150 prominent citizens demand withdrawal of HEC (Amend) Ordinance
Top Story
April 26, 2021
ISLAMABAD: Some 150 prominent academics and civil society leaders have written a strongly-worded open letter to Prime Minister Imran Khan demanding the withdrawal of the HEC Amendment ordinance and restoration of the HEC as an independent national regulatory body.
The government had promulgated the HEC (Amendment) Ordinance 2021 on 25 March 2021, through which the tenure of the chairperson was reduced from 4 to 2 years, the current Chair Dr. Tariq Banuri was removed from his position, and HEC was placed under the Federal Ministry of Education.
The signatories of the letter include senior educationists, vice chancellors, journalists, former ambassadors, generals and other government officials, parliamentarians, and human rights activists. They include such names as LUMS founder Syed Babar Ali, human rights activists Ms Hina Jilani, Harris Khalique and Karamat Ali, Council of Islamic Ideol
150 civil society leaders object to govt s move on HEC - Pakistan
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The Widow of Windsor
Fakir Syed Aijazuddin
In addition to the twenty-five or so regnal titles affixed already to the name of Queen Elizabeth II, another doleful one can now be attached:
The Widow of Windsor. This was last applied to Queen Victoria (the Queen’s great–great-grandmother), after the death of her husband Prince Albert in December 1861.
Like Prince Philip, Albert too had passed away at Windsor Castle. Unlike Philip, though, Albert as husband of a Queen regnant sought the title of Prince Consort. Prince Albert (a German princeling) desired a degree of equivalence with his younger wife. In Prince Philip’s case, though, he had married Elizabeth before she became Queen and, at her coronation in 1953, he took an oath to be her ‘liegeman of life and limb’. That oath went beyond alliteration. As her companion, Philip saw ‘his job first, second, and last was never to let her down.’
Another generation on mute
April 23, 2021
On March 6, the Islamia University in Bahawalpur expelled 8 students for organising a peaceful protest, a right afforded to them under Article 16 of the Constitution. Since 1984, when General Zia-ul-Haq banned student unions, with the exception of brief stints of freedom under Benazir Bhutto’s tenure, Pakistan’s university students have largely remained a muffled, if not entirely silenced, constituency.
The State’s menu of heavy-handedness is not limited to banning unions. In January, 5 students of the Progressive Students Collective, were arrested without warrants for demanding online exams during the pandemic. Medical students belonging to the Tribal Areas and Balochistan are on hunger strike, after the Pakistan Medical Commission slashed the number of reserved seats for students from these areas overnight from 265 to 29. This is the state of our union.
The writer is an author.
IN addition to the 25 or so regnal titles affixed already to the name of Queen Elizabeth II, another doleful one can now be attached: ‘The Widow of Windsor’. This was last applied to Queen Victoria (the Queen’s great-great-grandmother), after the death of her husband Prince Albert in December 1861.
Like Prince Philip, Albert passed away at Windsor Castle. Unlike Philip, though, Albert as husband of a Queen regnant craved the title of Prince Consort. Prince Albert (a minor German princeling) desired a degree of equivalence with his younger wife, the Queen. In Prince Philip’s case, though, he had married Elizabeth before she became Queen and, at her coronation in 1953, he took an oath to be her “liegeman of life and limb”. That oath went beyond alliteration. As her companion, Philip saw “his job first, second, and last was never to let her down”.
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