THE Tokyo Olympic Games, set to commence on July 23, have drawn major controversy since last year. Uncertainty still surrounds the Games as the host country Japan, like the rest of the world, remains in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. Originally scheduled to be held in 2020, the Games were postponed as infections surged globally. This year, Japanese officials, Olympics organisers and the International Olympic Committee have pledged to hold a ‘safe and secure’ event. Though strict virus-prevention measures are being put in place for the Games, which have already seen foreign spectators banned from Japanese shores while a decision on domestic audiences is awaited, tens of thousands of athletes and officials, mediapersons and others will be descending on the Japanese capital thus exacerbating the risk of infection. Such concerns have not been ignored. Recent polls conducted by newspapers and environmental and social welfare organisations show that as many as 70pc of the public in Japan is angry and want the Games either scrapped or postponed again.
To make matters worse, the head of a doctors’ union in Japan warned last week that holding the Games in Tokyo this summer could lead to the emergence of an ‘Olympic’ coronavirus variant that would be hard to contain. A number of countries including the US have advised their citizens against travelling to Japan but Olympic organisers say this will not affect the event. The bigger issue for them are the billions of dollars at stake as the Games involve major international sponsors who cannot afford the risk of the Olympics being delayed again. For thousands of athletes, too, who have been preparing for the extravaganza for many months now, further delay could mean the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Olympic glory. The head of the IOC insists there is no Plan B and that the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead as planned — a precarious route indeed. What price Japan will have to pay will be evident soon enough.
PML-N’s dilemma
IT has become fairly clear after Saturday’s meeting of the PDM that the opposition is now going to be operating from two separate platforms. With the PPP and ANP no more part of the alliance, as was made amply clear by both Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maryam Nawaz in the media briefing, and Shehbaz Sharif rallying them for unified action inside parliament, a hotchpotch arrangement appears to be taking shape.
The PDM will initiate a public movement after the budget, but the PPP will not be part of these rallies, while Mr Sharif as the leader of the opposition will mobilise parliamentary opposition to the budget and the PPP will participate in it. While this dichotomy may illustrate the absence of any tangible options for the PDM at this moment, it also reflects the difference of approach within the PML-N leadership. In a TV interview earlier last week, Mr Sharif had said categorically that he wanted all stakeholders to work together to resolve Pakistan’s deep-rooted problems. He had said he would try his best to convince Nawaz Sharif to adopt this course of action. However, on Saturday, Maryam Nawaz said equally clearly that she believed only an aggressive approach towards rivals could pave the way for greater reconciliation. Therein lies the dilemma for the PML-N.
The party has experienced its fair share of highs and lows of power and adversity in the last few decades. It had suffered its first major blow when a bloc was carved out of it during the Musharraf years and named the PML-Q. However since then, the PML-N has shown remarkable resilience under pressure. It is to its credit that it has retained its rank and file these last few years despite facing the brunt of political, legal and other pressures. At the same time, it has consolidated its base and has shown in the recent by-elections that it still packs a powerful electoral punch.
The problem today is that the leadership of the party appears unclear in its approach. Fight or talk? The answer is hazy and often ambiguous. To add to this dilemma, the differences in the approach of the two Sharif brothers have become more pronounced and are spilling over into the public domain. Despite the hard-line stance of Nawaz Sharif against the establishment, the party as a whole has never burnished its anti-establishment credentials.
A large number of influential people in the party do not want a confrontation with the establishment and may be supporting the younger Sharif brother in his attempt to steer the party back towards greater accommodation in order to create space for itself in the next elections. Matters are now coming to a head and the leadership will have to decide which strategy it wants to adopt. For now, Shehbaz Sharif’s narrative appears to be gaining traction both inside his party and outside.
Broken planet
SHORTLY after taking office, Prime Minister Imran Khan planted a deodar sapling in Haripur to inaugurate his government’s ambitious ‘10 billion tree tsunami’ plantation drive in 2018. To counter the threat of climate change, the PTI government announced that it would plant 10bn trees within five years. Three years later, the prime minister returned to the site he launched his campaign from to inspect progress and speak to the media about his government’s commitment to protecting the environment. Even if the figure is contestable — 10bn trees means planting millions of seeds a day over a five-year tenure — there is little denying the importance of large-scale tree plantation drives, as sea levels rise and the planet warms at an alarming rate. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times, and a transnational one, and yet not many governments around the world treat it with the urgency it deserves, prioritising short-term economic growth over the planet’s well-being. The previous year saw record high temperatures, melting glaciers, flash floods, wildfires, and a host of other disasters, which can only be described as apocalyptic, especially when combined with a global health crisis. Several cities across the United States experienced their hottest summers in recorded history, while Siberia went through a six-month-long heatwave, with temperatures rising up to 38˚C. Bushfires raged through Australia, exterminating billions of animal species, destroying thousands of buildings, and taking at least 34 human lives. In Brazil, the Amazon rainforest saw its worst fires in a decade. Here in Pakistan, Karachi was paralysed under record-breaking monsoon rainfall, receiving 223mm of rain in a single day, while several parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa experienced flash floods, and Gilgit-Baltistan was shaken by a massive landslide following heavy rain. At the end of the year, in his State of the Planet speech, UN Secretary General António Guterres put it bluntly: “The state of the planet is broken.” Can it be repaired?
According to FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, 440m acres of forest has been lost in a span of one decade — “an area about the size of Libya”. Pakistan is said to have one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, and it is also one of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, so it is encouraging to see the government put the environment on top of its agenda.
