A
picture in 1987 shows then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
greeting curious Moscovites who gathered to see her in Moscow, during
her official visit in USSR. —Photo by AFP
PARIS: Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl and Bill Clinton were
among the former friends and foes who joined in tributes to Margaret
Thatcher, praising the fearlessness and fierce determination of an
“iconic” leader.
The “Iron Lady” was a polarising figure in Britain and beyond, but
foreign leaders on Monday were unanimous in acknowledging her place in
20th-century history, with President Barack Obama mourning a “true
friend of America”.
Former German chancellor Kohl, considered the father of Germany’s
1990 reunification, said he “greatly valued Margaret Thatcher for her
love of freedom, her incomparable openness, honesty and
straightforwardness”.
Pope Francis said he recalled “with appreciation the Christian values
which underpinned her commitment to public service and to the promotion
of freedom among the family of nations.”
Gerry Adams, leader of the Sinn Fein republican party, said she had
played a “shameful role” in the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
But on Monday most reaction to her death – at least from leaders abroad – was positive.
In Brussels, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso paid
tribute to Thatcher’s “contributions” to the growth of the European
Union, despite her deep skepticism over increasing ties with Europe.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak called her “a formidable figure
on the world stage,” adding that she inspired many with “her strong
leadership and sense of conviction.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard hailed her for helping to
shatter the glass ceiling for women in politics. “Her service as the
first female prime minister of the United Kingdom was a history-making
achievement,” Gillard said in a statement.
South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye – an avowed
admirer of Thatcher – also paid tribute to a leader she said revived the
British economy and led her nation to “an era of hope in the 1980s”.
Nancy Reagan, the wife of the late US president Ronald Reagan, said
that “Ronnie and Margaret were political soulmates, committed to freedom
and resolved to end communism”.
Former president Clinton hailed her as an “iconic stateswoman” who
lived a “remarkable life as she broke barriers, defied expectations, and
led her country”.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari expressed profound grief over
the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
described her the most influential politician of her times.
“We share their loss,” the President said and added “in Baroness Thatcher’s passing away, Britain has lost a great leader.”
British lawmakers gather to honour Thatcher
Margaret
Thatcher (R) greets Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (C) and Britain’s
Prince Philip (L) who arrived for Thatcher’s 80th birthday party in
2005. —Photo by AFP
LONDON: Britain’s lawmakers will gather for a special session
of parliament on Wednesday to debate the legacy of former Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose death on Monday exposed bitterly
divided views on the Iron Lady’s 11 years in power.
Fellow Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron will lead
proceedings, while the head of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, and
Labour leader Ed Miliband are also expected to pay their respects.
But firebrand foes such as independent George Galloway have vowed to stay away in protest at Thatcher’s often divisive policies.
Queen Elizabeth II will lead mourners at Thatcher’s funeral next
week, the first time the monarch will have attended the ceremony of one
of her former prime ministers since Winston Churchill died in 1965.
Tributes from world leaders who hailed the role of the “Iron Lady” in
bringing down communism kept flooding in as the British government
announced that the funeral would be next Wednesday at St Paul’s
Cathedral in London.
Speculation mounted on Tuesday that former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev and ex-US first lady Nancy Reagan would be invited to the
ceremonial funeral, one step down from the state funeral given to
Churchill, but the same honour afforded to the Queen Mother and to
Princess Diana.
But Thatcher remained as polarising in death as she did in life, with
violence erupting at street parties celebrating the passing of a figure
who critics say destroyed millions of lives with her free-market
economic policies.
Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister and longest serving
premier of the 20th century, died on Monday aged 87 after suffering a
stroke. She had suffered from dementia for more than a decade.
Foreign Secretary William Hague, a fellow Conservative, told a
briefing on Tuesday ahead of a meeting with G8 counterparts that Britain
was grateful for the condolences from around the world.
“She was an inspiration to many people in other countries, not just
this country, particularly people aspiring to their own freedom and
democracy at a time they didn’t have it, such as behind the Iron
Curtain,” Hague said.
Cameron’s office said the government had agreed during a meeting with
Thatcher’s family and Buckingham Palace on April 17 for her funeral,
followed by a private cremation.
“A wide and diverse range of people and groups with connections to Lady Thatcher will be invited,” it said.
The queen and her husband Prince Philip will attend, Buckingham
Palace said. The monarch does not usually attend funerals or memorial
services of non-royals.
Thatcher’s coffin will rest in the Houses of Parliament the night
before the funeral and will be taken through the London streets on a gun
carriage to the cathedral with full military honours.
Several Conservative lawmakers have called for her to receive a full
state funeral but her spokesman Lord Tim Bell said Thatcher had
specifically said such an observance was “not appropriate”.
A private ambulance accompanied by police motorcycle outriders
removed Thatcher’s body early Tuesday from the luxury Ritz hotel in
central London where she had spent the last days of her life, an AFP
photographer reported.
‘Cult of greed’
But her legacy – encompassing brutal clashes with miners, the
crushing of the trade unions, violent poll tax riots and the Falklands
War with Argentina – remains as divisive in 2013 as it was during her
premiership from 1979 to 1990.
Even in her home town of Grantham, eastern England, where she was
born to a humble grocer and his wife, opinion was sharply split.
“I am glad she is dead … She closed down the mines and bought the
coal from communist countries, our enemies,” said 39-year-old Michael
Blocksidge outside the town’s guildhall, where the flag flew at half
mast as it does over the parliament and Buckingham Palace.
Trouble erupted at several parties to celebrate her death in south
London, Bristol in southwest England and Glasgow in Scotland,
reminiscent of the sometimes violent protests during her time in office
in the 1980s.
In Bristol six police officers were injured, one seriously, bottles
and cans were thrown at officers and fires were started in bins.
Britain’s newspapers were similarly divided even if they were
unanimous on the extent of Thatcher’s impact. Right-wing titles carried
effusive praise, with the Daily Telegraph calling her a “champion of
freedom for workers, nations and the world.” But the left-wing Guardian
said she promoted a “cult of greed”.
Thatcher’s death brings joy for miners she defeated
A
for-sale sign stands by the closed Clipstone Colliery in Clipstone,
central England. Communities ravaged by the decline of heavy industry
during her time in office said they would shed no tears. Only three deep
coal pits now remain in the UK, out of the 170 in operation in 1984 at
the time of the miners’ strike. —Photo by Reuters
ARMTHORPE: Mention the death of Margaret Thatcher in one of
the “working men’s clubs” frequented by former coal miners in northern
England, and you will be met with roars of approval.
It has been 28 years since her Conservative government crushed the
miners’ year-long strike, ending one of the most bitter industrial
battles in British history. But in the South Yorkshire village of
Armthorpe and others like it, the anger remains as visceral as ever.
“Good riddance!” shouted one former miner from a corner of
Armthorpe’s dingy club, where men with weathered faces and tattooed
fingers sat nursing pints on Tuesday.
On a table, the face of Britain’s first and only female prime
minister beamed out from the front page of a discarded newspaper, a day
after she died at age 87.
“We’ll use that for toilet paper,” another drinker said to gales of laughter.
‘The enemy within’
The 1984-85 strike by tens of thousands of miners was one of the
defining events of Thatcher’s time in power. Its violence horrified the
public as militant strikers clashed with riot police, sometimes in
“battles” with thousands on each side.
The dispute pitted the Iron Lady – who wanted to close dozens of
loss-making coal pits – against one of her greatest foes, the miners’
firebrand leader Arthur Scargill. And it bitterly divided the miners
themselves as thousands in some areas opted to stay at work.
Several people were killed, including a taxi driver murdered in Wales for taking a non-striking miner to a coal pit.
The strikers, famously described by Thatcher as “the enemy within”,
suffered desperate hardship during a year without work. Ultimately,
their gamble failed. Thatcher’s government had built up huge supplies of
coal and was able to starve them out.
The walkout ended on March 3, 1985, almost exactly a year after it
started. Some returned to the coal pits in tears. Thatcher wrote in her
memoirs that the strikers “wanted to defy the law of the land in order
to defy the laws of economics. They failed.”
It was a stunning defeat for Scargill’s once-formidable National
Union of Mineworkers, leading to the virtual end of deep coal mining in
Britain as dozens of pits were gradually shut down. In 1984 Britain had
around 170 working coal mines employing nearly 200,000 workers. Today
there are just a handful of mines, employing some 2,000 people.
‘Thatcher destroyed this place’
Armthorpe was among the victims, losing its 76-year-old Markham Main
Colliery in 1996. A housing estate was built on the site. Today, one of
the few visible reminders of the village’s mining history is a huge
wheel from the pit that stands as a memorial along the main road. Its
former employees remember 1985 with grim faces. Riot police, at one
point, formed a ring around the village and clashes followed.
“Thatcher destroyed this place,” said 63-year-old George Fletcher, a
former pit supervisor, as he sat with mates at the Armthorpe Social Club
opposite the memorial.
“My dad was a miner, his dad was a miner,” he said. “But Margaret
Thatcher didn’t like the working man. She worked for London. And she
made a lot of people’s lives hell.”
Behind him, a younger man took a front-page photograph of Thatcher
and screwed it up with clenched fists. The miners express pride at how
their close-knit community struggled together through the strike, often
pooling food and other resources in an effort that seemed antithetical
to Thatcher’s individualistic vision of Britain.
The village baker, they recall with deep gratitude, went bankrupt
providing food for the strikers on credit. But today there’s a depressed
air about the place, with many former miners complaining that they and
their children have difficulty finding work after the demise of the
place that provided generations with employment.
“Young ‘uns here, they’ve nowt (nothing) to do,” said George Kennedy,
55, who worked at the pit for two decades before he was laid off with
breathing problems.
Geoff Smith, a trustee of Armthorpe’s Working Men’s Club, said
Thatcher’s triumph and the shutdown of the mining industry had
“decimated” his village, and many others like it. “You’ve got to blame
her for everything that’s gone wrong here – drug problems, fighting,” he
told AFP. He expects the miners to arrange a party at the club to
coincide with Thatcher’s funeral next Wednesday.
“If they do, I’ll drink with them,” he said. “And if she’s going to
cremated,” he added with a cackle, “I’m sorry to say it – but if there’s
no coal to do it with, it’s her fault!”
Murdoch lauds ‘brave’ Thatcher
A
1987 photo shows former US President Ronald Reagan and former British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the patio outside the Oval Office,
in Washington D.C. —Photo by AFP
LONDON: Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday paid tribute
to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, crediting her with
giving him the strength to face down print unions in the 1980s.
Writing in the Times, one of his News International titles, Murdoch
called Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, “the woman who gave us back
our backbone” and “undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the
20th century”.
“I found her attitude an inspiration in my business life – and never
more so than when faced with the recalcitrance of the print unions in
the 1980s,” he wrote.
Printers were angered by Murdoch’s decision to shift production of
his newspapers to a hi-tech, less labour intensive, site in east London
in 1986. The controversial businessman said Thatcher had swept away
Britain’s post-war “dependency state”, which he claimed had “killed off
aspiration”.
“Mrs Thatcher understood that risk was a vital ingredient in a free
enterprise society,” he wrote. “She held firm in pursuit of her belief
in aspiration, in the power of individual people to make the most of
their talents to improve their own lives and those of their families and
of society.”
“Thanks to her I have experienced in Britain many of my defining
moments as a businessman, a Britain that is far more successful as a
result of her brave leadership,” he added.
Anti-Thatcher song heads to top of UK charts
People gather during a ‘party’ to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher in London. —Photo by AFP
LONDON: “Ding Dong! The witch is dead”, as sung by Judy
Garland in The Wizard of Oz, on Tuesday raced to the top of the Amazon
download chart in Britain, a day after the death of former Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Another version sung by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald placed at number
four and also topped the iTunes UK vocal chart as record-buyers passed
their judgement on the legacy of Thatcher, who died of a stroke on
Monday aged 87.
The records’ success comes on the back of a Facebook campaign celebrating the death of the divisive leader.
The Official Charts Company, which collates sales from all outlets,
predicts that the “macabre sense of humour of British music fans” will
give the 1939 record a top 40 placing in their weekly chart.
“The leading contender by Judy Garland is likely to move into the
Official Singles Chart Top 40 in its own right by Sunday if it maintains
its current momentum,” it said.
SAfricans: Did Thatcher help or hinder apartheid?
A
1990 picture shows Margaret Thatcher shaking hands with ANC deputy
leader Nelson Mandela, prior to talks and a luncheon. Nineteen years
after the end of apartheid, South Africans are still passionately
divided over whether Thatcher helped or hindered the demise of the
cruel system of white rule and prolonged the jailing of Nelson Mandela.
—Photo by AP
JOHANNESBURG: Nineteen years after the end of apartheid,
South Africans are still passionately divided over whether Margaret
Thatcher helped or hindered the cruel system of white rule and prolonged
the incarceration of Nelson Mandela.
The heated discussions triggered by Thatcher’s death show how
influential South Africans believe she was on the fate of the last
bastion of white-minority rule in Africa.
The former British leader supported the apartheid government when it
was at its deadliest, killing many in the late 1980s in state terrorism
at home and abroad in bombings and cross-border raids on neighboring
states accused of harboring guerrilla fighters, said Pallo Jordan, a
former Cabinet minister and stalwart of the governing African National
Congress.
”Maggie Thatcher and Britain were important figures … they were
defending (apartheid) South Africa, they were preventing international
sanctions,” said Jordan to The Associated Press.
”Many lives were lost (as a result of the apartheid regime). I don’t
think it’s a great loss to the world,” Jordan said of Thatcher’s death.
”I say good riddance,” he said Tuesday on South Africa’s Talk Radio 702.
Thatcher branded Mandela and his ANC movement ”terrorist”, amid
concerns that they received backing from the former Soviet Union during
the Cold War era and because of their guerrilla war for democracy.
Jordan was at Mandela’s first meeting with Thatcher after his release
from 27 years in jail, at Downing Street in London in 1990.
”What amused the old man (Mandela) more than anything else was that
here she was engaging in a conversation with this man that she thought
an arch-terrorist.”
He said Mandela’s inherent charm disarmed ”the Iron Lady”, and the
meeting passed without confrontation. Thatcher’s spokesman said in
1987 that anyone who thought the ANC, then the leading anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa, would govern South Africa was ”living in cloud
cuckoo-land.”
But others argue that Thatcher was strongly opposed to apartheid and
racism and helped influence the white government to free Mandela.
”Thatcher did more to release Nelson Mandela out of prison than any
of the other hundreds of anti-apartheid committees in Europe,” Pik
Botha, the last foreign minister of the apartheid regime, said Tuesday
on Talk Radio 702 in Johannesburg.
F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president of South Africa, said
in a statement that Thatcher, whom he called a friend, was ”a steadfast
critic of apartheid.” He said she had a better grasp of the
complexities and realities of South Africa than many of her
contemporaries.
”She exerted more influence in what happened in South Africa than any
other political leader,” de Klerk said. He said Thatcher ”correctly
believed” that more could be achieved through constructive engagement
with his government than international sanctions and isolation of the
South African government.
Thatcher argued that sanctions were immoral because they would throw
thousands of South African blacks out of work. Her stance allowed
British companies to continue operating in apartheid South Africa, where
the United Kingdom was the biggest trading partner and foreign
investor.
Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda berated Thatcher bitterly at a
1986 Commonwealth conference where she refused to join six nations
including Australia and Canada in imposing a package of sanctions
against South Africa.
Kaunda told reporters Thatcher cut a ”very pathetic picture indeed”
and accused her of ”worshipping gold, platinum and the rest” on offer
from South Africa. It was a far cry from his amused references to
Thatcher as ”my dancing partner” after the two famously waltzed at a
1979 Commonwealth summit of Britain and its former colonies in
Livingstone, Zambia.
The rapport engendered there led Thatcher to help resolve the impasse
in Rhodesia’s 7-year war. With Australian negotiators, she persuaded
the warring parties to sign a peace settlement that ended that country’s
white-minority rule and installed Robert Mugabe as leader of a
democratic Zimbabwe in 1980.
Mugabe, now derided for destroying the economy of his country through
violent and illegal grabs of white-owned farmlands, always enjoyed a
collegial relationship with Thatcher. He said he admired her and that
she was easier to deal with than Tony Blair who later became prime
minister for Labour Party.
But Britain’s government under Thatcher ignored the killings of an
estimated 20,000 Zimbabwean civilians of the minority Ndebele tribe,
prompted by an uprising of dissident, that lasted from 1982 to 1987.
Queen Elizabeth II even gave Mugabe a knighthood after the massacres.
Donald Trelford, editor of The Observer newspaper in London, later
charged that Thatcher and her Foreign Office were more concerned about
their relations with Mugabe than with human rights.
Only after thousands of white farmers were driven off their land and
more than a dozen killed did the queen strip Mugabe of his knighthood in
2008.
Thatcher finally was forced to impose sanctions against South Africa by
following the lead of the US Congress, which in 1986 passed the
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, overriding Reagan’s presidential veto
after South Africa attacked Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana on the same
day, recalled Pallo Jordan.
The official ANC statement on Thatcher’s passing was surprisingly
restrained, perhaps reflecting an African tradition of respect for the
dead.
“She was one of the strong leaders in Britain and Europe, to an
extent that some of her policies dominate discourse in the public
service structures of the world,” said ANC national spokesman Jackson
Mthembu, referring to her view that the apartheid regime was a bulwark
against communism. “Her passing signals the end of a generation of
leaders that ruled during a very difficult period characterised by the
dynamics of the Cold War.”
Thatcher, female trailblazer who promoted few women
Floral tributes are seen being left outside the house of Margaret Thatcher in London. —Photo by AP
LONDON: Margaret Thatcher once said she owed nothing to
feminism, but the only woman ever to become British prime minister
unwittingly cleared the way for other women to succeed in the
male-dominated world of politics, observers said on Tuesday.
In the impassioned debate sparked by her death on Monday, Thatcher’s
role as a pioneer for women in politics is among the thorniest subjects.
In a glowing tribute in which he described her as a “true friend” of
the United States, President Barack Obama said she was an example to
girls that “there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.”
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on Tuesday that Thatcher
“was a woman who changed history for women”. Yet in 11 years in office,
Thatcher only appointed one woman to any of her cabinets, elevating
Janet Young to leader of parliament’s upper House of Lords.
Gisela Stuart, a senior current Labour lawmaker, said whether she
recognised it or not, Thatcher “broke that ceiling – she actually said
that there is no place where a woman cannot go and succeed.
“While you can accuse her that she didn’t bring women in with her,
she broke down the doors and it was then up to the next generation of
women to walk through those doors,” Stuart told AFP.
There were around 40 women MPs in parliament’s lower House of Commons
when Thatcher reluctantly left power in 1990. Today 146 of the 650
lawmakers are women. Though Stuart is from the other side of the
political divide to Thatcher and the Conservatives, she said it is often
overlooked that the former prime minister also took on the macho world
of trade unions.
“The left likes to forget that you have to go a long way to find
something more chauvinistic than the brotherhood in the trade unions.
She broke their power,” she said.
Beatrix Campbell, a feminist writer and author of “The Iron Ladies:
Why Do Women Vote Tory?”, said: “The remarkable thing about Margaret
Thatcher was the way that she performed power not in a sense to say to
women you can be like me but, ‘I am the exception’.
“Thatcher hated feminism. It’s an egalitarian project, and she was an
elitist – never an egalitarian,” Campbell said in a BBC radio debate.
Thatcher never hid her contempt for feminist militants, saying: “I owe nothing to women’s lib.”
And she once commented that “I hate those strident tones we hear from some women’s libbers.”
At the same time, Thatcher, a married mother of two children, had no
qualms about praising a women’s supposed advantages over men. “If you
want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a
woman,” was one of her best-known quotes.
Margot James, a current Conservative lawmaker and the party’s first
openly lesbian MP, was in her 20s when Thatcher came to power. She said
it was unfair to blame Thatcher for having so few women in her cabinet,
because at that time there were not many women MPs to choose from.
“She had limited room for manoeuvre in that respect. What she did was
that she showed women that they could reach the very top in any field,”
she said in the debate with Campbell.
“She democratised Britain in so many senses. She opened up the economy, and gave opportunities to all, regardless of gender.”
Douglas Hurd, who served as foreign minister under Thatcher, also
dismissed suggestions that as a woman herself it was her job to promote
women. “That wasn’t her job, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “She wanted to
appoint the best people.”
China lauds Thatcher but Hong Kong activists cry betrayal
Britain
will hold the funeral of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher on
Wednesday with Queen Elizabeth II leading the mourners, officials said,
as the country wrestled with deeply divided views of the “Iron Lady”.
—Photo by AFP
BEIJING: Margaret Thatcher was an “outstanding” leader who
wisely compromised over Hong Kong’s future, China said Tuesday, although
democracy activists in the former British colony itself accused her of
betrayal.
The news of the ex-prime minister’s death at the age of 87 featured
on the front pages of most major Chinese newspapers – relegating a
deadly outbreak of H7N9 bird flu to the inside pages.
During the Conservative leader’s time in power, the overriding issue
between London and Beijing was the future of Hong Kong, as the clock
ticked down to the expiry of Britain’s lease on the New Territories
region in 1997.
Thatcher signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 to begin
the handover process, giving up on Britain’s hopes of retaining Hong
Kong in the face of unbending resistance from China’s paramount leader
Deng Xiaoping.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei praised Thatcher as an “outstanding statesman”.
“She made important contributions to the development of Chinese-British
relations, and in particular to the peaceful solution of the issue of
Hong Kong,” he told reporters.
The joint declaration followed a brief but bloody war with Argentina
in 1982 in which Thatcher “impressed the world with her hardline
stance”, China’s state-run Global Times said in an editorial.
“But Thatcher managed to understand that China is not Argentina and
Hong Kong is not the Falklands,” it said. “We can say that she made her
biggest compromise as prime minister in this issue.”
A decade after the 1997 handover, Thatcher said she regretted her
inability to persuade Deng to let Britain extend its control of the
prosperous entrepot in southern China, which stretched back to 1842.
Although Britain held Hong Kong Island and part of Kowloon in
perpetuity, the future of the territory as a whole was seen as untenable
if shorn of its populous hinterland in the New Territories bordering
the Chinese mainland.
Xing Hua, a retired academic from the China Institute of
International Studies in Beijing, said Thatcher arrived for talks in
China ahead of the declaration aiming to “maintain the privileges of the
British” in the colony.
“But she took a pragmatic approach to the negotiations to obtain the correct results, which should be commended,” he told AFP.
In the years leading up to 1997, Britain’s last colonial governor Chris
Patten promoted limited democratic reforms in Hong Kong – provoking
vicious diatribes from Beijing, and criticism from his own bosses in
London.
But while the territory enjoys a large measure of autonomy under the
Sino-British handover agreement, it still lacks universal suffrage – and
pro-democracy campaigners accused Thatcher of abandoning them.
“We were definitely betrayed by the British,” pro-democracy lawmaker
Cyd Ho from Hong Kong’s Labour Party told AFP, arguing that Thatcher
left the territory’s people “at the mercy of the authoritarian regime”
in Beijing.
Fellow pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan said Thatcher fared
“miserably” in terms of her legacy for the territory and accused her of
“selling out Hong Kong’s democracy”.
But others said Thatcher had done the best she could for Hong Kong.
Democratic Party founder and veteran activist Martin Lee said Thatcher’s
options were “heavily limited”.
“I suppose her option would be whether she would start a war with
China over Hong Kong, like the war with Argentina over the Falkland
islands. But of course nobody would see that it’s a possibility starting
a war with China.”
ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) while halting Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Ali Arshad Hakeem from his job function, ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) while halting Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Ali Arshad Hakeem from his job function, cancelled notification of his appointment, The notification was annulled by Justice Shaukat Aziz.
ISLAMABAD, While hearing the high treason petition, the Supreme Court on Monday sought government’s stance against former military ruler Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf. A two-member bench of the apex court headed by Justice Jawad S Khwaja heard the petition, seeking to try Musharraf for treason for imposing emergency rule in 2007. During case proceeding, petitioner Maulvi Iqbal Haider’s counsel AK Dogar presented arguments before the bench. Advocate-on-Record Zafar Abbas Naqvi objected saying that AK Dogar has not right to present arguments in the case. Naqvi requested the bench for withdrawal of the application, saying that he had not received any instructions from his client regarding the petition. Justice Jawad S Khwaja remarked that absence of instruction does not mean the bench would allow withdrawal of the application. The case hearing is underway. Pervez Musharraf returned to Pakistan on March 24 following four years of self-imposed exile.He is running in the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11. He is already facing many court cases for his alleged involvement in the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the 2006 killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a senior Baloch politician.
With elections around the corner, a tussle
has developed between the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of
Pakistan. One insists that the commission make voting arrangements for
overseas Pakistanis – the other is adamant that the logistics of
managing this task within the next month is next to impossible.
Pakistanis
return to the ballot box in a few weeks. While pollsters are busy
trying to forecast the next election’s outcome, I am struggling with
back-casting the last election. With a military dictator as the
President, and the country’s most populist politician assassinated while
campaigning, the elections in 2008 were impossible to call for even for
the very best of the forecasters.
