Pakistan jails 108 members of Imran Khan's party
"For the first time in Pakistan's judicial history, such a sad and shameful incident occurred that the leaders of the opposition in both houses [of parliament] were punished solely on the basis that they were loyal allies of Imran Khan's political narrative, public representation, and constitutional struggle," PTI wrote on X.The party says it will challenge the verdict.Khan's media advisor Zulfi Bukhari said the latest sentences signified "a black day for democracy", AFP news agency reported."Convicting opposition leaders one after another is not a good omen for any democratic system, and it will seriously damage our already fragile democracy," Bukhari said.Khan, formerly an international cricket star, has been imprisoned since August 2023, but remains hugely popular in Pakistan.He still faces more than 150 charges ranging from terrorism to leaking state secrets, all of which he and his supporters have decried as politically motivated.Violent clashes broke out between security forces and Khan's supporters following his arrest on 9 May 2023, which saw thousands of his supporters storm government buildings and military installations. At least ten people were killed in the protests, which prompted authorities to crack down on Khan's party.During National Assembly elections in 2024, PTI members running as independent candidates won the most seats, but were blocked from forming government.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Opposition leaders say ‘democracy in El Salvador has died' after scrapping of presidential term limits
Activists and opposition leaders have warned that El Salvador is following Venezuela's path towards dictatorship after the Central American country's congress scrapped presidential term limits, paving the way for Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election. 'Democracy in El Salvador has died,' opposition congresswoman Marcela Villatoro declared late on Thursday as the legislature – in which Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party controls 90% of seats – approved the highly controversial constitutional reform, by 57 votes to three. Villatoro accused fellow lawmakers of dealing a 'death blow' to the country's democratic system during the late-night session. 'Today some people applaud this. Tomorrow they will regret it,' she said, comparing El Salvador's slide into authoritarianism to the collapse of Venezuela's democracy. 'When all the orders come from one person and everything revolves around one single person, democracy no longer exists. And when you lose democracy … it takes years to get it back,' Villatoro warned. Loyalists of Bukele – a social media-savvy 44-year-old who once called himself 'the world's coolest dictator' – celebrated the reforms, which will also see presidential terms extended from five years to six and bring the presidential election scheduled for 2029 forward to 2027. The election's second round will also be scrapped. Suecy Callejas, one of 54 Nuevas Ideas lawmakers in El Salvador's 60-seat assembly, tweeted: 'The constitution isn't untouchable. What should be untouchable is the WILL of the people. And today, more than ever, the people are at the centre of our decisions.' Bukele, who is one of Donald Trump's top Latin American allies, was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected last year thanks to widespread public support for his hardline crackdown on gangs, which has seen homicide rates plummet. That three-year clampdown has seen 2% of El Salvador's adult population jailed and due process suspended, and made Bukele a role model for rightwing Latin American politicians grappling with high crime rates, and for members of Trump's Maga movement. But Bukele's concentration of power has horrified opposition politicians and activists. Juanita Goebertus, Human Rights Watch's Americas director, compared El Salvador's scrapping of presidential term limits to Venezuela's 2009 referendum, which approved the same measure under its then populist president Hugo Chávez. Sixteen years later, Chávez's heir, Nicolás Maduro, remains in power, having claimed a third term last year despite apparently losing the July 2024 election. '[El Salvador is] traveling down the same path as Venezuela,' Goebertus warned. 'It starts with a leader who uses his popularity to concentrate power, and it ends in dictatorship.' In a rare interview with the foreign media last year, Bukele said he would not seek re-election, citing the constitutional 'prohibition' which was this week removed. 'Also, we have an agreement with my wife that this is my last term,' Bukele told Time magazine, musing that he might write a book after leaving power. Few believe Bukele will honour that pledge. 'Welcome to the club of the authoritarian dictatorships of Maduro, [Daniel] Ortega, [Miguel] Díaz Canel,' tweeted Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a prominent Nicaraguan journalist forced into exile because of his country's democratic decline.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Highly strung MSNBC anchor soapboxes about why he quit plum job at Washington Post
Longtime Washington Post opinion writer and current MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart has detailed his decision to leave the paper after nearly two decades. Subbing in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's 'The Last Word' Thursday, Capehart said it was the editorial board's increasingly conservative tone as of late that led him to make the call. 'American democracy is in peril', he claimed, after taking a buyout from the Jeff Bezos-run paper nearly two weeks ago. He will still have his own show on MSNBC to go back to - 'The Weekend' - where Eugene Daniels, a self-professed ' Kamala Harris expert', and the Post's current congressional correspondent, Jackie Alemany, are his co-hosts. Also a frequent PBS NewsHour contributor, Capehart told O'Donnell's usual audience that it was Bezos's increasingly hand-on approach to the newspaper that set him off - as well as Americans' 'optimism' under Donald Trump. He explained: 'In February, the owner of the Post decided that the section would focus on the twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets.' 'We in the section received an email from our new editor, which reiterated that and added, it's also important that we communicate with optimism about this country in particular and the future in general. 'How can we communicate with optimism about the future in general when we're living in the here and now, where American democracy is in peril?' The spiel saw him take aim at Post owner Jeff Bezos, who announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' back in February Capehart, 58, had been referring to Bezos' recent interference with the Post's editorial process since Trump's reelection, which was followed by a wave of exits from the Post's largely progressive opinion section. Back in February, Bezos announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' - sparking the negative response. Months before, Bezos ruled to not endorse a presidential candidate shortly before the election, after years of propping up Democrats. Around that time, the Post's then-new publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, a former editor of the British Daily Telegraph, flat out told Post journalists: 'People are not reading your stuff'. A round of layoffs ensued, in late February, after which The Post announced it was implementing a buyout program targeting veteran staffers. Capehart, on-air, said he accepting the offer because the editorial board he belonged to since 2017 was now being expected to "constantly extoll the beauty of a home's doors, crown moldings, and windows when the rest of the house is engulfed in flames and its foundation is flooding." He further claimed 'patriotism is incomplete' if the ideology does not allow for a "mirror to be held up" to the US and its citizens. 'The administration is playing chicken with federal courts,' Capehart said. 'The administration is using masked federal agents to snatch people off the streets and send them to hellish prisons abroad. 'The administration deployed the military on the streets of an American city,' he continued. 'The president is using his office to enrich himself and his family. 'The president has turned Congress, a co-equal branch of government, into the staff wing of the executive branch,' he claimed. 'And we're supposed to ignore it, leave it to others to wrestle with on their news pages and websites? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. 'The Constitution gives us the inherent, unapologetically patriotic right to rail against such affronts to democracy and the rule of law, and the First Amendment demands it,' he added. Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary. He specifically cited the January 6 Capitol siege as a turning point in where MAGA supporters of former president Donald Trump violently invaded the Capitol Building in Washington DC in an effort to disrupt a joint session of Congress that was busy counting electoral votes in Joe Biden's favor. Back in 2021, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the same MSNBC host announced that he believed that Trump supporters are more of a threat than the Taliban or ISIS. Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary in 2024. He currently hosts The Weekend with Eugene Daniels and former fellow Post staffer Jackie Alemany At the time, Capehart called out 'MAGA and the domestic threat', which he said was far 'more worrisome than any foreign threat', during an appearance at PBS NewsHour, where he is a regular presence. The Pulitzer Prize winner has continued the decry Trump for straying from the country's founding principles since. Such a stance was effectively barred with Bezos's edict back in February. The move saw the Post's longtime editorial page editor, David Shipley, resign immediately, before dozens of others followed suit. The terms of Capehart's buyout, meanwhile, remain unknown.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Kamala Harris says she doesn't plan to return to ‘broken' system of US politics
Kamala Harris has said that she currently has no desire to re-enter 'the system' of American politics because it is 'broken'. On Thursday night the Democratic party's defeated presidential nominee, who replaced Joe Biden late in the 2024 campaign after he dropped his re-election bid, gave her first interview since losing the election to Donald Trump, talking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. After she announced she will not run for the governorship of California just a day earlier, Harris told the TV show that it was about something more 'basic' than whether she wanted to run for something else instead – with the subtext being whether she will attempt a White House run again in 2028. 'Recently I made the decision that I just – for now – I don't want to go back in the system. I think it's broken,' she said, provoking a collective groan from the studio audience. Colbert later returned to the subject, saying that her remark was harrowing. 'Well, but it's also evident, isn't it?' she said. Describing herself as a 'devout public servant', the former vice-president added: 'I always believed, that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that they're not as strong as they need to be. And for now I don't want to go back into that system.' Harris's choice of The Late Show as the channel for her first post-election defeat interview was pointed. The most-watched talkshow was cancelled last month by the CBS network, which pleaded financial stress, though the decision was widely denounced as being politically motivated. The cancellation was announced after Colbert had criticized CBS and its parent company Paramount Global for reaching a $16m settlement with Trump. The president had sued CBS News over an interview on the 60 Minutes show with Harris at the height of last year's presidential campaign, which Trump claimed had been manipulated in her favour. None of this febrile back story was mentioned by either Colbert or Harris on Thursday. But she did delivery a passionate lament for the numbers of people who she said had 'capitulated' to the aggressive second Trump administration. When Colbert invited her to say 'I told you so' after she had predicted many of Trump's most contentious moves – including Medicaid cuts, ignoring court orders, and 'massive tax cuts to the rich' – she replied: 'But Stephen, what I did not predict was the capitulation.' She went on: 'Perhaps it's naive of me … there should be many who consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy who just capitulated, and I didn't see that coming.' The timing of the interview was also poignant, as she was considered to be the automatic frontrunner if she had decided to run to become the next governor of California. Her wider remarks on 'the system' help explain that decision, though they still notably left room for another possible presidential run. In the meantime, Harris has a book to sell, 107 Days, which she name-checked copiously on the Late Show in advance of its publication next month. The book, as its title suggests, relates the story of the shortest presidential run of all time. She said it would give a 'behind-the-scenes sharing' of those intense days. Whether it is to sell the book or to lay the foundations for another presidential bid remains a moot point, but Harris said she wanted to use the next period to 'travel the country and listen to people. I don't want it to be transactional, where I'm asking for their vote.' Harris admitted that it had taken her months following her defeat before she had the strength to tune into the news again. 'You know, I'm just not into self-mutilation,' she said. Instead there had been 'lots of cooking shows', her top choice being The Kitchen.
