 Pakistan is heading to elections on February 8th amid unprecedented chaos. The most significant player over the past few years, former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party, the PTI, is facing a massive crackdown. Now Imran is in jail after having been convicted of multiple crimes and his party has been denied its traditional symbol. Meanwhile, an old war horse, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is back and his Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party seems to have the edge. The elections are taking place at a time of great hardship for most working class Pakistanis. What are the key issues in this election? We go to Abdul to find out. Abdul, thanks so much for joining us. A very contentious election taking place in Pakistan, you know, very difficult circumstances. Also politically quite unique. We have three major parties now as opposed to the traditional two. So maybe could you give us an outline of who are the major contenders? What is the kind of context in which this election is taking place? Well, in Pakistan, there are three major parties, as you already pointed out in this election. Of course, one of these parties is Pakistan, Tehrik-e-Nsa, which is led by Imran Khan, who is in jail. Though all the surveys indicate that he is the most popular leader in the country at this moment. Of course, he's in jail and he can't contest the elections. And his party has been denied the electoral symbol. And that means that all his candidates who are contesting are contesting as independent. So PTI as a party is not there in the election. Most of his, all of his candidates are contesting independently. Other two major parties, of course, are PML and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, because former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was allowed to come back to the country. And the other parties against him, where we draw on, and even the ban on him contesting elections for a lifetime was lifted. That would mean that given the, you can say, the favorable conditions in which PML is operating, it may be the, you can say, the leading contender for the making after the results are announced on February 8th. Other major party, of course, is the traditional center-left party called PPP, Pakistan People's Party led by Bilal Bhutto, the son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and also the former President Jardari. And he, of course, in this election has, does not have, it seems, whatever the surveys are saying, does not have major impact, though he remains very strong in some of the provinces, for example, Sindh, which is a major stronghold of the party. Apart from these major contenders, there are also smaller parties like Fuzlul Haqq's party, Jama'at-e-Islami and Jama'at-e-Ulma'a Pakistan and others. Apart from that, there are also smaller parties like left-wing groups fighting elections, but, of course, they do not have much influence across the nation. They are focused on certain constituencies or certain provinces. For example, Fuzlul Haqq's party is the major contender of Imran Khan's PTI in one of the provinces called Khaybar Pakhtunkhwa. So, since PTI is not contesting as a party, his party may have greater chances of winning seats, but all of it depends on how the voter turnout is and how free and fair the counting is because there are speculations about, despite the fact that PTI has not been allowed to contest, there may be some last-minute attempts by the establishment, as it is known in Pakistani politics, to kind of change the results in favor if, in case, it is going against their calculations. Right, Abdul, we also maybe take us through what are the sort of socio-political challenges that Pakistan is facing right now that will be high on the agenda of any government that comes to power. What is the sort of, you know, what is the ground situation for the majority of people of this country? Well, majority of Pakistanis at this moment are primarily concerned about their economic problems, which they are facing for many years now. Even during COVID and post-COVID, the situation has become much and much gradually worse, despite the fact that Pakistan was kind of uncertain in fact because of the fact, we should say, because it was able to get $3 billion loan from IMF, it had to fulfill certain conditionalities, which had led to further deterioration of the basic economic conditions of the people. And that basically reflected in the rise of prices of the essential commodities, essential services like electricity, food and so on and so forth. One should remember that this Pakistan, apart from having suffered the COVID outbreak, there was also basically a massive flood, which kind of completely devastated the rural areas in Pakistan and basically delayed the recovery from COVID, you can say. And structurally, Pakistan economy is not good for many, many decades now and that basically is, you can say, is the primary concern. Apart from that, in this election, one major issue is raised by, since Pakistan has, Pakistani politics has been a kind of, you can say, seesaw between the army and the political groups, the civilian groups, parties and a compromise between them have been the mode of operation. You can say mode of functioning of the Pakistani state for a very long time. Because of the Imran Khan's, you can say so-called rebellion or whatever you call it. And PTI is a strong stand against military's role in Pakistan politics. That has also become a major issue in this election, apart from the economic issues which the Pakistanis are facing. Apart from that, Pakistan, of course, has a major issue of security in terms of the rise of, or you can say, re-rise of Pakistan, Taliban in Pakistan. Apart from that, there are also, you can say, elements in certain provinces like Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which have been, of course, there have been, there have been tussles between the political elements in these two provinces with the central government in Islamabad. But also because of the religious rise of religious fundamentalism, which of course has a larger impact because of geopolitics in the region, that also becomes a major issue in Pakistan's politics. So if one has to identify, of course, there are other issues which have been raised. For example, corruption, which has been made, there is an attempt to make it an issue in Pakistan primarily because each of the parties, at least other party of indulging in corruption and aligning with the military to gain power. So that becomes, these are, you can say, a set of major issues. One major issue, which is, you can say, unique, relatively unique to this election, is the role of external interference in Pakistan politics, because again, related to Imran's consistences, since his removal from power in April, in the no confidence vote in parliament, he has raised a pitch that this is primarily because of the external intervention, interventions made by the US. And that has basically helped mobilize a large number of support across Pakistan in favour of his party. So yeah, these are the set of issues which Pakistanis are facing in this election. Abdul, thanks so much. We'll come back to you when the results are out and we can see what the new government will mean for the people of Pakistan. This year's National Day celebrations in New Zealand have seen major protests as Indigenous groups are resisting what they see as a government's bid to dilute the Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840 agreement between colonists and Maori chiefs. The issue has been building up for a while due to the government proposal to bring a bill that will reinterpret this treaty. This has been strongly opposed by Indigenous groups. We go to Anish for the latest on this. Anish, thanks so much for joining us. The governments often try to pitch national days as, you know, moments of unity to bring everyone together. But this time, for understandably good reasons, there has been a lot of debate and controversy in New Zealand. So take us through what these debates are about. We have actually spoken about this before as well. But to our audience who haven't, who are yet to know, the matter is about the Maori identity and the fact that they are the Indigenous people of New Zealand that has been brought to question right now under the government of Christopher Luxon. And this is something that was kind of expected because Luxon and also his alliance partners in the government right now, which is a three-party coalition of, you know, centre-right and right and more right. And it pretty much seeks to take out aspects of this foundational treaty, which is the Treaty of Waitangi, that gives and entitles the Indigenous Maori to being the original inhabitants of New Zealand and obviously the kind of entitlements and rights that come with it. And even claims of sovereignty, which is still based on the treaty, but is yet to be realised in many ways within the New Zealand political setup. Nevertheless, the fact that they are trying to codify it and with codification comes the manner in which it is to be interpreted, which is something that still is a nebulous territory when it comes to legal and constitutional framework of the New Zealand government. So interpreting that coming from a right-right and far-right government is going to be far more tricky because they are probably, like obviously they are ones who have been using the term of, you know, the mask of calling for equality and equality among all people and citizens as, you know, a mask or a facade to basically wipe out any kind of consideration of Indigenous rights or Indigenous sovereignty and their land rights, obviously. And this is something that the Maori's have taken quite seriously. For months now, we have talked about, we have seen actually Maori leaders across the board actually take up, you know, protests and all sorts of protests. They could think of to actually prevent any kind of rollback of whatever, you know, progress has been made when it comes to Indigenous rights, which is again, primarily based on the Treaty of Aitangi's document and just the document, the kind of provisions that are there in it. For those who do not know, the Waikake Treaty was pretty much the foundational treaty for what we today understand as New Zealand. And it was basically signed between British columnists and about hundreds of Maori chiefs at the time. And it pretty much established a relationship of basically that would be interpreted in many ways as a relationship between two nations. And that is something that has been carried out in many manners. Obviously, the treaty was not perfect. There were quite a lot of ambiguity. There were quite a lot of ambiguity in terms of the translations that were made. Obviously, there are issues there. And, you know, various times of different racist and right-wing governments have taken positions that have actually affected Indigenous rights. But nevertheless, the treaty has always been this, you know, this document that Maori have used to assert their sovereignty and has always been seen as a blueprint of what any kind of recognition of Indigenous rights should look like, especially in countries like Australia, or for that matter, many North American countries where, you know, the colonial governments continue in many ways, while the indigenous rights and indigenous lands continue to be enforced upon. All right, Anish, thank you so much for that update. And that's all we have in daily debrief. We'll be back tomorrow with a fresh episode. In the meanwhile, do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.