Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times, was freed from captivity on 2nd June, more than three weeks after he was brutally abducted from his home at about 2.45 am on Saturday 8th May by a civilian agency of the government. The trials and tribulations of TFT’s editor, its publisher Jugnu Mohsin, their colleagues and the paper itself, bear noting, if only for the record.
TFT readers and friends should also know that the ordeal of the paper and its editor and publisher is by no means over. The Attorney General has formally told the Supreme Court that the government retains the right to proceed with “fresh cases” against Mr Sethi. Official efforts have therefore been swiftly launched to cripple TFT financially. Mr Sethi has also been put on the Exit Control List which bars him from traveling abroad. Most alarmingly, senior officials sympathetic to Mr Sethi have advised him to severely restrict his movements even in his hometown of Lahore.
This is how it all began. It is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Relations between Nawaz Sharif and Najam Sethi were severely strained in late 1992 when TFT became critical of Mr Sharif’s policies, carried articles alleging wrongdoing by the Sharif family and launched the satirical column titled “Ittefaqnama” on the back page. The then DG-IB Brig Imtiaz Billa and DIG Police Rana Maqbool in Punjab were accordingly deputed to “teach Sethi a lesson”. While both gentlemen went about their assignment assiduously, Mr Sethi and Ms Mohsin survived the threats and income tax notices because Mr Sharif fell from grace in early 1993. In due course, Rana Maqbool apologised to Mr Sethi (“I had no choice”….”I was only doing a job”…) while Mr Sharif unexpectedly arrived at Mr Sethi’s front door one day in 1994 saying “I have come to apologise….I had no idea of what my people did to you”. In due course, with everything forgiven and forgotten, Mr Sharif began to cultivate Mr Sethi through the good offices of a mutual friend-associate.
In November 1996, Benazir Bhutto was eased out of office by President Farooq Leghari, and Mr Sethi was inducted into the caretaker cabinet entrusted with the job of initiating accountability and holding elections. Mr Sethi, however, ran afoul of Mr Sharif when he proposed disqualification laws relating to bank loan defaulters which would have hurt the Muslim League more than the PPP and especially diminished the prospects of many top PML leaders from contesting the elections. Mr Sharif formally protested to Mr Leghari and the law was amended. Mr Sethi was among two or three members of the cabinet who vigourously opposed the amendment but were overruled. Mr Sharif therefore had occasion to record a minor “personal grudge” against Mr Sethi. Fortunately, however, this incident was soon forgotten in the flush of Mr Sharif’s stunning victory at the polls soon thereafter.
Mr Sharif and Mr Sethi retained a measure of mutual warmth after the former became prime minister in February 1997. Indeed, on at least two occasions, once over a one-on-one breakfast meeting in March and again over another one-on-one lunch in April 1997 at the PM House in Islamabad, Mr Sharif asked Mr Sethi to give up journalism and join his team at the “highest level”. But Mr Sethi politely declined, arguing that he could better demonstrate his “friendship” for Mr Sharif by remaining out of the political fray and commenting on Mr Sharif’s policies and conduct objectively from the sidelines of independent journalism. This was exactly what Mr Sethi had said to Ms Bhutto in 1994 when she too had hinted at “rewarding” Mr Sethi for his “outstanding services to the cause to democracy” (read: “cause of the opposition”).
But Mr Sethi’s budding personal relationship with Mr Sharif was fated to flounder on the rock of intellectual and moral incompatibility in much the same manner in which his warm relationship with Ms Bhutto had come to be severed in 1995. The Friday Times had been a crusading voice against corruption and stood for good governance since it was founded in 1989. It did not spare Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif in their first misguided tenures but gave them both the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of their second terms. Then, when each began to go seriously astray, TFT lashed out at them, in the process derailing the personal relations between Mr Sethi and the two prime ministers respectively. At no stage, incidentally, from 1989 to 1999, were any favours asked of the two PMs, although both offered state largesse and were visibly surprised when it was promptly refused.
Mr Sethi’s relationship with Mr Sharif began to sour in May 1997 when TFT wrote editorials against Mr Sharif’s attempt to undermine the judiciary, in particular the March 1996 decisions in the famous Judges Case. TFT then went on to support Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah’s endeavours to strengthen the supreme court against the executive. And when the battle royale between Justice Shah/President Leghari and Mr Sharif erupted with full force in October 1997, TFT made no bones about opposing Mr Sharif’s attempts to become all powerful. Indeed, TFT was so outspoken that Mr Sharif was led by conspiracy-minded advisers into believing that Mr Sethi might have actually “conspired” with President Leghari into trying to overthrow his regime. Nothing was further from the truth. But Mr Sharif believed otherwise and was stung into vengeful spite by Mr Sethi’s alleged “betrayal”. Later in 1998, when Sethi and Sharif were totally estranged, Shahbaz Sharif was to comment that Nawaz Sharif could not bring himself to “forgive” Najam Sethi because he had expected Sethi to side with him instead of Leghari, whereupon Mr Sethi had remarked that the choice for him had never been between Leghari and Benazir or Leghari and Sharif but between right and wrong, between the rule of law and the law of the jungle, between good and bad governance and between accountability and corruption.
Relations between TFT and the Sharif government went from bad to worse in 1998. TFT was appalled by the choice of Mr Rafiq Tarar as president of Pakistan. TFT was opposed to the misguided economic policies of the finance ministry presided over by Mr Sartaj Aziz. TFT was aghast at the one-sided “accountability” of the PPP and IPPs orchestrated by Senator Saif ur Rehman. TFT was alarmed at the nationalist backlash engineered by the unilateral announcement of the Kalabagh Dam by Mr Sharif. TFT was terrified of the proposed 15th amendment bill aimed at making Mr Sharif all-powerful. And TFT didn’t mince its words and opinions when it lambasted the Nawaz Sharif government for abject failure on the most important issues of the day.
Matters came to a head in April 1999 when TFT commented on the conviction of Benazir Bhutto for corruption in an editorial titled: “Set a thief to catch a thief”. The editorial argued that Ms Bhutto had been rightly adjudged guilty of corruption but ended with the hope that “if one-sided accountability had been rejected by some today, even-handed accountability would be demanded by many tomorrow”. This was correctly interpreted in Islamabad as a fervent hope for the accountability of Mr Sharif one day. Therefore it did not endear Mr Sethi to either Mr Sharif or Senator Saif ur Rehman.
This editorial was followed by one titled “Personal Vs public interest” in which it was argued that the Sharifs and Senator Saif ur Rehman were setting ruinous legal and financial precedents for the country by refusing to pay back their accumulated defaults on the plea that “interest was un-Islamic”, or that their defaults had been “engineered”, or that foreign courts had no jurisdictions over loans contracted abroad. The same issue of TFT carried a story on the inside pages titled “Saif in the soup” describing the Senator’s attempt in the Lahore High Court to avoid payments of Rs 930 million demanded by United Bank Ltd. It is understood that both Mr Sharif and Mr Rehman were outraged at this “personal” affront by TFT.
Then came the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s back. A BBC team investigating allegations of money laundering by members of the Sharif family arrived in Pakistan and set about interviewing people. Among those interviewed was TFT’s editor Najam Sethi and Mr Sharif’s estranged cousin Yusuf Aziz. The IB reported the BBC team’s movements and contacts to the authorities in Islamabad and concluded that Mr Sethi had probably arranged for the BBC to contact Mr Aziz via a local journalist named MAK Lodhi. Alarmed, the government picked up Mr Lodhi and shook him up. Lodhi is said by officials to have pointed the finger at Sethi in order to save his skin.
The dye was cast. Islamabad is favourably inclined towards conspiracy theories. The one at hand suggested a “dark plot by Najam Sethi, in cahoots with the BBC, to discredit and undermine the Sharif family and government”. Or so alleged Senator Saif ur Rahman on April 30th to Jugnu Mohsin on the phone while Mr Sethi was away in New Delhi delivering a lecture on “Indo-Pak relations in the new millennium”. It was time to teach Sethi a lesson as well as send a strong message to the small independent press that its days were also numbered, like that of Jang and the big groups earlier.
The rest, as they say, is history. Mr Sethi’s speech in New Delhi was painted as “anti-Pakistan” by paid hacks and lackeys of the government and provided the perfect excuse to punish Mr Sethi for his anti-government views.
The bad news is that Mr Sethi’s fundamental rights were trampled upon with unmitigated glee by an authoritarian regime in full flow. He could have choked to death on the night he was abducted and beaten up. Certain sections of the press took great pleasure from Mr Sethi’s acute discomfort, partly out of personal jealously and partly due to government pressure or vested financial interests. The Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi behaved abominably in pursuit of an appointment to Washington. And many unsuspecting but well intentioned patriotic Pakistanis were led into believing the government-sponsored falsehood in the government-controlled press that Mr Sethi had committed sedition and deserved to be punished.
The good news is that the Pakistani army, ISI and Supreme Court were not prepared to lend their shoulders to such outlandish allegations against Mr Sethi. Many sections of the domestic press discerned the truth and sided with Mr Sethi. To a man, the political opposition supported the cause of Mr Sethi. The international community woke up to the demand for press freedom and human rights and castigated the government of Pakistan for detaining Mr Sethi. In the end, most Pakistanis cast their lot with Mr Sethi instead of his detractors.
The best news is that by making Najam Sethi an international cause celebre the government has unwittingly strengthened the cause of press freedom and human rights in Pakistan.
But the saga of Najam Sethi, TFT, press freedom and democracy may not yet be over. The first trumped-up income tax notices were issued to Jugnu Mohsin, Najam Sethi, TFT and Vanguard Books Pvt Ltd on 19th May, over a week after Mr Sethi was detained. The second lot was slapped on 3rd June, a day after Mr Sethi was set free before the Supreme Court. The third installment was delivered on 8th June. Jugnu Mohsin’s bank accounts have been frozen and all monies illegally transferred to the income tax department. The settled income tax accounts of Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin from 1994-95 to 1995-96 have been reopened for scrutiny and additional demands. The properties of both Jugnu Mohsin and Najam Sethi were “attached” for auction by the tax department on 7th June without giving them a chance to file their rejoinders. The accounts of Vanguard Books Pvt Ltd for 1994-95 have been reopened also. Exorbitant, illegal and false claims are being made by the IT department under pressure from Islamabad. The idea is clearly to cripple TFT financially and force it to close down.
All this is totally unnecessary and counter-productive. It gives Mr Sharif a bad name. And it paints Pakistan in unflattering colours before its friends abroad. The repression of TFT’s editor must stop. Wiser council must prevail. The personal hostility of Mr Sharif or Senator Saif against Najam Sethi should not be taken to such absurd limits where it begins to encroach upon the interests of the government and country at a time when both need all the friends and assistance they can muster at home and abroad.