6.4.2007, Monday
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13526/musharraf_tightens_media_grip.html?breadcrumb=%2F
Musharraf Tightens Media Grip
June 4, 2007
Prepared by:
Carin Zissis
Three Pakistani journalists (Reuters) recently left a press meeting in Karachi to find a dark message on their cars: an unaddressed envelope containing a single bullet. A week earlier two of the three journalists, who work for foreign media outlets, were included in a list of a dozen reporters considered “enemies” by a shady group called the Mohajir Rabita Council, which has links to the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement allied with President Pervez Musharraf’s political coalition.
Although the regime of Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup, cannot be directly linked to planting bullets in reporters’ cars, rising civil unrest over the president’s March decision to dismiss Pakistan’s Supreme Court Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has left Islamabad jittery about a free press. With his rule imperiled by the protests, Musharraf finds the free media he originally fostered turning against him. Last week he warned journalists against politicizing the judicial crisis, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reports. A day later, the information minister accused Pakistani media of “irresponsible behavior” (Daily Times) for its coverage of the crisis. He said authorities would enforce laws requiring private channels to gain permission before broadcasting talk shows and news programs.
A new report by the watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists lists Pakistan among the top ten countries experiencing deteriorating press freedoms. After protests first broke out (Daily Times) in March, police ransacked and tear gassed the headquarters of Geo TV. A month later the Pakistani regularity authority (BBC) set up in 2002 to license private media threatened to suspend the license of popular broadcast channel Aaj for inciting violence (AHN) with its coverage of the judicial crisis by criticizing the military. On Sunday, the government largely banned transmissions of both channels because of their “anti-government” programming.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Pakistani newspaper publisher Hameed Haroon documented Islamabad’s squeeze on press freedoms, including of his English-language DAWN media outlet. “[W]e are becoming collateral damage stemming from Western support for authoritarians like Mr. Musharraf,” wrote Haroon. His DAWN outlet experienced a sharp decline in government advertising as well as threats to its broadcasting license after reporting on Islamabad’s controversial cease-fire agreements with pro-Taliban groups operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Pakistani authorities so far appear unable to freeze criticism. Ayesha Siddiqa launched her new book (Times of London), Military Inc., examining the business side of the Pakistani military, despite officials pressuring Islamabad social clubs and hotels not to host the book launch. Attempts to stem freedom of the press have also failed to halt the widening protests, which turned violent and claimed over forty lives in Karachi in May after the chief justice was prevented from speaking there. Pakistan’s judiciary has proven equally assertive during the crisis, with the Supreme Court announcing an investigation into authorities’ intimidation of journalists, notes intelligence analysis website Stratfor. Yet with media criticism taking aim not only at president-in-uniform Musharraf but also the powerful military establishment, a fierce official crackdown on Pakistan’s independent media may be in the wings.
http://www.kashmirherald.com/main.php?t=OP&st=D&no=286
Pakistani Generals must act before it is too late
WAJID SHAMSUL HASAN
Not many countries in the world would envy Pakistan for being constantly in the focus of international media—adversely. Until recently with more than half of its population living under poverty-line, Pakistan was proud to have Shaukat Aziz as the richest prime minister in the world. And lately he has done it more proud by getting himself hard up to deserve mention as perhaps the only known gigolo prime minister in recent history.
The latest book on US Secretary of State “Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power,” by Newsweek’s senior editor Marcus Mabry has brought on record the “other” hitherto unknown qualities of Aziz as a Casanova. It has revealed that Dr Rice on her first visit to Pakistan in 2005 found herself face to face with Shaukat Aziz trying to bowl her over with his “gigolo” charm. She had to stare at him and cold water his hard on looks that he is reputed to employ to ‘conquer’ any woman in ‘two minutes.’
As if that was not enough we learn through BBC that the Pakistani military’s peace-keeping contingent in strife-torn Congo traded gold for guns and armed the militia they were supposed to disarm. Though Islamabad has rushed to deny the report as baseless, looking at the land grabbing habit at home of the Generals and their lust for riches, Congo gold would be no more than morsels for the troops trying to live up to the traditions set for them by their superiors.
Pakistan is yet to get over with the trauma of the mayhem by the armed thugs of the government in Karachi under the command and order of the Don of London’s Edgware as Daily Dawn’s columnist Ayaz Amir calls him. The London Economist (May 17) in a strong-worded indictment of the massacre said there are ‘plausible’ reasons to believe that “the violence was perpetrated by Karachi's ruling party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an ethnically-based mafia allied with General Pervez Musharraf”. Its target was a ‘people’s rally’ planned for May 12th in the city at to protest against suspension of chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry. He was to be the star speaker at the rally.
The Economist joined the wider media condemnation of the fact that while the carnage spread, killing scores and injuring hundreds, 15,000 strong police and paramilitary troops stood by silently. Independent sources claim that the police were ordered by the “high ups” to give a free hand and to let the ethnic gangsters stage a bloody bath to teach the protestors a lesson for their defiance of the General. This is supported by the fact that the two main officers assigned for the maintenance of law and order in the province—the Inspector General of Police and the Home Secretary—an army brigadier—were busy holding the Chief Justice and his team of lawyers hostage at the Jinnah Airport after their attempt to kidnap him failed. Moreover, Karachi administration was entirely managed by the MQM governor, his team of ministers and advisers while the Chief Minister made himself conspicuous by his absence so that his face is not blackened any further.
There could not be more audacious a statement than the one made by the MQM Home Advisor who claimed on a television channel that it was he who had personally ordered laying of siege of the Sindh High Court by blocking all routes to it by parking huge containers to stop anti-Chief Justice rallies bulldozing into it. The actual motive obviously was to stop the Chief Justice from entering the High Court premises. The people of Pakistan —including Karachites—protested against the MQM behaviour by observing a hartal voluntarily. It was a mark of national condemnation of state sponsored fascism.
The Economist correctly summed up the mood when it observed, “If the MQM meant to deter General Musharraf's opponents with violence, it failed”. Rather, it helped the General, may be inadvertently—in digging his own grave. By playing his MQM card he showed his true colours to his constituency—the army—which is predominantly Punjabi (more than 80 per cent of it being from Punjab). He also stymied MQM in its plans to emerge out of the Sindh and spread to other provinces particularly Punjab. Also, May 12 paved the way for a nation wide all-party movement against the uniformed President. “With an election due this year, Pakistani democracy is stirring from the coma it slipped into eight years ago, when General Musharraf seized power”, remarked a leader writer and added the Chief Justice has finally shown the way by “telling a bullying general where to get off.”
The General’s standing abroad is fast becoming dubious. The European Parliament has just censured his regime by approving Baroness Emma Nicolson’s highly critical report on situation in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. At home, the swashbuckling commando of yesteryears is ending up as a Shakespearean tragic comic character. Apparently suffering from a deep seated paranoid, he is becoming more of a megalomaniac in his utterances. Having totally failed to perform, he wants to extend his stay in power by his pep talk. Eight years too late—perhaps out of his sheer fear of being prosecuted at some stage for committing acts of treason under Article 6 –that he has now started parroting that he would not violate the Constitution any more. This declaration in an interview to a private TV channel was sort of music to the ears keeping in mind his present existence being out of non-Constitutional wedlock through an act punishable with death since he blatantly betrayed the oath that he had taken as an army officer to “uphold the Constitution”.
Good news—though too late in the day—is to know that he “respects” the Constitution but his actions speak louder than his pious profession. He made a clown of himself when he repeated that he would not allow both the exiled former prime ministers to return home and participate in elections without telling his viewers under what constitutional provision he could do that. How bankrupt his sense of proportion could be gauged from the fact that he wants the nation to believe that it is Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his PLM (Q) clowns that are running the country and ruining it beyond reprieve.
He is a self-appointed President of Pakistan but he has scant regard for the rules of business and protocol of conduct. His usurpation of the Presidential Office does not entitle him to demean the Constitution by compromising his Presidential neutrality by his regular participation in dubiously contrived PML-Q meetings, addressing its rallies, and actively directing its politics as if he is its ex-officio chairman. No surprise therefore, his international and domestic ratings have sunk lowest. In a poll, privately held, 29% of respondents picked Ms Bhutto and 21.6% Musharraf as h politician they most agreed with. Some analysts believe that the poll overstate the general's popularity, since Pakistanis are afraid to speak ill of their uniformed ruler to an unknown questioner. Also because almost every day the news papers are reporting blood-curdling tales of missing persons picked up by the agencies for obvious reasons.
The General has ‘promised’ to the nation that he would not break his ‘promises’ any more. He regretted that he had reneged on the promise to take off his uniform by 31st December, 2004. According to him, he had rolled back his promise because MMA had vitiated the political atmosphere. Any how for him, uniform is his second skin as he calls it now. To discard any skin—however useful or useless-- or to have it surgically removed -- is an excruciating experience. My view is that he would never like to be an anorchous Samson without his manly-power bearing hair. His uniform is what hair was to Samson.
The apex court would surely be approached by some one to save Pakistan army from the embarrassment of the day when it will have a COAS on wheel chair having outdone his normal tenure many times over. Now that the judiciary is finally on its own having rediscovered its lost spine, the regime will be at the receiving end of judicial whipping. Besides, the higher judiciary would no more be restrained by the imbecile executive to do away the two-time restriction on the prime ministerial candidate, graduation degree as a pre-requisite to contest elections and speedier judicial relief would be forthcoming to the two exiled prime ministers to enable them to return home to participate in the next polls. Not only that, no more would the superior judiciary condone the King’s Party to get away with its electoral rigging as it was allowed by the Chief Election Commissioner and the higher judiciary in 2004 elections.
Many analysts like the authors of Stratfor Intelligence Report on Pakistan, believes “General Musharraf will be forced to step aside, perhaps by the army itself. Failing this, he faces some distasteful choices. He can rig the election, as he did the 2002 referendum on his rule, though this would be certainly difficult against a pepped-up opposition. It might also annoy America, where support for him is flagging. According to Gary Ackerman, a Democrat who heads a Congressional panel on South Asia, “The truth is, for our goals to be achieved in Pakistan, there should be more than one phone number there to dial.”
A SMS message doing the rounds is interesting and it is worth reproducing here. It says Pakistan is a country where its Chief Justice is running from pillar to post to seek justice for himself and where its army chief, who is supposed to defend the country, has to lead a bunkered life to save and protect himself. And the General had to act against the Chief Justice to avert Pakistan from being declared a “failed state.”
Now Pervez Musharraf is caught up in a Catch-22 situation. The only exit route available to him is to call it a day and put in place an interim national government. He should be wise enough to show preference to preservation and not to sacrifice his first to save his second skin. His army colleagues should prevail on him to prevent him from going on a suicidal course that would even be too destructive for the entire military as an institution. They must beat a hasty retreat before the edge of precipice is crossed.