted then Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry to take suo moto notice and send his case back to the sessions court.

After his appeals were dismissed at all levels he was issued with a "black warrant" on Sept 29 this year -- on the eve of the Eid holidays, points out Qayyum, and his execution date was set for Oct 8. "The akhri mulaqat (last meeting) was scheduled for Oct 7, the day after the Eid holidays ended. You can imagine what we went through."

It was during these holidays that the case came to public notice, initially through an alert sent by the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) three days before the impending execution. Over the next few days, various individuals and organisations lobbied hard behind the scenes to obtain the last-minute presidential reprieve, conveyed to Qayyum by a call from the Interior Minister himself at midnight.

HRCP is among the organisations that have appealed for Ali's life on humanitarian grounds and on the grounds that he did not have adequate legal representation.

Ali has been in prison for over ten years. Two years ago, his wife died of cancer, leaving behind their two daughters, aged 10 and 11, to be looked after by his brother Qayyum, who is an electrician struggling to make ends meet in Lahore. He and his wife have four boys of their own to care for.

Legal representation for Zulfiqar Ali was a "mere formality" says Qayyum. The court did provide him with state-appointed lawyers at each stage of his trial, fulfilling the legal requirements. But such lawyers are poorly paid and also tend to be "young and inexperienced or those without briefs -- lawyers who should not be representing persons in death penalty cases," as the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted in a letter on June 17. The letter urged Prime Minister Gilani to commute all Pakistan's death sentences to life imprisonment and abolish capital punishment.

Qayyum said that he had never even met the lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court at the penultimate stage of appeal. In the final review stage, he only spoke to the lawyer involved "a couple of times on the phone."

"He kept telling us that the (next) hearing dates had not been set, and then suddenly we were presented with the black warrant. When I confronted him, he expressed total ignorance. I learnt from another lawyer that the Supreme Court had dismissed Zulfiqar's final petition (against execution) because our lawyer was not present in court," he says bitterly.

Pakistani law provides no redress or remedy on the grounds of incompetent or ineffective legal representation, notes HRW.

Former law minister and HRCP co-chair Iqbal Haider, who has been pushing his considerable contacts within the government to save Ali's life on humanitarian grounds, believes that the law minister Farooq Naek is responsible for the delay in carrying through the commutation promise. "The government wants it, but Naek is scared of the religious forces. He has created complications by giving an adverse opinion on the issue, saying that death sentences cannot be commuted to life because of the qisas and diyat law."

The controversial Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 1990 (originally enacted as part of the Hudood laws under Gen. Ziaul Haq's regime in the name of Islam) commonly known as the Qisas and Diyat Law, enables families of murder victims to accept compensation (diyat) or insist on retribution (qisas) from a convicted murderer.

Critics say that this law "privatises" justice and enables those with bargaining powers and resources to "buy" their way out of punishment.

Many also dismiss the notion that the law has any divine sanctity. "It is a man-made law which is inherently unjust as it gives the rich a licence to kill," says Iqbal Haider. He believes that the powerful law minister could insist that "Article 45 of the Constitution, which gives the president the power to grant a reprieve or pardon to a condemned prisoner, overrides qisas and diyat which is a man-made law with no divine sanction."

The Pakistani electorate roundly rejected the religious parties in the general elections of Feb 18. These parties, known for their displays of street power, form the main opposition to a moratorium on executions and the proposal to commute death sentences.

Some also oppose any move to abolish capital punishment, saying that it would take away their right to revenge. "My uncle was killed when some men tried to snatch money from him that he was carrying for someone else," says a young woman studying at a private university in Karachi. "He refused to give the money and they shot him dead. I want to see them hanged. Why should we forgive them?"

Others however, point to God's divine right to take away life that no one can assume, holding that it is better to forgive than to seek revenge.

The danger of an innocent person being hanged is also a major argument against capital punishment. PPP spokesperson and former member of the Senate human rights committee Farhatullah Babar believes that the death penalty "should not be carried out as it is irreversible. Plus there are so many lacunae in the judicial system that the danger of miscarriage of justice is very high."

The number of crimes carrying capital punishment also needs to be reduced. "At the time of independence in 1947, capital punishment could only be awarded for two crimes. Now there are nearly 30," notes Babar.

He is hopeful that the proposed legal reforms package will be finalised and the death sentences commuted as promised. The proposed package includes the important element of not sending prisoners sentenced to death by the district courts to the condemned prisoners' section. "They will only be sent to the death cell after their sentence has been confirmed by the High Court," says Babar.

According to newspaper reports, at least some prisons have already moved such prisoners to ordinary barracks.

Another important element of the proposed package is the provision of mandatory bail to prisoners who have already undergone five years of legal procedure.

But for intense lobbying by various organisations, Zulfiqar Ali would have been an addition to the 15 prisoners hanged since the prime minister's June 21 proposal to commute death sentences. Until this proposal takes a formal shape, his only hope, and that of other condemned prisoners like him, lies in clemency from the families of the deceased -- and temporary presidential reprieves to buy them enough time to negotiate these.

It seems I am not the only one who thinks seriously about stuff. For instance I have been thinking about how music has changed within our generation. A whole new genre, which might be called the music of the next generation has come into being. Most of it has a distinct Punjabi colour, because it got a jump start with Sufi music at the hands of Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the newer generation has taken it to heart and has created a sizeable body of work. The only thing left to do was to find a home for it. A place it could identify with!

The Governor's House is one of the most graceful of the many old colonial buildings in town. Set in acres of lush green lawns right in the centre of the city, with lakes and little hills and a zoo and more lawns, it is built over the tomb of a largely unknown saint, who was the patron saint of wrestlers and the tomb was known as the 'wrestlers dome'. It consists of a central complex, and two wings which were obviously built at different times as one, the south wing has a series of pointed arches fashionable round the middle of the nineteenth century, and the other has more modern pillars and lintel.

It is by no means a flamboyant architectural masterpiece, but it has lots of charm and quiet grace; and last week we discovered a new use for it which showed how versatile old world charm can be. The governor had decided to host, on his lawns, a concert of Punjabi music for an audience of about a thousand, and his house formed the background and setting for the concert.

The audience, girls in their flicking pony-tails and boys in macho t-shirts in their finery swayed to the music on the lawns while the kids, hordes of five and six-year-olds spilled over and sprawled on the fat cushions provided for them in front of the stage. Even before the concert started it seemed the perfect setting for an evening of music and joy!

Of course the Television wallahs have to put in their spanner in the works, because their recording is incomplete without shots of a happy audience enjoying themselves, so they have to mount huge spotlights behind the performers and shine them in the peoples' eyes, but no matter, the people were determined to have a ball and would forgive anything.

The unsaid bottom line seemed to be, "Yeah, yeah we know all about tottering on the brink of an economic meltdown and there are people offering to drag us back into the tenth century, but we are not going to let them wreck our lives, or even spoil a happy evening!" Just in case everyone didn't get the message, the host came to the stage and said so in more or less the same words.

That left everyone free to immerse in the wonderful music and it went on till three in the morning! When we thought that things might come to an end, the kids decided otherwise and crowded on to the stage, dancing and swaying to the marvellous beat of the Punjabi bhangra. Then everyone got too merged in the general euphoria and I don't think they remembered to thank the host for an evening of music and sanity. Let me do so now. Thank you!

Tanvir Kahloon is a 35 years old farmer who lives in chak no. 169-7R in Fort Abbas Tehsil of Bahawalnagr district. He depends totally on canal water to cultivate his 50 acres of agricultural land as the water under the ground in his village is not fit for crops. He mainly grows cotton in Kharif season which is about to ripe. The cotton crop needs to be irrigated after almost every eight to ten days at this point but 6R and 7R distributaries that bring canal water to his land are dry for many days. "The irrigation department has released water in 7R today (Oct 28) after 15 days but we have been told that water will be available only until Nov 3. The department has also decreased the original quota of water from 300 cusec to 200 cusec in 7R while 6R is closed for the last 35 days," says Tanvir. He is afraid that scarcity of water at this crucial stage will result in a 15-20 percent decrease in the cotton yield.

Arif Ali, a farmer of Jhanday da Qilla village in Gujranwala district sows paddy in Kharif season and mainly depends upon canal water to irrigate his 15 acres of land. Paddy is a water intensive crop and is irrigated twice or thrice a week

The under ground water level is also very low in his area and it takes a lot of money to install a turbine to use this water for irrigation. Since the last two months, the tributary that irrigates lands of his village is closed. "We have been totally dependant on tubewells to irrigate our crop this year which has resulted in increase of input cost to many folds as 5-7 litres (costing Rs 500) of diesel is consumed by tubewell to irrigate one acre of paddy. Many small farmers in my area are not irrigating their crops properly this year due to unavailability of canal water which will definitely damage the paddy yield to a great extant," warns Arif.

Tanvir and Arif are not the only examples; in fact, thousands of farmers and millions of acres of crops in Punjab this year have been badly affected by India's move to block Chenab river water during months of August, September and October to fill up their newly built Baglihar Dam. The construction work on this controversial dam started in 1999 in district Doda of Indian held Kashmir. Pakistan has long been vocal about the dam since 1999 and considers the project to be in violation of Indus Water Treaty of 1960, which governs distribution of river waters between both countries.

Nearly four years ago, Pakistan approached the World Bank (WB) and asked it to appoint a neutral expert to settle its differences with India on the Baglihar dam. The WB expert, Swiss engineer Raymond Lafitte, gave his verdict on the issue in Feb 2007, hed cleared the Baglihar Power Project but asked India to reduce height of dam by 1 and a half metres. both the countries considered the verdict as their win.

According to Punjab irrigation department, Chenab river provides water to 21 major canals and irrigates about seven million acres of agriculture land in Punjab. The flow of Chenab river has been closed for the last three months which has made about 3.5 million agriculture tracts barren and destroyed its crops. On Oct 29, according to Indus Water Commissioner office the flow of water in Chenab river at Marala was 10500 cusec.

Mahmudul Hassan Siddique, senior consultant Punjab irrigation department says that with the blockage of Chenab river's water, Punjab has been affected and the paddy and cotton crops in Sialkot, Narowal, Gujranwla, Sheikhupura, Faislabad, Hafizabad, Jhang, Lahore, Kasur, Okara and Bahawalnagr districts have suffered a lot, "The crops suffered because it was the time of harvesting at which point the crops need the water badly and the water was not available just because of the deliberate violations of Indus Waters Treaty 1960 by India.

Baghliar Dam is of such a large size that, India, whenever it wants, can block 7000 to 8000 cusec of water per day. India has already built 14 hydroelectric plants at Chenab river and is building more plants which will enable it to block the entire water of Chenab for 20-25 days. "These dams have also enabled India to release huge quantity of water downstream which will cause severe damage not only to our crops but also to our canals system" Siddique says.

He adds the Punjab irrigation department has passed this information to the Federal Government. Siddique adds the irrigation department has asked the provincial agriculture department to asses the damage. "They estimate the damage to be in billions but exact figures will be furnished after the crops will be reaped."

Chairman Agri-Forum Pakistan Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal, an expert on agriculture thinks the blockage of water during months of Sept-Oct will not only cause severe damage to crops but also the sowing of the next crop -- wheat -- will be affected to a greater extant. "The blockage of water at the time when Pakistan's Basmati rice and cotton (the major exporting items of Pakistan) is about to ripe indicates that India wants to deliberately destroy our economy." He suggests that Pakistan should not only demand for the compensation of water but also demand the compensation for the damage caused to the crops. Mughal adds the government has projected the rice production at 5.7 million tones this year, but the reduction in the flows of Chenab river at this point of time will reduce the production by 15 -20 percent. "This means that rice production will come down from the expected target of 5.7 million tonnes to 4.5 million tones."

Pakistan's Indus Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah tells TNS that according to the Indus Water Treaty, a schedule has to be approved by both countries for the initial filling of a dam. "If both countries announce a proper schedule, India, under treaty, has the right to fill up dam from June 21-August 31 but it also has to make sure that the down stream flow of water is not less than 55,000 cusec during this period, but it did not obey this obligation. According to initial assessment, India caused us a damage of around 2 MAF (Million Acre Feet) of water during that period. We have asked India to compensate us with a similar quantity of water," he says.

Jamaat Ali Shah visited the Dam site on Oct 25. "I visited the district Doda of Jammu and Kashmir and found several defects in the Baglihar Dam that is in utter violation of the set laws. Talks were held with my Indian counterpart but I am not satisfied," he tells TNS.

Jamaat Ali Shah has also briefed President Zardari on the issue at the presidency on Oct 29. "I told him that India had interfered with the flow of Chenab river by reducing water as compared to historical flows in the violation of the treaty provisions, which will not only cause loss to cropped areas in Punjab but also is responsible for early depletion of Mangla Dam due to additional water withdrawals.". According to Shah, President Zardari will write a letter to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reminding him of the promise made by him to resolve the issue of reduced inflow of water in Chenab river at Marrala Headworks in accordance with the provisions of the Indus Water Treaty 1960. Jamaat Ali Shah adds the federal government has taken up the issue very seriously and following the intervention at the highest-level, India has agreed to the physical inspection of the dam and meeting of the Indus Water Commission but the issue of compensation has yet to be resolved.

Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf's tailored PML-Q, whose survival became an open question after the Feb 18 elections, seems virtually on its 'death bed' with several differences surfacing within the party.

Years down the road PML-Q looks like a group of 'opportunists' with its majority - over 80 percent of the members- eager to join either PML-N or PPP.

Insiders tell TNS there are four groups within the party. One group wants to rejoin PML-N. The second group wants to join hands with PPP in the federation and form a coalition with the PPP in Punjab. The third group wants to replace the current leadership of the party and think that after the removal of Chaudhrys the PML-Q will have a better time negotiating with the PPP, while the fourth group - which seems smaller in strength - wants to see the current PML-Q intact and reorganise it.

For the past few days, all of the four groups are quite active and working on their separate agendas, however, there has been no meeting of the central working committee of the PML-Q so far. The plan to remove the sitting leadership of the PML-Q has also matured whereas another plan of removing PML-Q parliamentary leader in the National Assembly, Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat is also underway.

MPA Hamid Nasir Chatha is one of the main players who seem instrumental in the move aimed at removing Ch Shujaat Hussain and Syed Mushahid Hussain from the offices of the party head and the general secretary respectively. Chatha, also known as a 'political juvenile' within the party has a clear inclination towards Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf as well.

Insiders add that most PML-Q leaders who lost the Feb 18 general elections blame the Chaudhrys for their defeat. This group, according to some reports in the media, is also in contact with Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf and wants him to take over the party's leadership.

The prominent members of the forward block of the PML-Q, mainly comprising MNAs, include Riaz Fityana, Kashmala Tariq, Sardar Bahadur Khan, Aslam Bodla, Sardar Talib Nakai, Shahzada Mohiuddin and a few others who want to be a part of the PPP government in the centre.

Insiders say Fityana won his Kamalia seat with a slight margin and some of his opponents have also registered a case against his disqualification. By showing affiliation with PPP he is saving his skin.

Fityana, however, denies this. He has also held a press conference in Lahore and spoken openly against the Chaudhrys. He has also made his intentions public about having an alliance with the PPP.

The Punjab Assembly PML-Q forward block led by MPA Najaf Sial is also in contact with this block. The PPP, according to reliable reports, has also extended its support to the National Assembly PML-Q forward block, through MNA Faryal Talpur, sister of President Zardari, and Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.

The third group is bent towards the PML-N. According to a senior representative of the PML-Q, "over 95 percent members of the PML-Q want to join the PML-N with the aim to unite the Muslim League once again." In the Punjab Assembly, this group is led by Ata Muhammad Manika and enjoys support of 32 MPAs at the least.

The fourth group comprises Ch Pervaiz Elahi and his close aides and wants to run the party independently. For this purpose, Ch Zaheeruddin, who is also the sitting opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly tells TNS that PML-N should merge itself in PML-Q and it should not be the other way round. "We are committed to run the PML-Q independently, which we believe is the original Muslim League," he says, adding: "We are also reorganising the party at district level by the end of the next month." Ch Pervez Elahi, while addressing a press conference on Oct 29, has also hinted at taking the same course of action. Zaheeruddin tells TNS that the party will be taking legal action against the "so called" forward blocks within the PML-Q.

Insiders add that these merger plans cannot be executed until PML-Q gets in a position to extend its full support to either the PML-N or the PPP. That is why Chatha, who is totally anti-Sharif, seems active in his efforts to remove the Chaudhrys and bargain with the PPP. He is also in contact with Ch Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, a former PML-J (Jinnah) leader and now a PPP member.

Chatha has also had differences with Ch Pervaiz Elahi over the distribution of party tickets in the Feb 2008 general elections. According to sources, Internal Affairs' Advisor to prime minister Rehman Malik is also quietly working on this agenda, and is in contact with many PML-Q members. No doubt nothing less than the full support of a unified PML-Q can help in toppling Shahbaz Sharif's government in Punjab. It is an open secret that a number of PPP leaders are also working in this direction.

On the other hand, PML-N MNA Ch Nisar Ali Khan is making tremendous efforts to bring the PML-Q on PML-N's side. He has made a breakthrough by convincing Ch Shujaat Hussain to join hands with Nawaz Sharif. However, there is difference of opinion between Ch Shujaat Hussain and Ch Pervez Elahi on this development, as Elahi and Shahbaz Sharif do not get along. Shahbaz is known for his hard stance against Elahi while Elahi fears victimisation by the prior. However, positive developments did take place last week as Shahbaz Sharif's aides also issued a statement in the favour of a "united Muslim League." Ch Shujaat Hussain has also issued similar statements in the past few days.

Insiders believe that the PML-Q is in a tight situation and the PML-N has a natural edge to take the lion's share of the PML-Q. While on the other side the PPP wants to take the whole cake for strengthening its rule in Punjab particularly.

At the moment the total number of PML-Q MNAs in National Assembly is 53, while in the Punjab it is 83.

The Karachi Stock Exchange this past week announced that it would not be removing the 'floor' that it had put in place since before Ramazan to stem the fall in its index and price of shares. The 'floor' in effect means that the KSE might as well be closed -- for many of the days that it has existed, the bourse had been breaking records -- for lowest turnover and greatest amount of inactivity that is.

One doesn't need a degree in economics to figure out that it is very unlikely that the stock brokers will want to remove the 'floor' -- the reason is simple, it stops share prices from dipping any further and in effect prevents the value of their stock wealth from dipping any further. Of course, such a proposition is only at the debating/discussion stage in the west, and that too behind closed doors, with only the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi saying in public, that perhaps the time had come to suspend capital and financial markets all over the world, till such time that the rules were rewritten, and, in effect, a new system was in place. Of course, this brought out the issue of who would rewrite the rules and whether this was tacit admission of the failure of one of the basic tenets of the capitalism -- that commodities were to be bought and sold through the unhindered interplay of the forces of demand and supply.

In fact, what has been happening in the US and which the G-7 have been contemplating also runs against the grain of capitalism. AIG, one of the world's largest insurance companies, has been nationalised. Furthermore, the 700 billion dollars bailout plan is also nothing more than a scheme by the government to take over large chunks of America's failed banking system. Of course, there has been immense criticism of this from many ordinary Americans -- and none better than the jokes that one hears and sees on late night talk shows by Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and David Letterman -- in that they are obviously angered by the fact that their tax money is being used to bail out large financial institutions which have come to near dissolution mainly because of their own indiscipline.

Also, such assistance from the US government would hardly be forthcoming for, say, a family that had run into insurmountable debt and was one the verge of bankruptcy -- so why help corporations that are in this situation because they were not (a) properly regulated by the government itself or (b) because they were engaging in conduct that was far from prudent and displayed an acute sense of financial indiscipline. (American late night talk show host Jay Leno couldn't have put it better when he said: "There is a rule in banking which says that don't lend money to someone who cannot pay it back -- this is something that we Americans have obviously not heard of.")

And this issue is relevant to Pakistan as well -- particularly the case of the Karachi Stock Exchange -- which wants a government fund to help pay/compensate/subsidise its losses. And the question is that why should the government bail out stockbrokers who have already made a huge killing in recent years. As far as the small-scale investors are concerned, it is obvious that most of them have already suffered immensely and it is unlikely that any bailout by the government will impact them in any substantive way. However, the effect on the large investors, who are in many cases the stockbrokers themselves, could be substantial and hence the question -- which so far has not been raised at all in the media (barring a report by Ansar Abbasi in this newspaper dated Oct 29) -- that why should foreign aid funding or government resources raised domestically be used to shore up an institution that is known for rewarding the greedy, manipulative and the already-rich?

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Want to travel to Europe? Think again -- even if you have a very good invite with all your expenses covered and happen to be in respectable position in your field.

Recently one was able to win a fellowship to attend a seminar at the Salzburg Global Seminar, a non-profit organisation that arranges multilateral conferences at an 18th century castle in Salzburg, a city at the foot of the Austrian Alps and near the German border. Attendance in the seminar is a matter of some achievement and prestige and several of the participants and invitees are leaders in their respective fields.

The seminar that I gained a fellowship (covering participation, accommodation and meals) for also had the Austrian foreign minister as one of its keynote speakers. The invitation letter, confirming the fellowship, was received in mid-October and this meant that there probably would be enough time to attend the seminar given that it was around four weeks away. To my surprise, the Austrian Embassy in Islamabad had no separate website and its details could only be accessed on the foreign ministry's home page. While the ministry's page was in English, the embassy's page was in German. However, I managed to locate the number of the honourary consulate in Karachi and contacted them on the procedure for the visa. A most unfriendly old man picked up the phone and said that there was no place on the website where the visa form could be downloaded (Austria is a signatory of the Schengen agreement so one thought that a generic visa form could be used but that was not the case). He also said that one must go to the honourary consulate with the invitation letter, just to pick up the visa form!

Luckily -- relatively speaking of course -- I had also mailed the Austrian Embassy as well and they sent back a form (which could be printed out and filled) and details on applying for a visa. I was looking for a conference visa which the instructions said took around 20 days to process. I also called the embassy's numbers during the said time but no one ever picked up. The passport along with all other documents and the invitation letter were sent via a travel agent who does this on behalf of visitors from Karachi but the embassy refused to even accept the application -- the reason was that it would take a minimum of 30 days and the tickets showed a booking for travel well before that. Of course, this was because the embassy's own emailed communication had clearly said that a visa for attending a conference would take 20 days. For good measure, Salzburg Global Seminar, whose board has senior American and Austrian diplomats, academics and journalists on its, also sent two letters to the embassy in support of my application. But clearly, they would be of little use because the application had yet to be even accepted for processing. Several mails were sent to the embassy's email -- sent to Ambassador Dr Michael Stigelbauer (got his name from the www.mofa.gov.pk website) -- went unresponded. It was not before the last week of October that the application was again submitted and this time an appointment date was given -- for Nov 3. Although this meant that there would be only five days to get a visa, a near impossibility, one decided to take the chance. Maybe, just maybe, the letter in support of my application -- sent in twice by Salzburg Global Seminar would work. One can only imagine what happens to those who want to travel to Europe as ordinary tourists!