Your Tuesday Briefing: Political turmoil in Pakistan

August 23, 2022

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We're covering political turmoil in Pakistan and schools reopening in the Philippines.

An expert on Pakistani politics said Imran Khan was "clearly an order of magnitude stronger" than when he was ousted as prime minister. Sohail Shahzad/EPA, via Shutterstock

Political tensions swell in Pakistan

Imran Khan, Pakistan's former prime minister, was charged under the country's antiterrorism act on Sunday. He is trying to stage a political comeback after he was ousted from power in April following a no-confidence vote.

The charges followed a rally in Islamabad, the capital, where Khan condemned the recent arrest of one of his top aides and vowed to file legal cases against police officers and a judge involved in the case. Police said the comments amounted to an illegal attempt at intimidation.

The charges represent a drastic escalation of the power struggle between Pakistan's current government and its former leader and could set off a fresh round of public unrest and violent street protests.

Analysis: Khan's rallies have drawn tens of thousands, and his party has scored recent victories in the most populous province, Punjab, and the economic hub, Karachi. But experts say he and his supporters face a mounting crackdown aimed at curtailing their electoral successes.

Details: Pakistan's media regulatory authority imposed a ban on the live broadcast of Khan's speeches on news television channels. Several journalists and talk show hosts, who are sympathetic to Khan, say they have been threatened by the state authorities.

Classes opened across the Philippines yesterday.Aaron Favila/Associated Press

The Philippines reopens schools

Millions of children in the Philippines returned to in-person classes yesterday, ending one of the world's longest pandemic-related shutdowns.

"We could no longer afford to delay the education of young Filipinos," said Vice President Sara Duterte, who is also the education secretary.

The lost time will be hard to make up: Even before the pandemic, the Philippines had among the world's largest education gaps, with more than 90 percent of students unable to read and comprehend simple texts by age 10, according to the World Bank.

Covid-19 may have only worsened divides. Even though the country offered online instruction during the pandemic, many students lacked access to computers or the internet.

Pandemic: As other countries sent students back to classrooms, government officials and parents hesitated. They feared that schoolchildren could bring the virus to homes crowded with multiple generations of family members, potentially overtaxing a creaky health care system.

Details: Schools in the Philippines have long suffered from teacher shortages, and only some schools are currently in-person five days a week. The country plans to fully reopen all of its roughly 47,000 schools by November.

A dried-out riverbed of the Jialing River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River.EPA, via Shutterstock

Drought roils China's economy

China's central bank announced that it would cut its five-year interest rate yesterday, an effort to bring a little relief to the country's huge construction and real estate sector.

The rate cut comes as record-high temperatures and a severe drought have crippled hydropower and prompted the shutdown of many factories in west-central China, an industrial base.

Sichuan Province, for instance, normally generates more than three-quarters of its electricity from huge dams. The summer rainy season usually brings so much water that Sichuan sends much of its hydropower to cities and provinces as far away as Shanghai.

But an almost complete failure of summer rains this year has meant that many dams now cannot generate enough electricity even for Sichuan's own needs, forcing factories there to close for up to a week at a time and triggering rolling blackouts in some commercial and residential districts.

Fallout: Sichuan's three main rivers feed the Yangtze River, so hydropower cutbacks have also started to affect downstream areas, like the city of Chongqing and adjacent Hubei Province.

Details: The central bank cut the rate by 0.15 percentage points yesterday, to 4.3 percent, and said that it was reducing a one-year interest rate by 0.05 percentage points, to 3.65 percent.

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THE LATEST NEWS

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Bangladesh is closing schools for another day during the week and taking other measures to save energy, Reuters reports. The country shut down its diesel-run power plants after the war in Ukraine drove up fuel prices.
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The War in Ukraine

Here are live updates.

Daria Dugina, a Russian nationalist commentator.Tsargrad.Tv, via Reuters

Russia blamed Ukraine for the killing of Daria Dugina, 29, an ultranationalist commentator. The allegation could not be verified. Kyiv denied involvement.
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What's next: Tomorrow is Ukraine's Independence Day — and the six-month mark of the war.

What Else is Happening

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A Morning Read

Carmen Abd Ali for The New York Times

As more looted art returns to Africa, countries have wrestled with the right way to display it.

Benin may have found an answer: More than 200,000 people have come to a free exhibition of pieces that were plundered by French colonial forces in the 19th century and returned last year.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Will New Zealand change its name?

New Zealand, known by some as Aotearoa.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

In the 1600s, the Dutch named the land now known as New Zealand for Zeeland, a western province of the Netherlands. It was intended as a companion name for "Hollandia Nova" or "New Holland," as Australia was then known.

Nearly four centuries later, a petition before Parliament asks that the country be called "Aotearoa," which loosely translates from Maori as the "land of the long white cloud." The Maori have used Aotearoa to refer to the country for decades, if not centuries. It is widely believed to be the name bestowed by Kupe, a Polynesian navigator — and is, increasingly, what New Zealanders and their lawmakers call their home.

For now, a wholesale change seems unlikely: Polls suggest voters prefer "New Zealand" or a hybrid "Aotearoa New Zealand." But the debate speaks to a changing climate: Amid culture war debates, Maori names are gaining traction. In 2009, New Zealand's politicians voted against creating a holiday for Matariki, the Maori New Year. In June, it was observed nationally for the first time.