Reps. Joe Wilson(R-S.C.) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif). introduced the “Pakistan Democracy Act” on Monday, seeking to sanction the country’s Army chief for “persecution of political opponents” including former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Expanding the fundamental rights to include food, clothing, shelter, education, internet, and vote, the Constitution Reform Commission proposes replacing nationalism, socialism, and secularism with equality, human dignity, social justice and pluralism as fundamental principles of state policy.
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Modifying, the much discussed article 70, the commission recommends that parliamentarians be allowed to vote against party line except finance bills.
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The constitution commission recommends deletion of the constitutional provision that stipulates inclusion of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s speech of March 7, 1971, his declaration of independence and the proclamation of independence, which are included in the 5th, 6th and 7th schedules respectively.
FYI, it was written by International IDEA, which is funded by USAID, Open Society Foundations, and several Western governments.
Leaked docs reveal that prior to the toppling of Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina, the US govt-funded International Republican Institute trained an army of activists including rappers and “LGBTQI people,” even hosting “transgender dance performances,” to achieve a national “power shift.” Institute staff said the activists “would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.”
Pakistan has a general election today. It will decide on the next government of the world’s fifth-most populous nation and the governments of its four provinces — Punjab, Singh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 128 million people can vote to pick 266 representatives to form the 16th parliament in a first-past-the-post system. They will also vote to elect the legislatures of the country’s four provinces.
The Biden administration helped Pakistan get a controversial new bailout from the International Monetary Fund after Pakistan agreed to secretly sell arms to the United States for the war in Ukraine, according to a new blockbuster report by The Intercept. The deal allows Pakistan to sell some $900 million in munitions while keeping IMF loans flowing to the government in Islamabad amid a spiraling economic crisis, which is driven at least partly by the austerity measures imposed by the IMF loan. Pakistan’s position on the war in Ukraine has shifted significantly since Russia’s invasion and the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was removed from office in 2022 under pressure from U.S. diplomats who objected to his “aggressively neutral” stance on the war. Khan is now imprisoned in Pakistan on corruption charges. Meanwhile, the caretaker government backed by Pakistan’s powerful military has delayed planned elections, widely seen as an attempt to block Khan’s supporters from power. “When the United States has a primary foreign policy objective, in particular when it’s a war, everything else falls away. That’s what you’re seeing in Pakistan now,” says The Intercept’s Ryan Grim.
The long simmering political crisis in Pakistan is now boiling over. Terrified that the campaign of ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan for immediate new elections could inadvertently precipitate an explosion of mass working class anger against brutal IMF-dictated austerity, soaring food prices and mass joblessness, the government and military are resorting to dictatorial forms of rule.
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