GENERAL MUSHARRAF'S ONLY
His drastic moves to charm Afghan President Karzai
too have failed and once again a war of accusations is on between the two. Reports
from
Going back to his image building exercise significance can be attached
to the free-and-frank discussions that he has held recently with leading
anchors of various TV channels and several prominent newspaper correspondents
and columnists. Officially described as off-the-record background briefings,
these have been something more than meets the eye. I would like to subscribe to
the view that these “briefings” were held in desperation as a final confidence
rebuilding measure to win over a media that has been rather having a raw deal
at the hands of the government.
Pakistan—declared as one of the most dangerous places for journalists
after Iraq and among the last of the countries that have least freedom of press—the
General--described as a guy dropping from the top floor when asked how he felt
in between —answered “so far so good” does not know what is in store for him
when he completes his fall and hits the ground. His latest series ‘in
confidence, off-the-record briefings’ with the members of the fourth estate—some
of them being highly respectable while quite a few of them also known as pen-pushers
of sorts—were reportedly given a guided tour by the President-General into the
realm of the missing citizens, judicial crisis, talk of his “deal” with PPP,
growing terrorism, shredding of the writ of the state and Lal
Masjid/Hafsa Taliban Seminary scandal.
Those who sat face-to-face with the once most powerful chief executive
found him to be different and worried person in search of a straw that could
save him from sinking in the quagmire of self-created problems. He lacked his
usual commando bravado and his self-confidence sounded under tremendous strain.
He sort of pleaded woefully with his learned audience: will it serve any
purpose if he re-arranged the chairs on the deck of his Titanic?
I am told not many had the courage to tell him point blank—all is lost
and that the best exit strategy for him would be—not to address the nation on
television to explain to them the causes that are nearing him to his fall but
to go on the screen and take the entire country and its people into confidence—not
by a rhetorical piece of Hitlerian demagoguery but by
a right-earnest speech full of substance even if was replete with confession
of his acts of omissions and facts of
his regime’s failures. He should accept that the country can not be saved by
the army alone. It shall have to be a national effort in totality and a
declaration of general amnesty for all political opponents from him will be in
order to usher in a national government of consensus with elections as the goal.
That perhaps is the only exit strategy available to him and the military.
General Musharraf
and his colleagues in Khaki must realise that army’s
image was never as soiled as it is now. As
such it has lost its capacity to keep the country together. Its use of fire
power in Northern Areas and Balochistan on war
footing has caused death to the civilians in thousands but it too has lost its
men—more than the number of troops lost by NATO in
One of my friends who attended the briefing told me that the man is
badly shaken and fears a fate either like that of Ayub
Khan whose own-appointed army chief refused to bring out troops to assist civil
authority for restoring law and order in the country at his asking or that of
General Zia. He was also of the view that the General
knows that before the year is out he will have to denude himself of his uniform.
Commonwealth Secretary General has already made it clear, so have others who
have influence on him. Anticipating that eventuality, he has decided to create
three military commands so that the power of an individual corps commander is
reduced much on the Indian pattern where scores of corps commanders are under a
regional commander thus deflating individual powers.
Now I come to the larger issue of media freedom. Though the General
never gets tired of parroting that he freed the media, the real freedom for the
fourth estate remains an elusive dream. We have known what the leading
newspaper group Nawai-i-Waqt had to suffer at the
hands of the regime that blatantly tried to dry up and squeeze its sources of
revenue, we have also been witness to the militarised
ransack of a Geo private TV channel in Islamabad last month and subsequent
tongue-in-cheek praise of Musharraf given media
freedom by its anchor. Pemra’s (government appointed
electronic media controlling authority) draconian action against Aaj TV channel for giving coverage to sacked Supreme Court
Chief Justice Iftekhar Choudhry,
Islamabad’s advertising clamp down on leading English newspapoer
Dawn, hurdles against it in setting up its English TV channel and its latent
censorship of news about Balochistan—are the issues
that have brought into world focus the deplorable plight of media in Pakistan
despite GPM’s tall claims.
Treatment of Aaj TV has been condemned “as a
blatant attempt by the government to curtail media freedom and freedom of
expression,” the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said in a
recent statement. “It is quite evident that the government is unhappy and
irritated with the openness with which Aaj has
allowed various opinions to be aired.” The
New York-based “Committee To Protect Journalists” also
saw the pressure on the medias as part of a larger pattern to silence critics
of the government. CPJ has released a copy of a letter sent to Musharraf, in which it also referred to an accusation by
the Dawn Group that the government was withholding a television broadcast
license, and had stopped placing advertisements with the group because of the
newspaper’s critical coverage. “The action taken by your government against Aaj and the Dawn Group, along with the attack on Geo,
appear to be part of a pattern of intimidation to silence your critics,” Joel
Simon, CPJ’s executive director, said in his letter.
While the print media has always survived under governmental duress, now
the regime is directing all its efforts to control the electronic media since
it is likely to play a major role in its down fall. It has successfully managed
the print media by infiltrating its own pen pushers to disseminate its dis-information, its thrust to
have its scavengers planted in the electronic media is understandable. All
anchors and programmers who tend to be pliable will have to be kept under the
scrutiny of the viewers and professional critics to discern their concealed
orchestration of the establishment’s line. Even some of the most popular
presenters some time let their “secret links” obvious by their line of
questioning their guests—especially leaders like former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif—in order to rope
them in into a question-trap doled out to them by their invisible and obliging
patrons.
* Wajid Shamsul Hasan is Pakistan’s Ex High Commissioner at the UK