The Pakistani Spectator

A Candid Blog


Author Archive

What is Democracy?

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Feb 1st, 2012 • Category: Lead Story, Politics, Worth A Second Look

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself.  That, in essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is disgusting to watch day-in and day-out the raging [...]



The Men Who Fell From the Sky

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Jan 27th, 2012 • Category: Politics

“The mad-man committed suicide, the hero offered himself up to martyrdom in the name of a cause, but both would die, and the embittered would spend many nights and days remarking on the absurdity and glory of both.”
From a Novelist of an International Bestseller
In retrospect, it is ironic as well as interesting to note that [...]



Democracy By Rhetoric Only!

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Jan 19th, 2012 • Category: Politics

“They (become) unable to leave their world, where they (have) spent enormous reserves of energy constructing high walls in order to make reality what they (want) it to be… In order to avoid external attack, they (have) also deliberately limited internal growth.”
Paulo Coelho, 1998 novel
In today’s Pakistan of early 2012, the ruling party PPP, its [...]



The Anatomy of Self-Reliance

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Jan 13th, 2012 • Category: Politics

“Nothing in this world happens by chance.”
-Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

The word “anatomy” is used here to mean a structure and a framework for a political management process and a political organization that can turn around an impoverished and externally dependent nation into an independent and self-reliant country. It is not a simple task [...]



Has the People’s Revolution Arrived?

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Jan 2nd, 2012 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

“There is a difference between those who can see and those who cannot.”
–An Islamic tenant from the Qur’an.

Today’s most important question is: Has the people’s revolution arrived in Pakistan?
Indeed, Imran Khan’s promised “tsunami” hit the Karachi shores on Quaid-e-Azam’s birthday at Quaid’s ‘mizaar’ – a symbolic re-birth of Quaid’s dream.  There [...]



Why the PPP & PML-N are Politically Outdated

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Oct 27th, 2011 • Category: Politics

A profound proverb in the Punjabi language on understanding human behavior is as follows: Kah kawah dey the prah prahwah dey.The meaning is quite simple: Folks of the same breed always stick together. But an in depth comprehension of this saying provides a wealth of wisdom on how people behave, why [...]



Stop Slaughtering the Lambs

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Oct 21st, 2011 • Category: Politics

“What is happening in Pakistan is a well-drawn plan between the west and the
leaders of Pakistan. Soon there would be turmoil in Pakistan and civil war-like
conditions would be created. Baluchistan would eventually be given to Afghanistan.

USA’s agenda of punishing the Muslims after 9/11, would be incomplete without breaking [...]



Telling Lies in Democratic Pakistan!

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Oct 13th, 2011 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

Ey parto khurshid jehan-tab idher bi
Siye ki tarh, hum pay ajab waqt para hai
O World-illuminating Sun! Cast your splendor here (on us, in this direction) too;
A strange time, like a shadow, has come upon us
Ghalib – Translation,  Aijaz Ahmad
The Urdu metaphor “is hammam meh sab nange hain” (everyone here is involved in the shameless charade [...]



The Solution!!

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Oct 9th, 2011 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

“Hathi ke dant  khane ke aur dikhane ke aur (deception is always concealed).”
An Urdu proverb
“We are fighting an unwinnable war… and we have tasked our military with solving an insoluble problem: how to win over a people whose land we’ve occupied. Our military leaders, in response, are forced to invent plausible reasons explaining why they’ve [...]



We Must Stop America Now!

By Dr. Haider Mehdi • Sep 29th, 2011 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

On November 18, 1999, immediately after General Pervez Musharraf took over the helm of affairs in Pakistan, this columnist (Dr. Haider Mehdi) wrote a personal letter to him. The following is an extract from that letter. Consider the enormous accuracy of the predication of the political-military fallouts made over a decade ago.
“…Americans have been conducting [...]