New Pakistani Parliament Meets

The new Parliament of Pakistan has assembled for the first time post-election, and they have an ambitious list to tackle. Some of the priorities are:

  1. Ask for a UN probe to investigate the Asassination of Benazir Bhutto
  2. Strip President Musharraf of the power to dismiss Parliament and the new Prime Minister
  3. Re-instate the Judges Musharraf dismissed and put in detention

 This is political, and items two and three are ways to limit Musharraf. They make sense, and most in Pakistan support them, with the likelihood being that Musharraf’s Presidency will be called into question if the Wardi, or Uniform case against him is brought back.

I would say the parliament needs to focus on other urgent things immediately as well:

  1. energy
  2. Al Qaeda / Taliban insurrection
  3. Rising food prices
  4. Trade Agreements and other Economic stimuli

Behind the scenes you still have factions and frictions within the largest party of the ruling coalition, the PPP. Note this.

UPDATE:

[Note about the government in flux: post-election designation of the PM candidate for PPP has caused a schism in the party between Zardari and Fahim factions over who’s going to which position, as Zardari’s corruption cases are set aside it appears more likely that Fahim will be set aside. There’s also behind the scenes jockeying — if the Justices are re-instated, then it’s possible that Musharraf could be removed from the presidency, thus opening another position. Handicappers on what’s going on here are all over the map.] UPDATE TO POLITICAL NOTE: Fahim Scuppered.

Also note this interview with Musharraf – it comes close to a “setting up a legacy” discussion, a possible sign that he might resign in good faith before all of the above comes to a head.

This article paints the grim picture of how Pakistan is learning to live as a state under siege from extremists.

Adil Najam has excellent analysis here, I agree with most of what he says but for one thing.

The two greatest living enemies of the US and their organization are hosted in Pakistan. Either Pakistan needs to get them, or we will, and that’s the end of that discussion. We will neither forget or give up, and this isn’t going to go away if you ignore it until 2009.

7 thoughts on “New Pakistani Parliament Meets”

  2. Yeah, they should have been closed long ago. The blog’s supposed to only allow comments on the newest 10 threads, but when I upgraded it got flipped off, all comments all the way back to april 2006 were open. So I fixed Akismet and that this morning, too much spam. (Not referring to your comments, the usual insurance/casino/pr0n/drug spammers were keeping me busy, I’m very happy I got that figured out.)

  3. The blog’s supposed to only allow comments on the newest 10 threads,

    Damn, now that I wouldn’t be OK with personally. I like the idea of people commenting on something I posted a year ago. That way people can call me out if I turned out to be flat out wrong on something 😉 In fact, I’ve got the “random post” button placed pretty high up there just in case anyone wants to take a trip down memory lane.

    I hear ya on the spam though. Friggin persistent bastards.

  4. Yes they are, and I don’t get a lot of time to write or admin the blog, so there you have it — I have to keep the shields on full most of the time.

  5. The things that you mentioned that should be taken up by the Pakistani
    Parliment are things that should be taken up by our Congress also, instead of investigating why some Asst Attorney Generals were fired or MLB and steroids…

  6. Yes, our do nothing congress is beginning to have effects. The dems have time to make anti-war posture motions and ammendents which they know will fail beforehand, but they fail to do the one thing that will take the dollar and the economy out of freefall.
    They aren’t making the tax cuts permanent.

  7. The only thing that has gotten through the new Congress has been the
    minimum wage raise. Other than that all they’ve done is pass bills that were
    vetoed and they couldn’t overide. Everything they bring up is meant to
    weaken our powers to protect us or give more rights to the illegal immigrants or combatants held at Gitmo. We need to clean house and start
    fresh with a new batch of representatives and senators…

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