Guardians of morality
November 22nd, 2011
Mobile phone service providers across the country must, under orders from the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), prevent the texting, over the vast network system, of some 1,600 words and also submit a monthly report on this. The idea is to control morality. This, of course, is absurd and the entire exercise is also an obviously futile one. It boggles the mind to consider how this collection of ‘offensive language’ was compiled and by whom. We are under threat of becoming the laughing stock of the world. Some of the ‘banned’ words — such as ‘idiot’ or ‘fairy’ or ‘deeper’ can, of course, be used in an entirely innocuous fashion.
But this, of course, is besides the point. The problem we face here is not the ludicrousness of the measure taken, or the choice of words placed on the list, but the fact that such a measure has been taken at all. This is the first time the PTA has made any effort to control the content of text messages on grounds of controlling obscenity. The organisation has lately also made an effort to ban internet access to sites it deems pornographic — even though such material can be obtained in many different ways. The issue that arises here is the effort to bar free speech, free choice and impinge on the privacy of persons communicating between themselves. It is also a fact that what one individual sees as objectionable, may be perfectly acceptable to another. The judgment on this cannot, and must not, be dictated by an outside authority whose actions threaten to turn our country into an Orwellian State. Instead, communications authorities should focus their efforts on providing better and more efficient services to consumers rather than acting as a moral policing force.
We need more civil society protests. Some campaigners, such as the group, Bytes for All, have objected to the clampdown on freedom in cyber space. They need to be joined by other groups so that the basic principle of free expression can be upheld and we retain the right to call ourselves a full-fledged democracy.
Nawaz Sharif’s return to politics of vendetta
November 22nd, 2011
On November 20, the PML-N returned to its old vendetta style politics with the PPP and Nawaz Sharif asked the mammoth gathering at Faisalabad to elect his party again to get rid of a government that was steeped in corruption, had ‘sold the sovereignty’ to the Americans through a memo written by President Zardari and had betrayed the Kashmir cause by putting it on the back-burner for 10 years while allowing India the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status.
He contrasted his own period of governance in the 1990s with what he called dysfunctional governance under the PPP, saying how he had defied the Americans by testing the nuclear device, had achieved eight per cent growth to today’s two per cent and had built the motorway. He demanded inquiry into ‘the affair of the memo’ and threatened to go to the Supreme Court if it was not appropriately carried out. He hinted, while referring to the Pakistan Army in the affair of the memo in a positive manner, that he was ready to forget the past and coexist with the remnants of the Musharraf regime if midterm elections were made to materialised.
His hostile reference to Imran Khan, without naming him, seemed a kind of warning to the establishment against choosing Tehreek-e-Insaf as the next ruling party. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan appropriately filled in the blanks by explaining how a reconciliation with the army would be possible. The PML-N rally in Faisalabad seems to have set a tone of confrontation with the PPP, which has traditionally polarised the country and forced the smaller parties to line up according to who will offer them more bounties of shared power.
Nawaz Sharif is finally out of the intellectually attractive grey area of not wanting to destabilise the elected government and cause it to fall before its term. The lessons learnt from the ‘power chaos’ of the 1990s were conveniently forgotten on the misleading principle that the common voter is fundamentally a visceral human being with a Manichean world view, making moral decisions only in a battlefield environment: the PML-N will not be good if the PPP is also good; hence the PPP is the villain whose ouster by the PML-N will bring about the utopia Pakistan was originally promised but never permitted.
The reverse transformation of Nawaz Sharif was taking place gradually as the PPP in power got itself embroiled in corruption, got into trouble with the army and began to experience a peeling of the plasters in its Sindh edifice of power. The second echelon leaders of the PML-N, more pragmatic than Mr Sharif, never liked the intellectual posture of letting the PPP finish its tenure. They finally got him to come around to their way of thinking. They wanted him to return to the ‘Long March’-mode when he had taken to the road and got the judiciary restored. Now, the foil is off the rapier and the old toppling practice is back.
Sharif contradicted some earlier stances to appeal to his party’s conservative ranks and to its overall vote bank. His statements this year of normalising relations with India and taking big steps in the realm of economic contacts with it were laid aside as policy projection and the PPP was accused instead of letting the nation down on the Kashmir cause. Of late, he had already been uncomfortable with the right-wing reaction against the PPP’s grant of MFN status to India and he didn’t mind that his references to the ‘memo’ and India made him look as if he was realigning with the army — provided it looked with favour at the PML-N getting back in power.
Nawaz Sharif has his challenges stacked up against him. He wants quick elections because of the looming shadow of Imran Khan; he knows that the national economy is in the doldrums and this time around the Saudis might not come up with free oil; he is aware that non-state actors nurtured by the establishment will continue to insist on sharing power with him informally; he knows that he will have to continue to be anti-American for the sake of credibility, which will strengthen al Qaeda’s ability to call the shots and force him in an isolationist direction; and that he will have to cohabit with General Kayani despite mutual misgivings.