Saving the
Chief
By Col (Retd.) Riaz
Jafri
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Did I hear correctly a TV channel
saying that Aitzaz Ahsan asked the judges of the
Supreme Court to save their Chief by acting the
same way as the generals of the GHQ did on October
12, 1999 in saving their Chief when Nawaz Sharif
dismissed General Pervaiz Musharraf? The TV channel
went on to say that Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramaday
said that the judges can only act in accordance
with the law.
Mr. Aitzaz, if you really said it, you have lost
every bit of little respect that I had for you.
And, the Honourable Mr. Justice Ramaday, Sir,
I salute you.
****
Media Malaise
The way some of the media
men are behaving leaves much to be desired. They
seem to be gunning for the government on every
little excuse. They not only try to put words
into the mouth of the pro-government panellist
that they have not said, but also try to corner
them for having ‘meant’ that. A few
days back on the Capital Talk when Dr. Salman
Shah was enumerating the achievements of the government
and what all the budget stood to promise the poor
man, Hamid Meer, who drives a visible seditious
pleasure from his stinging remarks, interjected
saying “increase the poverty”, implying
the budget will increase the poverty. A totally
uncalled for and biased remark!
I don’t understand why does the government
feel the necessity of appearing on such biased
channels. It is the dire requirement of the media
to have government spokesmen with them to create
the desired interest in their shows and their
papers. May I, therefore, suggest to the government
and the pro-government elements to boycott the
biased TV channels/ print media. No one should
appear in any of their talk shows/discussions,
nor should they invite any one from the biased
media to their press conferences. If any one of
them does find his way to a press conference,
he should be conspicuously ignored. None of his/her
questions be replied with the remarks, ‘No
comments for you’. Just starve them for
the government’s point of view. The government
might think that by doing so they will give a
free hand to the biased media, but in reality
it would not be so and expose the hollowness of
all their propaganda against the government. As
the government would have made its intentions
of boycotting them known to the public amply and
effectively before hand, every one will read and
watch what all is said and written by them against
the government with a big question mark.
The reader and the viewer nowadays is intelligent
enough to see the reason for doing so. They soon
feel the absurdity of one-sided negative propaganda
by the biased TV channels and the papers and would
themselves ridicule the obvious. They will automatically
watch and read the ‘balanced’ channels
and the newspapers. The biased media men will
feel ostracised and outcast of the society, which
will be much more effective a tool than to impose
any restrictions upon them through the ordinances.
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