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strategy Waiting
to be heard Taal
Matol monitoring Clueless in
Khyber RIPPLE EFFECT Political analysts might think that the decision to boycott was not too realistic but, a few days before the polls, APDM strongly defends its position By Aoun Sahi The All Parties Democratic
Movement, (APDM) a coalition of more than 25 political parties, led by According to Ameerul Azeem, spokesperson of Jamaat-e- Islami, none of the political parties -- except PML-Q and MQM -- is ready to accept that the present election commission is competent to held free and fair elections. "With the caretaker government only a continuation of PML-Q and its allies and president re-elected already, it is clear to all opposition parties including PPP, PML-N, and ANP that the elections are going to be massively rigged. I am unable to understand why are they taking part in these elections?" "Pakistan is being governed by a 'permanent martial law body' in the shape of National Security Council (NSC) and what can they [PPP, PML-N] do even if they get a majority in the next parliament," says Azeem while talking to TNS. The PPP does not agree.
"We think those who are not taking part in election are directly
facilitating Elections have always been welcomed by political parties, he says. "In 1935, under the India Act both the Congress and the Muslim League took part in elections. Both the parties at that time were striving hard to get rid of British Raj. They did so because elections are the only way to bring change," Bukhari says. According to him, most of the parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and Tehreek-e-Insaf are boycotting the elections to save face. "Both the parties would have been exposed if they did because they have no penetration among the voters." Why did they take part in the 2002 election when the situation was even worse, he questions. "We are really sad that parties like National Party, Balochistan National Party and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, which have their vote bank intact in Balochistan, are boycotting which is going to bring unwanted representatives in the parliament from some constituencies of Balochistan." Ameerul Azeem does not think the situation in 2002 election was worse. "We are not against the elections per se but against the way these elections are being administered. President's reelection and imposition of emergency to have a judiciary of Musharraf's choice are new phenomenon that were not there in 2002." Azeem thinks if the present elections are contested, subsequent elections will be 'controlled' like the ones in Afghanistan, Syria and Egypt. Sajjad Bukahri is of the
opinion that if true representative parties of people did not take part in Political analysts think that after PML-N announced to take part in the election, APDM's decision to boycott became irrelevant. "If you look at the composition of APDM, you will find that majority of the parties are regional parties of Sindh and Balochistan, without a huge following," says Rasool Bakhsh Rais professor at LUMS. There is also not much difference on issues like upholding the constitution and the independence of judiciary between parties contesting or boycotting the elections, he says. "Even Benazir Bhutto, with some ambiguity, wanted an independent judiciary." Rais is of the view that once the PPP and PML-N had decided to go for elections, all other political parties should have followed. According to him much depends on the post-election scenario. "If nothing happens to the judiciary and the next parliament endorses Musharraf's acts, then APDM's movement may gain real momentum." Rais says the Baloch nationalist parties are using the boycott card very well. "They have their motives and are using APDM platform really well to highlight their issues. Baloch people are very angry with the centre on issues like the killing of Akbar Bugti. That is why they are not ready to show any sign of confidence in the present regime." At the same time, Rais considers it disappointing that two mainstream parties -- PPP and PML-N -- have failed to create a consensus with Baloch nationalist parties. For him it is not a new thing that political parties with totally different agendas are working successfully from the same platform. "In the Anti-Ayub movement all sorts of political parties -- secular, rightist, leftist, nationalist, regional and mainstream -- worked together and then the political parties' movement against Z.A Bhutto was also a combination of all types of political parties. I do not think that the difference of philosophy will create a problem among APDM ranks because they have similar motives." The APDM leadership thinks it will emerge as the main beneficiary of these elections. "If the elections are rigged, which they will be, all mainstream political forces who have already announced to launch protests will have to join us. If the real representatives of people are allowed to come in parliaments and they work for the empowerment of the constitution and the restoration of judiciary, APDM will be the first to welcome and support them," says Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch, central leader of APDM and chairman National Party. He does not agree that they are depriving the people of Balochistan of a voice in the parliament by boycotting the elections. " The parliament is one forum to raise your voice while there are many others that you can use for the same purpose," he says. Dr Hayee warns of a civil war in the country if the system based on equity and justice is not enforced. "APDM demands an end to the role of intelligence agencies and military in politics, supremacy of the constitution and the parliament, rule of law, independence of judiciary and peoples' rights over their resources. If Musharraf wants to save Pakistan, he should resign as president, abolish the National Security Council and hand over power to the real representatives of the people." According to Hayee elections under Musharraf mean nothing as they will bring no change for the people. In its last hearing, the SC had fixed Nov 13 as the deadline regarding the missing persons' whereabouts By Naveed Ahmad Back in October, there were 485 missing persons' cases before the Supreme Court larger bench. Three months down the road, 515 families wait for the new Supreme Court team to resume hearing of their cases. The last hearing in the
missing persons' case took place on Nov 1, just two days before General In that last hearing, the judges had warned the government to meet the Nov 13 deadline for bringing the citizens to public light or giving information about their whereabouts. The Supreme Court had even asked that cases be framed against those who were required by the security and intelligence agencies. The superior court, however, warned the government that any excuses or delaying tactics on Nov 13 hearing would result in summoning of the heads of intelligence agencies before the court, an unprecedented move in the country's history. Earlier, the apex court had also recorded the statements of the 'released' and 'traced' persons in public hearing such as Abdul Basit, Hafiz Tahir, Aleem Nasir, Dr Imran Munir, Dr. Sufder Sirki, Siddique-e-Akber, Obaidullah and Osama Nazir. Amina Masood Janjua, wife of Masood Janjua, who is spearheading the missing persons' campaign said, "The desolate families of missing persons, who were counting each day for the return of the loved-ones, are once again shattered." She said that the attorney general and his team were always found engaged in delaying tactics while the case was being heard. The Supreme Court was flooded with evidences and first-hand accounts of missing persons sighted in detention centres being run by the intelligence agencies across the country. For example, Dr Imran Munir who went missing and was recovered also recorded a 10-page statement in which he recollected the treatment meted to him in one of the intelligence agencies' detention centres in a bid to allegedly seek a confession of spying for some enemy country from him. Dr Imran Munir had categorically stated in his affidavit that he had seen Masood Janjua in the custody of an intelligence agency. Based on such evidence and other corresponding information, the Supreme Court had given the deadline of Nov 13 for production of Masood Janjua and many others. Ever since CJP Chaudhry was detained in his residence, the missing persons' case has not been taken up by the apex court. Amina hopes to "continue their struggle and peaceful protests come what may". She said, "We are badly hurt by the disastrous steps taken by Musharraf, but we'll take every possible measure to exert pressure on his government." Over the past three years, these families mustered the support of the media, human rights organisations and civil society the world over. With the sudden deterioration in the political situation and the legal door virtually shut on them, the families of missing persons are meeting opposition politicians such as Nawaz Sharif. Late PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto too had pledged to meet the missing persons' families in Rawalpindi. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Imran Khan are also in constant touch with these families. Amina Masood and other families of the missing persons have been contacted by the human rights watchdogs such as Amnesty International and Cage Prisoners for taking up the matter to international courts. According to the missing persons' families, attorneys are working on their petitions which would be put before the international judicial bodies soon. Meanwhile the condition of the missing persons' families has gone from bad to worse. "It is really hard to manage the business as well as struggle for the release of my husband," said Amina. She said that often her college-going sons have to look after an information technology institute her missing husband used to manage. Similarly, Faisal Faraz's aging mother has been through worst times ever since her son went missing along with Masood Janjua. Her mental as well as physical condition is far from normal. The parents of Atiq-ur-Rahman, who went missing from Abbotabad on his wedding day, are the worst hit as both have lost their mental balance. Atiq's young brother could not survive the alleged harassment by the police and was poisoned to death, according to Defence of Human Rights. The loss of their second son has overwhelmed the already shattered family; his mother, father and elder sister have lost consciousness. By Shoaib Hashmi It is the old and normal word in our language for glass, and over the centuries when glass was a rare and precious commodity it took on more romantic connotations -- sheesha became the word for a flagon, or a delicate little glass of wine. More recently, starting in the Gulf and getting to us it has become the word for a peculiar variety of hookah. Unlike the real he-man hookah of the Punjabi countryside, this is a namby pamby little affair, made of decorated glass, and instead of tobacco they use some concoction which produces lots of smoke and plenty of perfume and nothing more. As an unrepentant and
serious smoker of fifty years standing, I will swear in any court that it is
a lot So what have they gone and done? They have banned the sheesha in all the teenage coffee shops in DHA and imposed a midnight curfew on the shops. The excuse is that lots of fool parents of kids living in Defence have complained that the sheesha is injurious to health and the youngsters can hurt themselves especially if they stay out after midnight smoking. I must admit I have mixed feelings about the affair. In the first place, no one has presented any evidence that the stuff is actually harmful. In fact no one has scientifically investigated it anywhere in the world, I have even thought about it and I found it a tasteless and harmless and charmless breathing in and out, probably to be recommended because it keeps the kids out of outside air which is full of petrol and diesel fumes. Besides they are much more liable to be knocked down by one of their parents driving like fools! Only Naom Chomsky was, I think, once wise enough while commenting on the American attitude to drugs to point out that perhaps America would be wiser to try and dissuade its own people from using drugs, instead of spending millions bombing poppy fields all over the third world to stop production. Maybe the same syndrome is at work here. Obviously the objecting parents are unable to get their loutish kids to come home at a decent hour, so they go right ahead and spread wild rumours about a harmless substance, create a fuss and browbeat the cafe owners to shut down early, and spoil the kids fun into the bargain. If you sense a certain sneaky self-serving streak in my tirade, you are right. I have never forgiven you people for starting a totally unfounded campaign against smoking, and making us smokers feel like lepers all over the world with your bigoted slogans. What I would really like is for someone to make a serious study of whether your ministry of health idiocy has actually managed to reduce the modicum of smoking. It hasn't. It has just managed to take some of the pleasure out of it for us. At least the vegetarians have had the decency not to spread a vile rumour that flesh is bad for you! Majority of the international observers are going to watch only one phase -- poll day freedom. For an analysis of the two other phases, they will be dependent on second hand information By Nadeem Iqbal Contrary to the exaggerated claims of the government that elections can not be rigged in the presence of a large number of international observers, there are either very few international observers present in the country or they have a very limited scope to observe the whole election process. According to international
standards, election observation is a whole process that includes observing The foreign office spokesperson said that around 500 observers from abroad and foreign mission are to observe the Feb 18 elections. These include 35 observers from Democracy International Inc (DII) USA, four from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) , eight observers from Pakistani American Leadership, four observers from South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), and the largest numbers of observers, 110 from the European Union. (EU) US Senators (Senator John Kerry, Senator Joseph Bidden and Senator Chuck Hagel) and Congress members (Sheila Jackson Lee, Elton Gallegly and Jane Harmen) are also on their way. In addition, around 500 foreign journalists are also to cover the elections. Majority of these observers are going to watch only one phase. For an analysis of the two other phases, they will be dependent on second hand information and will not have direct access to primary source at the grass root. In addition, the official restrictions citing security environment has virtually curtailed the observers' option of conducting unannounced surprise visits to polling stations and exit-polling at polling stations. Justifying this, the
Foreign Office spokesperson said, "there has never been any practice of
exit polls Therefore, although the American International Republican Institute belonging to Republican Party has conducted five national public opinion surveys since 2002, it is no longer undertaking this activity. Its June 13-July 3, 2007 poll showed that a majority of Pakistani voters believed that the country is moving in the wrong direction and that they are dissatisfied with President Pervez Musharraf. While its January 19-29, 2008 survey of 3,485 adult men and women found that the PPP was on top with 50 per cent votes, PML-N was second with 22 per cent and PML-Q came in third with 14 per cent votes. These findings were attested by a parallel survey conducted by another American NGO, Terror Free Tomorrow. Taking strong exception to these findings, an official spokesman said that the polls released were an unfortunate attempt by these organisations to distort realities and mislead the people of Pakistan on a very sensitive and important subject at a time when the nation is anxiously looking for the upcoming elections to decide its future destiny. IRI has now gone into hibernation and will come out only after the elections, making its analysis on the basis of the political parties' feedback. Another organisation that has suspended its activities half way is National Democratic Institute belonging to American Democratic Party. Its October 2007 assessment and an earlier NDI mission in May identified critical issues that needed to be addressed by the Pakistani government to improve the inclusiveness and credibility of the election process. This has left only two foreign election observers from EU and the Democracy International, USA, in the field. Democracy International says that it is sending the 40 member mission on the request of the US government while EU claims that it has been requested by the government of Pakistan. It is not clear if these organisations have signed any MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the government of Pakistan. As in its report released after observing 2002 elections in Pakistan, the EU election observer mission (EUEOM) said that although President Musharraf extended a verbal invitation to EU observers, it was not followed by a formal invitation and the Pakistan government declined to sign an MOU that created logistical problems for the EUEOM, preventing it from being able to implement its full deployment plan. In 2002, EUEOM could send its 88 core, long and short term observers to only 483 polling stations in 23 districts. It concluded that "Any abuse of power, whether for monetary gain or anything else, should be addressed by firm and impartial application of the rule of law, not by unjustified interference with electoral arrangements and the democratic process. Regrettably, in choosing the latter course, the Pakistan authorities engaged in a course of action which resulted in serious flaws in the electoral process." Now EUEOM is here again to observe elections with reference to assessing the impartiality of the election commission; degree of freedom to political parties and candidates to assemble and express their views, universal franchise afforded to voters, the fairness of access to state resources including political parties' access to state media; conduct and counting of polls etc. But whether EUEOM would be able to cover a larger area is a big question mark given the fact that as per 'Guidelines for Facilitation of International Election Observers (IEOS) and Media Personnel (MPS)' issued by the Pakistan government, these observers can not move without the coordination of the government officials or those belonging to Election Commission. There are some local observers as the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), a coalition of thirty leading Pakistani civil society organisations, whose establishment was facilitated by Asia Foundation with the support of a donors' consortium including the governments of the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, as well as Australia. Established in 2006, it is to observe the election process, educate voters, and advocate for electoral and democratic reform. It has deployed co-ordinators in more than 264 National Assembly constituencies across the country to observe all aspects of the election process. Since Nov 2007, these observers send weekly election updates to the FAFEN in Islamabad. An official of FAFEN told TNS that, "by election day, the number of its observers would reach to 20,000 covering 45,000 polling stations out of total 65,000. All these observers are trained on how to be a neutral onlooker and have specially designed form that they fill and send it to FAFEN." But despite this elaborate system, the FAFEN official said that the reports based on observations from field reflects up to 60 per cent of reality. To the question of how would FAFEN observers enter the polling station if the election commission does not issue accreditation cards, he said that he hopes that the district returning officers comprising local judiciary would listen to Election Commission's instructions in time. In its recent election update, FAFEN said that still as many as 15 million voters (17.65 per cent of an estimated 87.5 million citizens of voting age) may still be missing from the Final Electoral Roll (FER), while 7.5 million voters on the FER (9.30 per cent of 81 million records) may be listed more than once and: 1.26 million CNIC numbers (1.55 per cent of 81 million FER records) may be listed more than once. Pakistan Coalition for Free and Fair Democratic Elections (PACFREL) is another broad coalition of Pakistani national civil society organisations that is working on similar lines. Bound by code There are rising concerns that the findings of these international observers are coded by their respective state interest. It may be so, but all the observers have to observe a code of ethics and the mostly referred code is the 'Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and Code of Conduct for International Election Observers.' Among the observers in Pakistan who have endorsed this document include IRI, NDI and EU. The code stressing upon the neutrality of the observers says: "International election observation is: the systematic, comprehensive and accurate gathering of information concerning the laws, processes and institutions related to the conduct of elections and other factors concerning the overall electoral environment; the impartial and professional analysis of such information; and the drawing of conclusions about the character of electoral processes based on the highest standards for accuracy of information and impartiality of analysis." It further says: "International election observation evaluates pre-election, election-day and post-election periods through comprehensive, long-term observation, employing a variety of techniques. As part of these efforts, specialised observation missions may examine limited pre-election or post-election issues and specific processes (such as, delimitation of election districts, voter registration, use of electronic technologies and functioning of electoral complaint mechanisms). Stand-alone, specialised observation missions may also be employed, as long as such missions make clear public statements that their activities and conclusions are limited in scope and that they draw no conclusions about the overall election process based on such limited activities. All observer missions must make concerted efforts to place the election day into its context and not to over-emphasize the importance of election day observations." -- N.Iqbal
The kidnapping of Tariq Azizuddin is the first incident of its kind in the country's entire diplomatic history By Javed Aziz Khan Feb 11 was the a field day for kidnappers. Among others who were kidnapped was Pakistan's envoy to Kabul, Tariq Azizuddin. Two senior officials of the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan, tasked to carry out a geological survey, Principal Technician, Ziauddin and Junior Technician, Bisat Khan, and an assistant director of the Fisheries Department were kidnapped from Lakki Marwat and Bannu. Though the inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) denied the disappearance of a senior army officer, police and other law enforcing agencies were alerted after reports of missing of a brigadier on the same day. The kidnapping of Tariq
Azizuddin, the first ever incident of its kind in the country's entire
diplomatic The tense Frontier Police, especially the city police, were the only people who were relieved when it was confirmed the envoy went missing between Ali Masjid and Jamrud and not from Peshawar. The force was worried initially because Tariq had visited a relative in University Town area of the provincial metropolis before leaving for Afghanistan the same day when he disappeared. Tariq Azizuddin, 57, who hails from a Pakhtun tribe and can fluently speak Persian, had been appointed Ambassador to Kabul on Oct 26, 2005 but he took charge of the Pakistan embassy in Afghanistan in Dec 2005. Before that, he was chief of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Apart from serving as ambassador to Sarajevo between 2001 and 2004, Tariq remained Counsel General at the Pakistani Consulate in Los Angeles. He had also served in Manchester, Cairo and Kuala Lumpur. The mainstream organisations of the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud, has denied their involvement in picking up the ambassador but a previously unheard group of militants claimed to have committed the crime. A foreign media organisation reported the group has demanded the handing over of Mansoor Dadullah, who was arrested by the security forces in wounded condition after exchange of fire near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Balochistan the same day, against the release of Tariq Azizuddin. The fact, however, is that the militants have no say in Khyber Agency and the only known group in the area is Mangal Bagh-led Lashkar-e-Islam. The organisation is said to be pro-administration and has taken a number of steps against the kidnappers and other criminals involved in different crimes. The law and order situation in the agency is also better as compared to the past. Kabul too expressed its concern over the reported kidnapping of the envoy. "I am concerned. I hope he is safe. I hope he will be released soon," said Afghan President Hamid Karzai. President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro have directed the law enforcement agencies to take every measure for the early and safe recovery of Azizuddin The federal government, law enforcing agencies and the political administration of Khyber Agency were making hectic efforts to trace the hideout where the envoy has been kept but their initial efforts proved a complete failure. Two officials of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) went missing from the same area for over two weeks. The family of one of the missing men had received a call from the Taliban who did not make any demand but admitted that Gulzar, the ICRC field officer, was in their captivity. The officials were later recovered during a raid made by law enforcement agencies. Khyber Agency is not the only place where kidnappings are being reported. High-profile kidnappings have been taking place in most parts of the province and FATA in the recent past. Those who have been kidnapped in the last few weeks, include former provincial minister Qari Mahmood, former MNA Maulana Sadiq, Senator Rashid, grandson of Nawab of Bajaur, several policemen and innumerable others.
RIPPLE
EFFECT By Omar R. Quraishi Bias is found in media everywhere and in fact it may not necessarily be such a bad thing. However, it can be a bad thing if the bias is allowed to get into the way of one's reporting and/or editorial judgments and even worse if this happens in a manner that the writer/reporter/editor/journalist does not even realise it. A good website for exploring this subconscious and presumed bias is media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.fair.org) which closely scrutinises the conduct of the mainstream US media in its coverage of various national and international issues. For instance, it cites a report of Jan 27 on what is a very popular TV show -- 60 minutes on the CBS network -- by Scott Pelley who tried to convey the impression to the audience that Saddam Hussein was mostly responsible for the ravages of war and invasion on his nation because he chose not to tell the rest of the world that Iraq actually did not have the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) which the west, and particularly America, was accusing it of. FAIR quoted the 60 minutes report and the reporter's overview summed up in the following sentence is particularly telling: "For a man who drew America into two ears and countless military engagements, we never really knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking". He asked the following questions: 1. What happened to Iraq's WMDs? 2. Was Saddam actually in league with al-Qaeda -- a claim pressed by people like Dick Cheney and then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and used by the US to justify the invasion. Such a line of questioning/reasoning in fact presumes that it was the Iraqi leader who wanted war with US and not the other way round at all -- again not questioning a myth perpetuated (and disseminated by the mainstream US media) by the American military-industrial complex. The website pointed out that the reporter didn't have to look beyond his own network since it had carried a detailed exclusive interview of Saddam in which he repeatedly said that the WMDs had all been destroyed. Further, CBS also carried an interview of Saddam's primary interrogator, FBI agent Robert Piro, who quoted Saddam as telling him pretty much the same thing. To its credit, FAIR quotes from the interview's transcript, pointing out that Saddam had told Piro that the WMDs had been destroyed by UN weapons inspectors in the 1990s and that those which had not been destroyed by the inspectors were dismantled unilaterally by Iraq. Following this, Piro was asked that why then did Saddam not take measures to prevent the US from attacking Iraq -- the inference being given that perhaps Saddam wanted his country to be invaded. Of course, this necessarily implies that somehow America didn't want to be dragged into the whole affair and that it was a reluctant participant who had to do what had to be done -- and hence it could lay claim on moral high ground. As FAIR points out, Saddam and other senior Iraqi officials had time and again said that Iraq's stockpile of WMDs had been dismantled and furthermore they kept denying allegations from the Bush administration that Baghdad had in place a missile delivery system. In fact, it was on CBS itself that Saddam had given an exclusive interview -- to none other than Dan Rather -- on the eve of the war, saying that all WMDs had been destroyed, To quote the dead president: "I think America and the world also knows that Iraq no longer has the weapons. And I believe the mobilization that's been done was, in fact, done partly to cover the huge lie that was being waged against Iraq about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. That is why, when you talk about such missiles, these missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations in Iraq. They are no longer there." FAIR put it very well when it wrote of CBS's seemingly fickle editorial policy: "Before the invasion, CBS's line was that Iraq was hiding prohibited weapons, and Saddam Hussein was lying about it. Now it maintains that Iraq did not have those weapons... and Saddam Hussein was lying about it. Is it really too much to ask that the network look back at their own coverage of five years ago?" *********** A couple of recent surveys, carried out by the International Republican Institute and Terror Free Tomorrow, both US-based organisations seem to have hit a raw nerve with the government. The reason obviously had to do with the damning indictment both made of President Pervez Musharraf and his government's policies, and also perhaps because according to them the PPP and the PML-N would win enough votes to form a comfortable coalition government after the election. Among the things they revealed was that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed felt that the president should step down from office. A government spokesman said that the surveys were "an unfortunate attempt to distort realities and mislead the people". The comments proved to be a good example of the adage that sometimes it is better not to speak at all rather than risk making a complete fool of oneself. And one says that because conducting such opinion polls is a proper science and that the results tend to be more or less accurate, with a reasonable margin of error (which usually doesn't go beyond a few percentage points above and below the predicted outcome). Of course, there have been exceptions but these tend to happen when say an electoral race between two candidates is more or less a dead heat. As for the scientific part, given that it is impractical and immensely costly to survey each and every member of the population, the mathematical science of statistics makes it possible for opinion polls and surveys to be accurate despite polling a relatively small percentage of the population. For instance, opinion polls routinely conducted in the US or Britain tend to question, at the most, a few thousand people. America has a population of around 300 population and despite this the results tend to be more or less reflective of the overall population -- and the reason for that is that the sample that is surveyed is representative of the entire population. Well-known organisations like Gallup and Nielsen have made a name for themselves all over the world in holding such surveys and by and large their results have tended to be accurate. Keeping all this in mind, it was more than comical to see the government spokesman take issue with precisely this point -- saying that the surveys could not be credible because they surveyed a few thousand people out of a population of over 160 million. As a colleague at work said the other day, polling the entire population would be an election and clearly this is a point that seems to have escaped the government and its various spokesmen. This particular spokesman also said that it was difficult to understand what prompted the two organisations to "dispute the popularity of President Pervez Musharraf". Surely, the spokesman did not hear the president himself publicly admit that his popularity was on the reaction. And then the spokesman indulged in downright dishonesty when he said that the IRI was "rejected by the people earlier" and that it had "packed up its offices" out of 'fear' from the people because of releasing "such fabricated surveys in the past". Clearly, this government spokesman and other spokesmen need to take a walk on the streets of cities and towns of Pakistan to really get a sense of how popular -- or not -- the president and his government are. The spokesman also had the cheek to say that the government would ask managements of newspapers to "exercise their editorial judgement in an objective manner before assigning any credit to such unrepresentative surveys". Again, the entire point was missed -- papers like this one and others like Dawn, Nation and The Daily Times carried the results of these surveys prominently precisely because their editors were aware of their responsibilities that they needed to exercise their editorial judgement in as objective and independent a manner as they could. Maybe instead of saying all this hogwash, the spokesman could have simply come out with the truth and said that the government doesn't like it one bit when the results of such surveys are displayed prominently by the print media. The only question worth asking that arises from this is whether those who spread this propaganda actually believe in it or do so because of lack of any other feasible alternative. At the very least, they should know that calling day night doesn't make it day and that people will see through official propaganda if the situation is such that very few will be inclined to believe the government line. The
writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News. Email:
omarq@cyber.net.pk
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Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami
Party (PKMAP) and National Party (NP) are canvassing hard and holding rallies
throughout Pakistan to convince people not to vote in the election. APDM
justifies its decision to boycott by saying that taking part in the present
election means legitimising all unconstitutional acts of President Musharraf
-- including his election from the same parliament for two terms, imposition
of emergency and sacking of the judiciary.
President Musharraf. The present regime wants minimum turn-out because it
suits the king's party. Otherwise PPP will clean sweep the elections,"
says PPP deputy information secretary, Senator Sajjad Bukhari.
elections, the king's party would easily win a two third majority without
rigging and the next parliament would have legitimised Musharraf's
unconstitutional acts. "If the PPP wins majority in the election, it
will never give parliamentary cover to Musharraf's acts. We will also undo
all the 'unconstitutional' amendments in the 1973 constitution and restore it
to its true spirit."
Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency in the country and issued his second
Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) seeking a fresh oath of allegiance
from selected judges.
of hot air and no more; there is none of the nicotine and tar which have
given cigarettes a bad name, and the clouds of smoke that issues, and gives
the smoker vicarious thrills is just a lot of coloured air. Most certainly it
has no harmful effect, or else the whole area of the Gulf would have been one
big infirmary!
the pre poll environment, poll day freedom and post election transfer of
power to the majority vote-getter. Many of the observers are not undertaking
to observe all these three phases.
either in Pakistan or any country in the region. Exit poll can confuse the
voters. It is also not needed when the process is fully transparent and
conducted in the process of polling agents of the candidates."
history, overshadowed the other high-profile incident and the government had
to focus on an early safe recovery of the envoy who took a risk by opting to
travel on Jamrud-Jalalabad Highway instead of taking a flight. Furthermore,
the envoy is said to have never asked for any escort that is normally
provided to all the VIPs while travelling in areas infamous for criminal
activities.