http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2007/november/opinion_november74.xml
IT IS Karachi. We are all standing, pushing and shoving, outside
the offices of Jang, Pakistan's largest paper. This private compound,
off the famous II Chundrigarh Road, was packed to the last inch.
We are here to protest the continuing ban on country's largest TV
network.
Most of us work
for either the Jang, The News or the GEO, but I spot faces from
the Dawn and the CNBC and other TV channels. Like everyone around
me, I had two candles, one in each hand. Flames tremble in Karachi's
evening breeze and we struggle to keep them alive; for they are:
Flames of Freedom.
Surrounded by
cameras and large plasma screens that capture and display our gyrating
bodies, we all are singing: “jeenay do, jeenay do, logo ko
zinda rahnain do (...let us live, let us live...let people live
their lives)". These are the only screens on which we can see
ourselves; all the GEO channels — even the sports and entertainment
— have been banned. On three sides, the walls of the compound
surround us, and towards the only exit: policemen look on, amused.
Like the media in Pakistan, we are also under siege.
I have just
moved here from London. And General Musharraf's “emergency
plus” has followed me. Doubts about the sanity of my own move
only multiplied. But today looking around, I am happy. I think I
made the right decision. Air is rife with a passionate belief for
change; this is the new Pakistan we used to dream of. But yet, this
scene has an eerie resemblance to Antonio Banderas's 'House of Spirits'
the movie set in the context of Allende's Chile. Then it was Henry
Kissinger, and we just had a visit by John Negroponte. On whose
side they are this time? We still don't know. Perhaps we will never
know.
With the imposition
of “emergency plus”, all TV channels had suddenly disappeared.
From media regulator, PEMRA, we learnt that the cable operators
have voluntarily taken off the news channel in 'higher national
interest'. Oh really? However, soon the government produced a 14
pages 'Code of Conduct', demanded that certain anchors be fired
and the new interim set up be supported by the media. Those who
signed on the dotted line, or just agreed in private, were allowed
back — one day before the visit of Negroponte. Impressions
are always more important than the reality.
But for some
more special treatment was reserved. GEO and ARY, the biggest of
the news networks, remained blocked on the cable networks. In case
of GEO, its sports, youth and entertainment channels were taken
off as well. GEO Sports had the exclusive rights to Indo-Pakistan
cricket series. Ptv was to show it, on its terrestrial arm, as part
of the contract. All gone. People sulk in disbelief and disappointment
and the network has to suffer a loss of US$15 million, for cricket
alone. But who cares? These niceties matter when you have rule of
law. Since 99 per cent of viewerships watch the independent channels
on cable that means practically these channels are unavailable in
Pakistan. Yet Gen Musharraf decides to pressurise a friendly country
to stop their broadcasts. Why? Because diasporas were watching them?
I think hard, but there is no easy answer.
Pakistani novelist,
Mohsin Hamid, thinks that General Musharraf was pushed into his
desperate steps — ie emergency plus — by the intransigent
judges, idealist lawyers and the irresponsible media. His arguments
go to the heart of the debate, “transition versus transformation”,
that raged across Daily Times, a Lahore-based paper, some weeks
ago. Prominent author Ayesha Siddiqa sparked it when she criticised
the editor, Ejaz Haider, who had argued that Pakistan needed a smooth
transition. Ayesha, like many others in the lawyers' movement, had
believed that what Pakistan really needs at this stage is a transformation;
a real change of the system. And I think Aitzaz Ahsan was a transformationist,
at least from the days when he published his book, “Divided
by Democracy” co-authored by Lord Desai.
But I am not
much of a romantic journalist. Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy used
to be my holy book; in the discipline of international politics
I strongly identify with what is called 'realism' and in all these
years since 1999, I had strongly believed that General Musharraf
and his benevolent dictatorship is needed for the continuing growth
and stability. My friend Ayesha Siddiqa had always called me a Musharraf
stooge; she even suspected that I am perhaps on the pay roll of
one or the other agency. And when Ayesha was sparring with Ejaz
Haider I firmly believed that Ejaz was right and Pakistan needed
a smooth transition.
Today, the eminent
barrister is languishing in Adiala Jail and the noted author is
staying away from the country. So can we argue that those who believed
in 'transition' have won the argument? Unfortunately, sometimes
you lose by winning. Today I, like many others, believe that the
General may have been a good man, but he has lost his plot —
and he has lost it miserably. And, moreover, unlike Mohsin Hamid
and many others, I am not even convinced that our good general was
just pushed, by a few intransigent judges or irresponsible media
anchors, into taking his steps. His acts since the terrible November
3 look far too scri pted; and when we look more closely at his regimen
for the media it becomes obvious that he wanted to paint with a
broad brush.
The new Supreme
Court disposed of five constitutional petitions related to the general
in the course of a single day. A real court, however responsible
it may be, will find it difficult to become such an efficient tool.
It was not about a few judges; it was about the overall confidence
the judiciary had acquired through its own convoluted journey. So
could it be about a few anchors? Should we be so naïve to buy
that a government that can hold on its own against the advice of
its financial supporters — Negroponte and company —
is really stuck at four of five men and women? Even when they have
no real authority?
No sir! This
is a bigger and more ambitious plot. Jang/GEO network is now the
only media group that is still standing; it is losing almost a million
dollars a day; soon it won't have any liquidity to pay salaries
to thousands of its workers. The Musharraf government wants to financially
cripple this most popular of the media community to set an example
— just like the judiciary. What he needs from the media is
the kind of unquestioned loyalty PCO judges owe him. And that is
why general Musharraf made that extra-regional leap, interfering
in the laws of a friendly country, to silence the broadcasts that
were blocked in his country anyway. He wants a quick capitulation,
for the next stage: managed elections with desired results, without
anyone to hold the mirror. But then they say: there is many a slip
'twixt the cup and the lip.
Dr Moeed Pirzada
is a broadcaster and political analyst; he has been a Britannia
Chevening scholar with British foreign & Commonwealth Office
at London School of Economics & Political Science
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