Mr Asif Zardari says he’s a much maligned man. That has made him so angry that he’s decided to teach the Press a lesson. Anyone who inks an irreverent word about him should therefore get ready to apologise or else.
A few journalists we know have recently had a taste of Mr Zardari’s medicine. In the most outlandish case, Mr Ardeshir Cowasjee and Mr Ayaz Amir (and the editor, printer, etc., of “Dawn”) have been asked to apologise for more or less everything they have written about Mr Zardari in the last year or so. Or else cough up billions of rupees in damages.
Inevitably, Mr Zardari’s modus operandi has caught the imagination of the prime minister. Ms Bhutto has now got into the act and is threatening a few notable writs of her own — against the “Far Eastern Economic Review” and “Time” magazine. Not to be left behind, Sindh governor Kamal Azfar has aimed a missive at “Newsline” magazine while PPP ministers Ikram Rabbani and Nazim Ali Shah have tried to test TFT’s mettle by demanding a few trillion rupees in damages (of course, they won’t get a sou!). Interestingly enough, the virus seems to have struck opposition leader Nawaz Sharif too — the PML(N) says it has served “notice” on the “Washington Post” for defaming its leader some months ago. In all these cases, the offending newspapers are threatened with losses of billions of rupees if they fail to grovel before the high and mighty.
In the meanwhile, our honourable judiciary has decided to punish breaches of the contempt-of-court law. Mr Ardeshir Cowasjee, who seems to have a knack for ruffling feathers, was recently hauled up before the Supreme Court in Islamabad and would have faced the guillotine for sure if his lawyer (Mr Sharifuddin Peerzada, who else) hadn’t asked their Lordships why they were so keen to try his client when a case against Ms Benazir Bhutto for contempt of court had been pending for several years before their august bench. Fortunately, the “first-come-first-served” philosophy advocated by Mr Peerzada was so unimpeachable that their Lordships decided to defer the case against Mr Cowasjee.
This “sue or I’ll be damned” philosophy appears to have warmed the cockles of Mr Zardari’s heart after a trip to Singapore some months ago. Mr Lee Kwan Yew, the former Singapore prime minister, is said to swear by it, having successfully sued a few newspapers before a compliant judiciary and forced them to close down (after they were made to pay up and declare financial bankruptcy). Fortunately for the Pakistani press, however, Mr Zardari’s immediate concern is not to ban offending newspapers but only to rap them on the knuckles for allowing “irresponsible” hacks to exhibit their unholy talents.
But a host of unforeseen problems could lie ahead. Consider, for instance, what might happen if, in some case or the other, Ms Bhutto or Mr Zardari should decide to demand an unqualified public apology from some Pakistani newspaper or journalist and then find themselves rudely told to go and fly a kite. What will they do then? If they take the errant hack to court, journalists might decide to gang up and make a cause celebre in defence of “press freedom” — as happened when their Lordships of the Supreme Court were confronted with a battery of top lawyers and newspaper bodies agitating “due process” for Mr Cowasjee; if they don’t, it would imply an unacceptable loss of face which might be difficult to swallow. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t, as it were.
We would therefore urge caution upon these who are inclined to sue at the drop of a hostile word or sentence in the Press. The rule of thumb should be: if you have any dirty skeletons in your cupboard, settle for a “clarification” out of court but never sue. It doesn’t much matter whether there is sufficient legal evidence or not (there rarely is). What matters is the dirt that flies around, given the disposition of Pakistanis to believe the worst of their politicians.
The same logic would appear to apply to those judges who seem bent upon enforcing the law of contempt, come hell or high water. If Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are to be allowed to go scot free when they have been openly contemptible of the judiciary on so many occasions, it would be contemptible for the courts to hold lesser mortals guilty of contempt. The last thing any judge should want is to preside over the sort of farcical situation which arose when a chief justice of the Supreme Court tried former army chief General Aslam Beg for contempt a couple of years ago. In the event, Gen Beg smugly walked out of court even as a lowly journalist was kicked into prison for daring to question the court’s reluctance to take on a retired general.
Of course, this is not to condone erroneous reporting or malafide intent in the Press. But surely Mr Asif Zardari should be the last person to talk about what is right or wrong.