The press is up in arms against a package of “press laws” in the offing, one of which relating to defamation has been hastily promulgated. The All Pakistan Newspaper Society says these laws are “illegitimate, unethical, unconstitutional”. And now that General Pervez Musharraf is imperiously signing on the dotted line, we urge him to reconsider.
His government has garnered much goodwill at home and abroad by allowing a relatively free press to function and it would be silly, in fact stupid, to squander it on the eve of the government’s departure by provoking a bitter backlash – the APNS has vowed “to roll back these absurd, preposterous and uncivilised pieces of legislation masquerading as press laws”. After all, in a perverse sort of way, the Pakistani press has been a great “defender” of the military regime by constantly challenging the “sham” democracy of the “corrupt” politicians who “paved the way” for the generals to take over. To be fair, General Musharraf should admit that, by and large, he and his colleagues have had a “good” press personally, even though some journalists have not always agreed with the government’s political and economic policies. In fact, neither Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif was as lucky, even though both had excellent personal relations with the leading owner-editors of the country and constantly showered them with assorted favours. General Musharraf would also do well to recall that when he overthrew Mr Sharif, the press played a significant role in telling the international community how repressive and autocratic the former prime minister had become, why no one was ready to shed tears at his sullied departure and why the military takeover was “welcomed” by many sections of society.
Regarding the press laws, the facts are as follows:
Senior representatives of the press sat down with top government officials over many months to hammer out a mutually acceptable compromise law aimed at regulating the printing and publishing of newspapers, books, etc. Why has the government now unilaterally decided to make amendments in the approved draft? This is a breach of trust and no excuse – that “these are minor amendments” – will suffice. Indeed, if these are minor amendments as claimed, all the more reason that the ministry of information should have sought the green light from the APNS before fiddling with the approved text. In fact, the “minor” amendment, which gives unacceptably sweeping powers to the newly formed District Coordination Officer, radically changes the spirit of the agreed draft law. But that’s not all.
There was also an agreed draft of a proposed Press Council to mediate conflict between the press and aggrieved parties, both government and private. Again, unilateral changes have been made in it sneakily which alter the bipartisan balance of the Council as originally envisaged and give the government a bigger say in deciding how many people and what sort of people will come to sit in judgment over alleged press indiscretions. As the APNS rightly put it: “Can the creation of a self-regulating and autonomous Press Council with one government representative out of 17 members merely exercising moral authority as originally agreed, be unilaterally converted by the Cabinet into a body in which the government appoints 9 out of 19 members and transforms it into a Press Court with wide ranging powers to cancel newspapers or ban them, constitute a ‘minor’ matter”?
Worse, much worse, the government has unveiled a new defamation act that hasn’t been discussed with the press at all, let alone approved by it. In fact, the press only got to know of it when it was leaked by some conscientious bureaucrat, implying that the government was hoping to give a departing kick to the press.
To be honest, this law smells very much like an anti-terrorist act aimed at getting “results” against the accused who are presumed to be guilty unless proven innocent. It mocks the law and blackens the faces of those in the ministries who drummed it up. Why do we need a new law when there is an existing defamation law that follows the strictures of other democratic countries and has been tried and tested in the High Courts and Supreme Court of Pakistan? And if the problem is not with the existing law but with the courts that take forever to conclude a case, shouldn’t the emphasis be on reforming the lumbering court system rather than fiddling with the law? Now that it has been enacted in the backdrop of our litigious culture, such a law will break the back of the free press in Pakistan. That is why even lay journalists across the country are joining hands with owner-editors to lay siege to it.
General Musharraf is about to hand over many powers to the very politicians he despises and accuses of being corrupt and irresponsible. He should therefore be thinking of empowering the press to help him hold the “new democrats” accountable. Instead he is seeking to cripple the press. Strange are the ways of simple, well-meaning soldiers. They still don’t know how to distinguish between friend and foe. They still don’t know how to distinguish between short-term contingencies and long-term interests. General Sahab, please don’t do it.