ISLAMABAD: A village in Pakistan’s populous Punjab province, the birthplace of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, mourned his passing during a vigil held on Tuesday, according to Reuters, following his death last week.

Gah village, located about 100 kilometers southwest of Islamabad in Pakistan’s Chakwal district, was Singh’s hometown, where he was born on Sept. 26, 1932.

Singh, an economist and the first Sikh to serve as India’s prime minister, passed away on Dec. 26 at the age of 92. His family migrated to India after the partition in 1947. The late Indian prime minister’s father, Gurmukh Singh, was a cloth merchant, and his mother, Amrat Kaur, a homemaker.

Despite his humble beginnings, Singh studied at Oxford and Cambridge, earning recognition as a scholar before spearheading economic reforms that lifted India out of a financial crisis in the early 1990s.

“When he [Manmohan Singh] became [India's] prime minister, the whole village erupted with joy and celebrated,” said Malik Haq Nawaz Awan, a resident of Gah, speaking in Punjabi. “In the same way, there was an environment of sorrow [over his passing]. Everyone was sad.”

The local school, where Singh received his early education, holds a special place in the village. The late Indian premier’s roll number was 187, and his admission date, April 17, 1937, is still recorded in the school register.

Villagers credit the school’s renovation and the development of their settlement to Singh’s success. His rise to prominence in the neighboring country made the people of Gah proud, and his death has left a profound void.

“I belong to this village as well, and the proudest thing for me is that Singh was my father’s classmate,” said Altaf Hussain, head of the Government Primary School in Gah. “When I went to school, I’d see his name in the records. Every time I saw ‘Manmohan Singh’ in our school records, I felt happy and proud knowing that a child from our small village, who studied on the ground, became India’s prime minister and managed its economy.”

Another villager, 65-year-old Raja Abdul Khaliq, recalled inviting Singh to visit the village, though the Indian premier could not make the trip.

“His family remains, and we invite them to visit us,” he said. “Whenever they come, they’ll find in this village a home away from home. We’ll welcome them with open arms, and our hospitality will be etched in history all thanks to him because of the debt of gratitude our village owes him.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has faced criticism in Indian media for not condoling Singh’s death. However, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar expressed grief over Singh’s passing, praising his leadership for prioritizing dialogue and mutual understanding to address regional issues, which improved ties between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

In 2019, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi invited Singh to attend the opening ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, but he was unable to join. In 2012, President Asif Ali Zardari and Singh met in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, describing their meeting as friendly and constructive.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught for years, with visits by senior officials to each other’s nations remaining rare. The two neighbors have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

ISLAMABAD: A leading Pakistani non-profit on Tuesday said the 2024 general elections led to a “fracture of popular mandate” and intensified political instability in the country, though it also expressed optimism over the newly initiated negotiations between the government and opposition.

The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), which focuses on democratic governance, released its end-of-year Quality of Democracy in Pakistan 2024 report a day earlier. The report provides an overview of the state of politics in Pakistan over the past year, marked by increasing polarization and systemic issues.

“The 12th General Election held in February 2024 after a considerable delay was a largely flawed exercise that served to fracture popular mandate and to provide citizens only with a modicum of political and electoral choice,” it said.

Pakistan’s national polls were marred by accusations of irregularities, including delayed results, amid claims by former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party that its candidates faced significant obstacles in running their campaigns.

PTI candidates were also forced to contest as independents after the Supreme Court ruled its intra-party elections flawed, stripping it of its election symbol. Party leaders alleged the system was heavily rigged against them.

The subsequent election results did not leave any party positioned to form a government independently, leading to political negotiations that helped the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif build a coalition with a razor-thin majority.

“Pakistan’s leading political parties have continued to display a sad and familiar proclivity to assist the establishment against a political opponent of the time in return for short-term selfish political gains,” the report noted, using a popular euphemism for the country’s powerful military and adding that the current political set-up “is no different.”

It also highlighted controversial developments, including amendments restructuring the judiciary and extending the tenures of defense chiefs, which it described as evidence of growing centralization of decision-making influenced by the establishment.

The PILDAT report also addressed persistent social media blackouts in the country, describing them as a means of suppressing critical political voices.

“To manage and silence political dissent, the current set-up has stepped up efforts to manage the use of Internet and social media platforms by blocking certain applications and controlling the flow of communication through others,” it said.

However, the report welcomed the dialogue between the government and PTI, which formally began last month, calling it a potential path to political and economic stability.

“Against this bleak horizon, the improving economic stability and the stated willingness and initiation for political dialogue between the PTI and the government offer the only silver lining,” PILDAT noted.

“Despite grandstanding by the government and its backers and tough bargaining and threats of civil disobedience by the PTI, it is our belief that a comprehensive dialogue must be sustained to find politically negotiated solutions,” it added.