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The ordinary people of Pakistan are likely to pay a heavy price because of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ego. Khan has refused to resume trade with India despite the fact that Pakistan badly needs Indian sugar and cotton to contain the high domestic prices. Khan has rejected a proposal to import sugar and cotton from India after consulting his cabinet colleagues.
This decision has come at a time when sugar prices have gone up to Rs 120 kg in Pakistan. Instead, Khan has instructed the Ministry of Commerce and his economic team to immediately take steps to facilitate the relevant sectors, value-added, apparel and sugar, by finding alternative cheap sources of import of the needed commodities.
Various proposals have been presented to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) which considers these suggestions from an economic and commercial point of view. After consideration by the ECC, its decisions are presented to the Cabinet for ratification and final approval. A proposal was presented to the ECC to allow the import of sugar, cotton and cotton yarn from India.
Khan has decided that Pakistan could not go ahead with any trade with India under the current circumstances. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that there can be no normalisation of ties until New Delhi reverses its decision in 2019 to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
India has said that it desires good neighbourly relations with Pakistan in an environment free of terror, hostility and violence. India has said the onus is on Pakistan to create an environment free of terror and hostility. India has also told Pakistan that “talks and terror” cannot go together and has asked Islamabad to take demonstrable steps against terror groups responsible for launching various attacks on India.
The ECC’s decision had raised hopes of a partial revival of Pakistan-India bilateral trade relations, which were suspended after the August 5, 2019 decision of New Delhi to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. In May 2020, Pakistan lifted the ban on the import of medicines and raw material of essential drugs from India amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Judge and his family gunned down
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) judge and his family were gunned down by unknown assailants near Swabi interchange in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) on Sunday.
District Police Officer (DPO) Swabi Mohammad Shoaib said that ATC judge Aftab Afridi, along with his family, was travelling on the Peshawar Motorway from Swat to Islamabad and was targeted near the Indus River crossing.
He said that Afridi, two women, his two-year-old son, died on the spot while the driver and a gunman sustained injuries during the tragic incident. According to Rescue 1122, the two women are Afridi’s wife and daughter.
DPO Shoaib also said that the incident appears to be a result of personal enmity and further investigation is underway.
The first information report (FIR) was lodged against five suspects including Danish Afridi, Jamal Afridi and Gul Mat Shah on the complaint of the slain judge’s son Abdul Majid.
“My father and family came to Peshawar to attend a cousin’s wedding,” said Danish Afridi, another son of the deceased. Danish said that two vehicles coming from behind opened fire on his father’s car while he was in another vehicle.
Cracks within the opposition
The rift between two major opposition parties – the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – over the office of the Senate’s leader of the opposition deepened on April 2 when five opposition parties, including the PML-N, agreed to form a separate block of 27 opposition senators in the upper house of parliament.
Serious differences emerged between the parties – both part of an anti-government alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) – after the PPP appointed its stalwart Yousuf Raza Gilani as Senate’s opposition leader, apparently in violation of what had earlier been agreed upon in a PDM meeting.
Amid deepening rifts, within the opposition alliance, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has made it clear that his party is ready to go solo in its democratic fight to topple Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government.
“PPP is ready to do opposition either alone or with other opposition parties but one thing is clear that we will not let this selected government function,” he said on Sunday while addressing a rally held to observe the 42nd death anniversary of party founder and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Larkana.
Bilawal said only his party knows how to fight with the government and the establishment both inside and outside the parliament.
“Imran Khan would have secured ‘supermajority in the upper house of parliament if PDM parties had boycotted the Senate elections,” he maintained.
Due to his party’s ‘smart strategy’, he added, opposition parties were able to defeat the ruling party both in the Senate and in the by-elections across the country.
The cracks in opposition have left PM Imran Khan happy ahead of the general election due next year.
