The first sentence of the AP report on the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is rather telling:

When former parliament speaker Yousaf Raza Gilani was first tipped as a contender to be prime minister, he quipped that taking high office in Pakistan’s cutthroat politics could fast-track him back to prison. (link)

Wait — back to prison?

In fact, Gilani spent five years in prison on corruption charges that may have been political in nature, and was only released in October 2006. Musharraf can’t be thrilled that a person his government once accused of defrauding the government of millions ($30 million, to be exact) is now running an overwhelmingly dominant coalition government against him. (As a side note, I find it interesting that Gilani was actually a member of Zia Ul-Haq’s government in the early 1980s, before switching over to the PPP. I haven’t been able to ascertain anywhere why he switched — what Zia stood for ideologically is quite the opposite of the PPP. Does anyone have the scoop on this aspect of Gilani’s past?)

The media is reporting that the real power will still lie with Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, and president of the PPP. Zardari, for his part, really was corrupt (charges against him too have been dropped recently), so if one believes that Gilani’s status as PM will mean a lesser likelihood of a return to the bad old days of the Benazir Bhutto regimes, one might be relieved at this turn of events.

Then again, there is also a suggestion that Zardari will run for Parliament in a by-election this summer, which would qualify him to be Prime Minister. If I were Zardari I might skip that step, and wait until Musharraf steps down as President. One would expect him to aim for the office where the real power lies in Pakistan — the Presidency.

Finally, the big question on everyone’s minds has to be the status of the former Supreme Court justices, who were detained last fall and also recently released (but not reinstated). If the new Parliament decides to go the route of confronting Musharraf directly, will not the poop hit the punkah [pukka in Punjabi]? Will Musharraf step down without a fight? Continue reading →

I disagree with Manish’s assessment; I actually thought Obama gave a very good speech on Tuesday. I do see the limitations: the tone and delivery was much more restrained than Obama’s earlier big speeches, so it’s not likely to bring him a new wave of supporters where he could use them most (i.e., here in Pennsylvania). But a soft and dispassionate tone was probably essential, as his primary goal was to distance himself from the unrestrained, over-the-top anger of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In contrast to Manish, I do feel that Obama did address the segments of American society who are not black or white, when he mentioned immigrants:

That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.

Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. (link)

The rhetorical move here is intriguing — he starts by acknowledging the resentment of working- and middle-class whites (which is itself significant; it’s perhaps the first time I’ve seen a Democrat say anything like this). But in the final paragraph, he moves to include immigrants, and in some sense suggests that the resentment of whites might also overlap with the resentment of immigrants about things like affirmative action. (Certainly, I know many South Asians — and Asians, more generally — who are deeply opposed to Affirmative Action, so this rings true.)

Continue reading →