The ongoing confrontation between Senator Saifur Rehman's bloodhounds and the Jang Group, slowly being starved of funds and newsprint, raises serious concern, for it is not just a question of Mir Shakilur Rehman's newspapers and what becomes of them but of the freedom of the press as we have known it for the last ten years.

The fears being expressed in this regard are not exaggerated. If the government succeeds in cowing the Jang Group, its appetite will be whetted and sooner or later it might be tempted to bring the rest of the press to heel. But while this affair has wider ramifications, it also brings to the fore a strange quirk in the Pakistani psyche which drives holders of any kind of power and authority to overplay their hands. Not knowing when and where to stop, they find themselves pushed into taking untenable positions. Ultimately this invites retribution on their heads. Examples of this tendency are legion and make for depressing reading.

Without going too far back into the past, consider Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's conduct and the March 1977 elections. He kept playing games with the opposition when it was in his interest to settle matters with them quickly. This over-clever attitude ultimately brought the army into the political arena and Pakistan was left nursing the waves of military rule for eleven and a half years. Muhammad Khan Junejo overreached himself as prime minister. Forgetting that his elevation was a gift bestowed on him by General Zia, he began to sprout wings which ultimately cost him his office and paved the way for Nawaz Sharif to seize control of the bulk of the Muslim league. Benazir Bhutto was a stranger to moderation and common prudence during both her stints as prime minister. The political crisis of 1993, which cost Ghulam Ishaq Khan the presidency and Nawaz Sharif the prime ministership, did not erupt over any issue of principle but simply because both individuals, hitherto partners in political intrigue, became victims of their mutual suspicions and jealousies.

Farooq Leghari must be ruing the day he sacked Benazir Bhutto's government for that set off the chain of events which now sees him in the political wilderness, wanly contemplating his brief hour of pomp and glory. Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah did not know where to stop during the judicial crisis of 1997. If he had only called a halt to his levelling zeal when Nawaz Sharif was brought around to appearing before him in open court, he would have carved a place for himself in judicial history and the moral authority of the Supreme Court would have been immeasurably strengthened. But afflicted like the rest of his peers with the Pakistani (or is it the sub-continental ?) malady of not knowing when to call a halt to marching ambition, he found himself pulled down from his pedestal by his own colleagues. The Supreme Court has yet to recover from the episode, as from the blow to its prestige inflicted when an inspired mob assaulted its sacrosanct premises. Altaf Hussain and the MQM are also victims of excess, never having learnt the art of curbing their crude ambitions.

But the pity of it is that it is not only judges, generals and political redeemers who can be guilty of excess in Even cautious and prudent newspapers, as the present woes of the Jang Group testify, can be driven to intemperate action by the same malady. Both the government and the Jang Group have adopted extreme positions. But who is losing out in this fight? Certainly not the government which can live with the charge that it is using coercive methods to bring the Jang Group to its knees.

The distinction between democratic and undemocratic is of relevance in a society where the rule of law prevails and democratic traditions are strong. Where the exercise of power is arbitrary and authoritarian, as for most of its history it has been in Pakistan, this distinction becomes irrelevant. Over here the great test for both governments and individuals is what one can get away with. If the government can get away with staged encounters in which alleged criminals are shot in cold blood, it is not going to be overly worried by protests that it is bent upon destroying the freedom of the press. Unless of course these protests get out of hand in which cases it will start worrying very seriously. But the supreme test remains a pragmatic one: what can one get away with? While this consideration is important for any Pakistani government, it is also important for the Pakistani press which must always keep an eye on where the frontiers of freedom are drawn.

That these frontiers can shift is because of the tenuous nature of the freedom which the press enjoys in Pakistan today. The foundations of this freedom rest on sand. The Pakistani constitution is a protector of nothing and anyone taken in by the fundamental rights enshrined in it lives in a fool's paradise. From the lifting of martial law in December 1985 onwards, the press has found room to grow because of a twin set of circumstances: the checks and balances which were created in the Constitution as a result of the Eighth Constitutional Amendment; and the existence of two strong political parties which shared the political stage between them. Both these circumstances no longer exist. With the revocation of the president's authority to dismiss the National Assembly and appoint the service chiefs (this last now lying within the competence of the prime minister), the system of checks and balances which was an unwitting, and seemingly enduring, legacy of General Zia's military rule has been swept aside. With the discrediting of the PPP and its rout in the last elections, the Muslim League dominates the political scene to the exclusion of any rivals. In this situation the press is very much on its own, something which the Jang Group, hitherto a product of prudence and commercial sense, seemed at times to forget during the last two years of this government's being in power.

Suppose there was civil unrest in the country and people were out in the streets against the government. Suppose a battle royal erupted between different sections of the ruling establishment as occurred in 1993 when President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif were caught in a bitter struggle for power. Or if an army chief, always someone to be  taken seriously in a country famous for its military coups, was making eyes at the government, as happened in November 1992 when then army chief, General Asif Nawaz, was thought to have given an approving  nod to Benazir Bhutto's decision to emulate Chairman Mao's example and undertake a long march on Islamabad. In situations such as these, a newspaper, if it feels like taking on a government, can get away with a great deal simply because the diffusion of power at the top prevents a government from being ruthless with its opponents. But with the Muslim League in full cry, none of the above situations exists in Pakistan today.

This then is the tragedy of this whole affair. In not knowing where to stop, the Jang Group has not only put its own interests at risk but also imperilled the frontiers of freedom as they exist in Pakistan today. It is time therefore to close ranks, ponder the consequences of the present drift towards an all-powerful centre and think of ways and means to prevent a bad situation from getting worse.

(Dawn 5.2.1999)

Phone: + 92 42 6666404 - 6687827
 

 

 
E-mail: jrc@syberwurx.com