Five Rupees

There has been considerable concern about the level of engineering behind these elections. Which is of course fair enough. Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that the outcome of this election is still technically up in the air. This is not a Stalin or Saddam style rigging project. As much as GHQ has tilted the playing field in the last few months, Pakistani voters still exercise agency . The generals have had their say, but on July 25, the people get a go. While it is reasonable to surmise that the establishment's efforts have made the entire thing foreordained, I think there's still some grey area, if only because we know (hope?) that full-blown ballot stuffing and miscounting of votes is not on the cards. With that in mind, I've tried to think through a few educated guesses of what the world may look like. Before I lay those out, some major caveats: 1. The data is limited, both in how much there is and how good it is 2. Even if the data were great, no one

So Hameed Haroon gave an interview to BBC and this was a Very Big Deal, mainly because all allegations against the military were shown to be spurious. Everyone at Daw(N), you have been XPOZED. Pack it up, boys. Here's the thing: if you've gotten this far in life -- all the way to July 17, 2018 -- without accepting that the military establishment has censored the media in the distant and recent past and continues to do so in the very, very present, then no interview, no one-line zinger, no "aha, gotcha" moment, no pile of evidence is going to convince you. So can we please stop pretending otherwise? It's not like these GHQ fanboys were sitting at home with monocles and lawyer wigs and thinking "Yes sir, I will carefully and impartially consider the evidence forthcoming in this Hameed Haroon interview and then make a call about the military's influence in politics." Please. Don't indulge the fantasy and don't fall for their concern tro