Channel News Asia
중도 성향
사회
"YAHYA" · 총 8건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 81,473건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.2(균형)입니다. 긍정 3,988건(4.9%)·중립 75,558건(92.7%)·부정 1,927건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.7(중도 균형)입니다.
IN November 1970, the Bhola cyclone killed up to half a million people in East Pakistan. Yahya Khan’s government introduced a 10 per cent surcharge to fund emergency relief. Bangladesh became independent 13 months later. The affected territory was gone. The levy remained. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government absorbed the revenue into general federal accounts in 1972. No accounting was published. In 1985, Gen Zia introduced the Iqra surcharge, framed as an education fund. The revenue balanced federal operating accounts. No alternative education instrument replaced it when it was abolished under the IMF’s insistence. The template was set. Fifty years later, Pakistan has not deviated from this template. What began as a cyclone surcharge is now a Rs1.55 trillion instrument misclassified as non-tax revenue. The architecture is identical but the scale has changed. Pakistan has pursued this through two parallel tracks. The first collected resources in the name of disaster relief, later rebranded as climate resilience as floods became more frequent. The second imposed non-tax revenue through petroleum pricing. The petroleum development levy (PDL), a general development surcharge dating to 1961, was structurally insulated in 2010 to bypass provincial NFC sharing. It grew steadily, crossing Rs100 billion annually by the mid-2010s and exceeding Rs200bn by FY2018-19. Although never formally framed as a climate instrument, it has acquired a distinct environmental gloss, culminating in the climate support levy of 2026. The flooding track: The 1973 floods wiped out three million houses and erased a year of economic growth. Bhutto created the Federal Flood Commission. Three consecutive 10-year national flood protection plans followed, running from 1978 to 2008 across four governments, each funded through the PSDP with no ring-fencing. Pakistan suffered catastrophic floods throughout. Three decades of federal plans, without a rupee ring-fenced. No relief fund has ever been legally ring-fenced. Since 1992, when Nawaz Sharif’s government first activated the prime minister’s relief fund model, Pakistan has deployed the same instrument at least five times across floods and earthquakes. The design is deliberate: by classifying flood revenue as voluntary donations rather than taxation, governments simultaneously escape parliamentary scrutiny, judicial challenge and NFC distribution requirements. Benazir Bhutto deployed the identical model after the 1994 floods. So did every government after 2010. The 2010 floods affected 20m people and caused $43bn in damages. The government announced a flood relief surcharge projecting Rs40bn, collected it, and absorbed it into the federal consolidated fund while simultaneously negotiating IMF targets. After the 2022 floods, the government quietly renamed its existing super tax: Section 4B, whose stated purpose was rehabilitation of temporarily displaced persons, became Section 4C, a super tax on high-earning persons. The humanitarian justification was dropped without explanation. The revenue mechanism stayed the same. Three findings hold across every instrument. No relief fund has ever been legally ring-fenced: every prime minister, president and chief minister relief fund is credited to the account of the federation, making it general government money. International pledges substitute for domestic accountability rather than supplementing it. And every fund since 2005 has carried a public commitment to publish an independent audit. None has been published. Justice Saqib Nisar’s 2018 dam fund collected Rs11.5bn from the public in the name of water security, earned Rs2.2bn in mark-up over six years, and was quietly transferred to the public account of the federation in 2024 without a single rupee spent on the stated objective. If money raised under the highest judicial authority in the country can still end up in the general budget, no argument remains that any executive fund can be trusted to do otherwise. The petroleum track: Climate change has been weaponised as a justification to tax citizens. Gen Musharraf used clean-fuel rhetoric to justify development surcharges during the CNG transition without a single rupee being traced to a cleaner fuel outcome. In 2009, the Supreme Court under chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ruled that revenue collected without a verifiable service to the payer is a tax, not a surcharge, and that imposing it by executive notification violates Article 77. The response was the Petroleum Products (Development Levy) Amendment Act, 2009, that satisfied the court’s procedural requirement while eliminating any ring-fencing obligation. The consequences are calculable. At Rs1.55tr, the PDL represents 10-11 per cent of total federal revenue. Under the seventh NFC Award, provinces are entitled to 57.5pc of all taxes. If correctly classified, Punjab would receive Rs461bn annually, Sindh Rs219bn, KP Rs13bn and Balochistan Rs81bn. They receive zero. It is a tax called a levy because of the NFC Award. The classification is deliberate. PML-N elevated PDL margins in 2016 on the justification that the premium would fund cleaner fuel production. The revenue went instead to IPP capacity charge payments and circular debt service, which reached Rs1.14tr by FY2017-18. The revenue collected in the name of cleaner fuel financed the liabilities of a fossil-fuel-dependent power grid. The PTI then scaled the PDL to Rs424bn, the highest in Pakistan’s history, while branding it a carbon instrument aligned with its Ten Billion Tree Tsunami project. In March 2022, it froze the levy at zero for political reasons. The IMF suspended a $1bn tranche within weeks. A climate-labelled levy had become a macroeconomic emergency. Across 23 programmes since 1958, the IMF has required Pakistan to enhance the PDL without requiring it to distribute the revenue constitutionally. The way forward: Can the PDL be ring-fenced or audited? Ring-fencing 15pc of PDL collections into a sovereign climate fund (SCF) would deploy Rs232bn annually, shared with provinces under the NFC Award and structured as a statutory trust. Following global benchmarks, it can leverage private investment at a ratio of one to four, unlocking approximately Rs900bn in total climate finance conditioned on climate resilience outcomes aligned with Pakistan’s commitments. The IMF objection is predictable but answerable. The SCF does not reduce total PDL collections. Tabled in the next programme negotiation as a structural benchmark rather than a provincial concession, the IMF’s incentives align with the reform rather than against it. The question is not whether Pakistan can create such a fund. It is whether any government is willing to surrender a revenue stream that it has prized too much to ring-fence. The writer is a climate expert. Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2026
[Foroyaa] The National Assembly, through the Office of the Clerk, has submitted a report on the inquiry into the assets of former Gambian President Yahya AJJ Jammeh, to the government. This development was disclosed in a press release from the office of the Clerk of the National Assembly last Friday, 29th May, 2026.
Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi chairs session of Superme Judicial Council. — Supreme Court/fileOfficial letter conveys dismissal after full consideration of material.Complaint sought CEC removal over alleged constitutional breaches.PTI alleged election commission's bias,...
• Legal fraternity says ‘facilitative measure’ has turned into ‘gatekeeping mechanism’ • Notes technical glitches make access to justice needlessly complicated LAHORE: The enforcement of mandatory biometric verification for litigants filing cases has triggered widespread concern across Punjab’s legal community, with lawyers describing the requirement as an unreasonable obstacle to access to justice. Notified in January and in force since March of this year, the move was envisioned as a facilitative, technical measure. According to a statement attributed to LHC Chief Justice Aalia Neelum, the system would “help curb fake litigation, prevent impersonation and eliminate the use of bogus witnesses and sureties”. It was described as a significant step towards modernising the judiciary and safeguarding the integrity of judicial proceedings, which would enhance the credibility of the judiciary and provide a secure and efficient mechanism for conducting proceedings. But after a few months of seeing it in action, lawyers argue that the measure has effectively become a gatekeeping mechanism, disproportionately affecting poor and vulnerable litigants’ ability to access justice. Some see the initiative as evolving into a revenue-generation exercise rather than meaningful judicial reform, as the process has imposed an additional financial burden through a “pay-to-access” model, where the officially prescribed fee of Rs200 often rises to Rs300 in practice. According to members of the legal fraternity Dawn spoke to, serious infrastructure deficiencies and recurring technical glitches are disrupting the timely filing of urgent matters. The Lahore Bar Association (LBA) has already issued an ultimatum to the Lahore High Court (LHC), urging it to rationalise the biometric verification requirement. Representatives of the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) and the LBA complain that the LHC introduced the new regime without consulting them. They told Dawn that the decision was made after consultations only with the Pakistan Bar Council and the Punjab Bar Council, the country’s and province’s regulatory bar bodies, respectively. LHCBA President Babar Murtaza said the biometric system had already been implemented when his cabinet assumed office in March this year. However, he said the bar leadership later met the LHC administration committee and conveyed the legal fraternity’s concerns regarding the system. According to him, the bar was informed that the system had been introduced pursuant to a decision of the National Judicial (Policy-making) Committee (NJPMC). Mr Murtaza maintained that justice should be swift and inexpensive. He pointed out that the validity period of biometric verification was initially restricted to 24 hours but was later extended to 72 hours following the bar’s intervention. He demanded that the validity period be extended to at least one week. He said the bar supported biometric verification for filing main petitions but opposed its requirement for subsequent civil miscellaneous applications. Criminal cases, witness verification Both Mr Murtaza and LBA President Irfan Hayat Bajwa termed biometric verification “unnecessary” in criminal matters, including pre-arrest and post-arrest bail petitions. They argued that once biometric verification was conducted in pre-arrest bail cases, a suspect could already be easily traced by law enforcement agencies, rendering the purpose of seeking protective bail redundant. In post-arrest bail cases, they added, the accused was already in judicial custody and should not be subjected to additional verification requirements. The lawyers also criticised the requirement for witnesses to undergo biometric verification before recording statements. They questioned who would refund the fee if testimony could not be recorded on the scheduled date because of adjournments or other reasons. A litigant told Dawn that he failed to file a stay application in time because of a technical fault in Nadra’s biometric system. He said access to justice had become unnecessarily complicated due to avoidable technicalities. Revenue at litigants’ cost The fee collected through the biometric verification process also includes a share for the relevant tehsil or district bar association. However, Mr Bajwa said lawyers did not want revenue at the expense of poor litigants. “We are against any such revenue-generation model,” he said. He added that the LBA was still awaiting a response from the LHC regarding recommendations submitted nearly two weeks ago. Former High Court Bar Association-Multan president Syed Riazul Hassan Gilani has also lodged a formal complaint with Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi against the biometric system implemented in Punjab. He alleged that of the mandatory Rs200 fee, Rs20 earmarked as “financial assistance” for employees of the high court and district judiciary amounted to “legalised extortion”. Mr Gilani argued that compelling litigants to pay judicial staff in addition to their government salaries risked normalising monetary demands under the guise of welfare. He pointed out that the Islamabad High Court charges only Rs30 for biometric verification and e-affidavits through Nadra, without imposing any additional welfare levy. The senior lawyer also questioned the jurisdiction of the NJPMC and provincial chief justices to impose mandatory fees or levies on litigants. He maintained that making access to justice contingent upon a “pay-to-access” model violated fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution and disproportionately burdened vulnerable, illiterate and marginalised segments of society. Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2026
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Israel said on Wednesday it had killed the new head of Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, in a strike the day before, after killing his predecessor in a similar attack this month. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz claimed the “commander of the armed wing of the Hamas terrorist organisation in Gaza was eliminated yesterday”. Hamas has not yet commented. “In the Prime Minister’s name and in my own, congratulations to the IDF and the Shin Bet on the brilliant execution,” Katz claimed in a post on X. “We committed ourselves to eliminating everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do: they are all marked for death, wherever they may be.” After announcing the strike on Tuesday, Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a joint statement that Odeh had “served as head of Hamas intelligence during the October 7 massacre and was appointed approximately one week ago as successor to Ezzedine al-Haddad”. Haddad was killed by an Israeli strike on May 15. “Odeh was responsible for the murder, abduction and injury of numerous Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers,” Katz and Netanyahu said. In the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, retaliation against Israel, Netanyahu pledged to target and eliminate the Hamas leaders behind it. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has killed at least 72,803 people, according to the territory’s health ministry. Israel has previously killed Hamas’s former political chief Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, its Gaza chief who was widely regarded as the mastermind of the October 7 attack. It also killed Mohammed Deif, the longtime commander of Hamas’s armed wing, known as the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as Mohammed Sinwar, who succeeded his brother Yahya Sinwar, as Gaza chief. Israeli strikes have also targeted Hamas operatives in Lebanon and senior Iran-backed Hezbollah commanders allied with the group, including former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ruled that family courts should not convert a wife’s suit for dissolution of marriage on grounds of cruelty into a decree of khula without her explicit and informed consent, particularly when valuable financial rights such as unpaid dower are involved. Authored by Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan on behalf of a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, the observations came while hearing an appeal filed by Selab Akhtar against a decision of the Peshawar High Court that upheld concurrent findings of lower courts dissolving her marriage through khula and denying her full dower and past maintenance. “We hold,” the judgement said, “that khula should not ordinarily be granted without the wife’s consent or clear election where she had sued on grounds of cruelty and valuable financial rights were implicated.” However, where cruelty is not proved and marital life has manifestly collapsed, courts must give the wife an opportunity to choose whether to pursue dismissal of her claim or accept dissolution through khula upon lawful terms, rather than compelling restoration of a relationship that has effectively ceased to exist, Justice Hassan observed. Cautions against setting unrealistic standards for proof of cruelty, especially when unpaid dower is involved “The proper judicial course is neither to impose khula without consent nor to mechanically dismiss the matter while ignoring matrimonial breakdown,” the judgement emphasised. The dispute arose from a matrimonial case between Selab Akhtar and Quwat Khan. The couple married on Sept 19, 2016, in Swat’s Matta tehsil, where 30 tolas of gold were fixed as haq mehr. According to the petitioner, after marriage she was subjected by her husband and his family members to harsh treatment, coercion, humiliation, cruelty and mental torture, making continuation of matrimonial life impossible. She alleged she was expelled from the house without justification and denied maintenance. Consequently, she filed a suit before Judge Family Court-II, Swat, seeking dissolution of marriage on grounds of cruelty, recovery of 30 tolas of gold as dower or its market value, and maintenance allowance from the date of neglect until disposal of the suit. The principal question before the SC was whether a family court could dissolve a marriage through khula where the wife had sought dissolution on grounds of cruelty but failed to substantiate the allegations through legally admissible evidence, despite expressing unwillingness to continue the marriage. The court also examined whether such relief could be granted when no specific prayer for khula had been made and no express consent had been recorded. Justice Hassan observed that the controversy was not merely whether the marriage should stand dissolved, but the legal consequences flowing from a failed cruelty claim where the wife nevertheless refused to continue the marital bond. The verdict explained that where cruelty or statutory fault on the part of the husband is established, the wife ordinarily can’t be compelled to forfeit her dower merely to secure freedom from an oppressive union. In contrast, dissolution through khula ordinarily involves relinquishment or restitution of financial consideration, including dower to the extent recognised by law. The SC observed when a wife approaches the court alleging cruelty, she is effectively seeking a declaration that the husband’s conduct disentitles him from retaining reciprocal marital rights, including unpaid dower. “To convert such claim, without due regard to the nature of relief pursued, into one of khula may prejudice valuable financial rights,” it emphasised. At the same time, the court observed that judges cannot ignore situations where a marriage has irretrievably broken down in fact. If cohabitation has ceased, bitterness has deepened and the wife unequivocally refuses to resume marital life, the law cannot compel parties to continue a “dead relationship” merely in name. The judgement also criticised the approach adopted by subordinate courts in assessing allegations of cruelty. It noted that courts often insist on standards of proof ill-suited to the realities of matrimonial life, such as requiring independent eyewitnesses to domestic abuse, FIRs for confinement or medical certificates in every case of physical assault. “Such an approach overlooks that marriage is essentially a private relationship conducted within the walls of a home,” the judgement said, adding that women may seldom be in a position to procure independent witnesses to acts of humiliation, coercion, emotional torment or mental agony occurring within the domestic sphere. According to the verdict, matrimonial disputes should be decided on the civil standard of “preponderance of probabilities”, taking into account conduct of the parties, surrounding circumstances, consistency of versions and overall probabilities emerging from the record, rather than the strict proof required in criminal prosecutions. Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2026