After the deportation of former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf faced a new standoff with the nation's Supreme Court yesterday after the opposition launched a legal challenge.
Embattled US ally Musharraf had Sharif, the man he toppled in a 1999 coup, arrested on corruption charges and sent to Saudi Arabia just hours after he flew home from seven years in exile on Monday.
The move came despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled last month that Sharif had an "inalienable right" to come home and that the government should not block his return in any way.
Pakistani lawyers boycotted court proceedings in most cities over the handling of Sharif's deportation, while the country's increasingly vocal press warned that the expulsion would deepen the country's chaos.
Musharraf has been embroiled in crisis since his failed attempt to sack the chief justice of the Supreme Court earlier this year, a step that sparked mass protests in this nation of 160 million people.
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party filed a petition with the Supreme Court yesterday asking it to order the government to allow the two-time prime minister to come back to the country immediately.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bus stop in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 11 people, including police officers, and wounding 15 others, police said.
The blast happened in Dera Ismail Khan, a remote town close to Pakistan's troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where there have been several attacks blamed on pro-Taliban militants.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS