Why silence the press
Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
Early morning a van drops five men at the corner of two not-so-busy roads in the capital. They all wear police uniforms. One has a newspaper in hand. It is so cold that their breath can be seen in the air. They rub their hands, look around and stand under a tree where the slanting rays of morning sun provide a streak of warmth. This is the beginning of a long day for them.
After settling down, they divide the pages of the newspaper among them and read, exchanging occasional comments about the news items. They are all on duty. Their job is to keep an eye on the would-be terrorists. But they are human beings who have left their warm beds for the sake of a salary which will not even pay for the house rent and a career which will not take them anywhere. The pages make rounds among the five and when they have all read the main news items, the urgency of knowing what had happened during the previous day is gone and they start looking forward to a cup of tea which one of them would soon fetch from a corner kiosk.
Elsewhere, in hundreds of offices, shops and houses, millions of men, women and children wake up to the presence of large-size folded papers which hawkers had thrown in their offices or houses through small cracks. These pages are their morning window to news about the world they cohabit with millions of other men, women and children.
This daily routine is followed, day after day, throughout the world, by millions of human beings who have come to regard the institution of press as the most important development of the 20th century. Habit, need and an established routine play such a decisive role that on days when there is no newspaper, one feels as if the day has not started. An almost subconscious need to confirm that the world had been going around in its own manner when one slept, the necessity of finding details about commodities and merchandise and the concern for one's safety combine to make the morning habit of reading newspaper the most pervading collective routine of millions of human beings.
All of this has given a tremendous potency to the press. The inherent power of the written word together with the receptivity of minds just waking up from a night of refreshing sleep and the impact of receiving a news for the first time are the latent forces which work behind the unique role newspapers play in modern times.
Examples of the power of the press abound. Creative journalism has brought down mighty dictators and powerful regimes have been brought to knees by the power of pen. Presidents, prime ministers and other elected and non-elected rulers have been humbled by the press and there are cases where a single phrase, a cartoon or a picture has broken the will of strong men.
It is because of this power that the present government of Mr Sharif cannot stand the freedom of the press in Pakistan. He knows that the policemen standing on the corner of two not-so-busy roads of the capital start their day by reading the newspaper as do millions of other men, women and children. He knows that from government offices to private shops and from factories to roadside kiosks, the whole country wakes up to a routine of reading newspapers thus giving these papers a parallel power to his rule. He knows that he cannot change the habit of millions of people, but he also knows that newspapers are printed on newsprint and newsprint he can control.
One only has to look at the evolution of Mr Sharif's public career to know why the press must be silenced. No, I am not attempting a psychoanalysis of the man who has become the most "powerful" elected ruler of Pakistan in its 51-year history. I am simply pointing toward basic, well-known, facts.
Brought back to power rather abruptly due to a botched plan of Farooq Khan Leghari, Mr Sharif lost no time in moving toward appropriation of power from all other institutions of the state. He had reasons. His experience had taught him that unless he had absolute power, he could not survive in a country where politics is based on raw force and money. He had had more than ten years of experience in the corridors of power during which he learned firsthand from his mentor that in Pakistani politics one's loyalty has to be with the chair, not with the person who sits on it.
Thus he was quick to sidetrack the only gentleman prime minister this country had by getting a few dozen people who threw stones and forks on the poor man and despatched him to Sindhri to die as a broken man. He won his first battle rather quickly and gained the wide berth of Muslim League and the ticket to Islamabad. Next came the confrontation with the coldblooded and seasoned dictator of sorts, Ghulam Ishaq Khan who succeeded in bruising him in return in a reckless fight of mutual extinction which destroyed much of the sanctity attached to certain institutions.
But these experiences were not useless. For when Mr Sharif returned to power through a mandate so heavy that he had no use of any heavyweights from downtown Rawalpindi, he clearly knew what to do. Of course the man from Choti had to be removed before anything could be done. If he could do what he did to his own party leader, nothing could be taken for granted. But that was no problem, a cool trip to Choti and the game was over for Mr Leghari.
But it was not over for Mr Sharif and he knew it. Somewhere in his psyche, there is a driving force which demands that everything has to be done quickly. It is an imbalance of sorts which does not let him relax. His commands have to be fulfilled as soon as they are uttered. This mode of behaviour amounts to assuming that unless he gets everything done instantaneously, it is worthless. Like a child who insists that he won't sleep until his favourite toy is brought to him in the dead of the night when all shops are closed, Mr Sharif insists that courts have to decide cases within 72 hours, bureaucracy has to move instantaneously and parliament has to enact laws within hours.
Mr Sharif knows well that he has appropriated more power than any other elected ruler of this country. But he believes that he has a mission to accomplish. And rightly or wrongly, he is convinced that he can only accomplish his mission in haste and only if there are no independent voices in his way. He tasted the sweet fruits of his power when he quickly subdued state institutions one after the other. He appointed Saifs and Chaudhries, made and broke careers at will and all of this produced a sense of movement and accomplishment. His appointees appropriated power in his name and the organs of state started the cleaning operation which silenced grumbling voices. Bureaucracy was humbled, opposition was virtually eliminated, a jungle of legal battles and dynamics of a family separated into husband, wife and children confined in three different spheres took care of Benazir Bhutto. There was no one else left, and in that glorious void, he had the freedom to plant the seeds of a new dynasty.
But it was not to be. There was a chief justice who had got some notions about the independence of judiciary. Then there was an army chief who started to think aloud and, worst of all, there were some newspapers who employed some journalists who insisted on using their own heads. Mr Sharif knew how to handle the chief justice and the army chief and managed that part quickly. But the newspapers and the journalists were another story.
Journalists are, after all, men and women who live within the confines of a state which has been turned into private dynasty. How could they still insist that they have a brain which has certain rights and demands. This was simply intolerable in a state where no one has the right to use such dangerous organs. And now that he has removed all obstacles, he cannot let such little, insignificant irritants as the press stand in his way. That is why the press has to be silenced. The press has to be humbled simply because it is the last unsubdued force, the last dying voice of a collective amnesia, the intolerable babel of a few minds who refuse to submit to the glory of a rising dynasty.