Sindh Governor Kamal Azfar has taken serious umbrage at an article written about him by journalist Mohammad Hanif in the June issue of Karachi’s monthly magazine Newsline. Although Mr Azfar believes the entire article to be scurrilous (it portrays him as a “lota” par excellence), the main offending lines appear to be: (a) “According to a joke that did the rounds in those days (Ayub Khan’s era), Azfar received 101 refrigerators from those vying for industrial licenses”. (b) “Later, he was elected to the Senate and started calling himself ‘Sher-e-Karachi’. When Bhutto heard of his newly acquired title, he asked him in a meeting: ‘So Sher-e-Karachi, how many plots have you received?'”
Mr Azfar reacted by slapping a legal notice on the magazine (editor, publisher, printer and journalist) for alleged defamation. He demanded a retraction and an apology, failing which he threatened dire consequences. When the magazine refused, his niece Ayesha Azfar wrote a long rebuttal which was duly published in the next issue of the magazine. The matter should have ended there — after all, Mr Azfar’s “lota-ism” had been well documented and a joke is still a joke at the end of the day. But it didn’t. Last week, the police woke up the magazine’s editor in the middle of the night to inform her that a criminal, non-bailable case had been registered against her and her colleagues. That’s when all hell broke loose.
Although Mr Azfar has now been persuaded to retract his case, he remains insistent that he was merely acting as an ordinary, aggrieved citizen resorting to defined legal redress. “How would you feel if you had been maligned in this manner”, he asked TFT, the hurt in his voice ringing loud and clear. Fair enough? But ordinary citizens cannot order the Advocate-General of the Sindh government to proceed on their behalf, can they? Nor can we think of any significant instance when a libel case has been pursued as a criminal complaint rather than as a civil suit. Indeed, when Mr Azfar sued TFT a few years ago for publishing a letter allegedly against one of his powerful clients, he did not resort to criminal proceedings against us. It is also noteworthy that, in their libel notices to various local and foreign papers, neither President Farooq Leghari nor Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (nor, indeed, the press’s favourite whipping boy Asif Zardari) have so far thought it appropriate to tread the path taken by Mr Azfar.
Why did Mr Azfar, normally a soft-spoken and polite man who has weathered many “lotesque” slights in his dogged ascent to the top, decide to take such extreme measures? Has Governorship gone to his head? Is he surrounded by a host of sycophantic admirers who are urging him to crack the whip and redeem his “reputation”? Such concreteness, as he must now know to his discomfiture, is invariably misplaced.
In an editorial a month ago (“To sue or not to sue”) we had warned our luminaries about the troublesome implications of following in Mr Lee Kwan Yew’s footsteps. The argument bears repeating: “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…If they take the errant hack to court, journalists might decide to gang up and make a cause celebre in defence of ‘press freedom’…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 skeletons in your cupboard…never sue”.
Mr Azfar was faced with the very predicament we had written about. He demanded an apology from Newsline and was told to buzz off. When he persisted in talking tough, journalists across the country made a cause celebre of the case and forced him to lick his wounds in splendid isolation. Not one of his friends, colleagues or superiors in Islamabad was prepared to defend his hasty action.
For the sake of the record, we might now take notice of several pending cases which could also blow up in the face of the perpetrators if wise council is ignored. Ms Bhutto is demanding an unqualified apology from at least two local journalists. Likewise Mr Zardari. What will they do if any one of these hacks decides to become a martyr “in the cause of press freedom”? Hound him to the wall? Force him into bankruptcy? Put him into prison?
Pakistan is not Singapore. Our press is alive and kicking. We are not about to give up our hard won freedoms for the sake of all the Bhuttos, Zardaris and Azfars in Pakistan. Yes, we are irresponsible and malicious at times. But that is a price our politicians and bureaucrats will unfortunately have to pay for being historically irresponsible, opportunist and corrupt.