It is our considered view that, by and large, Ms Benazir Bhutto’s government does not enjoy a “positive” image in society. As a matter of fact, it is largely seen as generally inept, increasingly cynical and painfully inadequate to the tasks at hand.
This perception is not confined to the “chattering classes”, whatever Mr Hussain Haqqani, the glib special press assistant, may say contemptuously in order to sooth the frayed nerves of the prime minister. If only the PM’s hangers-on would pluck up the courage to tell her the truth, she would realise how rapidly her stock has declined since coming to power. Alternatively, she might consider holding an open “katcheri” of the rank and file of her party workers and wait for an earful.
This leads to two important questions: Is the Ministry of Information responsible for failing to project the government’s policies and point of view adequately? Or is the prime minister at fault for not providing the good government people desperately expect of her?
Since perception is often more important than reality, all governments worry about how their policies are portrayed in the press. Prime Ministers, in particular, tend to be extremely sensitive of how their “image’ is projected in the media. The Ministry of Information, thus, seemingly acquires a pivotal role in government. Apart from packaging government policies and ensuring widespread dissemination, the ministry is also expected to keep a tight rein over `independent’ journalists who don’t always see eye to eye with the government’s point of view. This is an unenviable job, even at the best of times.
A host of ministries, many of whom are staffed by “sifarshi”, ill-merited officials or inept ministers, make policy on the recommendations of the cabinet or prime minister. Unfortunately, they do not always know how and when to communicate their intentions and expectations to the Information Ministry or to the press in the best possible manner. Since time lags and packaging are of the essence in achieving public impact, many good initiatives by the government are lost either through the incompetence of the relevant ministry formulating policy or simply through sheer inertia in the labyrinthine corridors of bureaucracy. Under the circumstances, the Information Ministry can be reduced to flogging half-baked briefs or desperately trying to limit damage to a minimum.
At any rate, it is impossible to “control” the press in a democracy. This, despite the fact that every government has a number of “levers” at its disposal expressly designed to “manage” the media. Apart from the organs of the government — NPT, Radio and TV — many private-sector newspapers are routinely inclined to toe the “line” in exchange for handsome newsprint quotas and advertisements. All that is required is to strike a suitable “deal” to win them over or to neutralise them. But not all papers are always so cynical. Sometimes, in fact, a few “rebels” can sour the environment so bitterly that the government’s best-laid propaganda coups are wont to misfire. Nor, given the plethora of publications fiercely competing for a niche in the market, is it always possible even for timid editors to maintain a pro-government stance on each and every issue. Readers have a voracious appetite for gossip, scandal, crime and corruption. Unfortunately for the government, however, such is the psychology of public behaviour that people in power make much better and more likely targets than the under-dogs of the day. In such cases, there is precious little the Information Ministry can do.
Many local journalists, it is true, are invariably keen to stay on the right side of every government. The lure of plots, “lifafas” and foreign junkets with the prime minister is difficult to resist. Once again, though, there are some journalists who cannot be “bought” or cajoled by the government, either because they are inclined to guard their independence rather jealously (for whatever reasons — ego, status, professional ambition or rivalry, etc) or because they write for the foreign press. Nor can there be any question of “controlling” or “managing” those journalists who are ideologically or politically motivated against the party in power. In all such instances, the job of the Ministry of Information is once again relegated to damage-limitation at best.
In view of these perennial circumstances and in-built limitations on the Information Ministry’s brief, it is now worth asking how Benazir Bhutto’s government has fared in projecting itself in the last six months.
As far as the Information Ministry is concerned, there is every reason to believe that it has harnessed the major newspapers relatively efficiently. Apart from one major Urdu paper, which is openly allied to Mian Nawaz Sharif, and a couple of Urdu weeklies which are ideological organs of the right-wing and hence implacably opposed to the PPP, the vernacular press appears to be reasonably “sympathetic” to Ms Bhutto. The major English dailies, as a matter of fact, seem to have bent over backwards to appease the government by relegating the utterances of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to a maximum of two columns on the front page. What remain problematic for the government, however, are the nagging columns of a few “die hard” commentators and analysts. These are written either by unreformed ideologues or by a select band of unrepentant “rebels” who have made it their life’s mission to oppose every government in power and expose every bungling they can lay their hands upon. There isn’t much the Information Ministry can do about them.
Then there is the question of the performance of Radio and TV. Given the lack of professional manpower available in these bodies and the refusal of the government to reform them radically, it would be foolish to expect any imaginative initiatives on this front. They are chockablock full of “sifarshis” from the last decade and the Urdu-Punjabi divide in the management has thwarted any possibility of a quick redemption. If both are unable to come up to the PM’s expectations, it is not their fault.
It is, of course, true that the PM’s media managers are not getting along well among themselves and that this failing may have adversely affected their joint ability to project the government’s cause. But there is no reason to believe that by switching and transferring people at the top any better results can be expected, given the sort of institutional and administrative constraints we have mentioned. Indeed, matters could get worse if the PM were to antagonise the mandarins of Islamabad by importing an “outsider” into the Information Ministry.
No, the fault doesn’t lie with Ms Bhutto’s media managers. It lies fairly and squarely with herself. She has spent more time whizzing about to foreign lands in quest of illusive causes, performing countless Umras to prove her piety and cutting unlimited feet of ceremonial tape than in assembling a good team and getting down to brasstacks. Does the prime minister really think that ordinary people give a damn about the state of Pakistan’s foreign reserves or how faithfully her finance minister is adhering to the IMF’s conditionalities to cut the budget deficit? Does she really think that a rise in the price of wheat has made her enormously popular with the peasants? Does she think that people will wait with bated breath for Ghazi-Barotha to roll around in five years time? Does she think that the deteriorating law and order situation doesn’t affect the quality of peoples’ lives? Does she think that many of her advisors and ministers are not on the take? Does she think Pakistanis have forgotten the ray of hope during the Moeen Qureshi regime?
The PPP government is lacklustre and unfocussed. Benazir Bhutto doesn’t seem to have the will to lead effectively. It is no good blaming the media managers for this shortcoming. If the prime minister disagrees with this analysis, we couldn’t be happier if she were to get her act together and prove us wrong.