At issue are allegations of poll-rigging in the NA-110 Gujranwala by elections.
Yesterday, Tariq Butt reported on alleged incidents at the poll based on sources at the scene including police. While his report is largely a simple re-telling of the story as reported by sources, the article carries the sensational headline: “Inside story of how a poll was rigged, and saved”. This headline accepts that there was some misdeed – poll rigging – without allowing the proper course of justice to take place. A more appropriate headline would be “Allegations of poll rigging” or “Accusations of poll rigging mar by elections in NA-110″.
Despite a lack of proof or allowing the proper process of justice to take place, self-appointed judge and jury Ansar Abbasi accepts the prosecutorial headline of Tariq Butt’s column and declares a verdict as the ECP has asked to lodge a FIR.
FIR stands for “First Information Report” and is a report prepared by police when they receive information about an alleged incident. It is, as the title of the report says, first information only. It is not a conviction nor is it any proof of misdeeds.
But the way Ansar Abbasi reports the situation, a reader is likely to come away accepting that the accused are guilty and already convicted.
To the great embarrassment of the PML-N, the Election Commission of Pakistan has asked the Punjab election commissioner to lodge an FIR with the police against the persons who tried to rig the by-polls in NA-100, Gujranwala.
Vindicating the role played by the recently removed Regional Police Officer (RPO) Zulfikar Cheema, who faced the wrath of the N-League for not allowing rigging in the by-polls won by the PPP, the ECP has decided to proceed against those who had kidnapped the presiding officers or tried to tamper with the election results.
While it would be appropriate to report that allegations have been made and that the ECP is pursuing an investigation, the presumption of guilt on the part of PML-N is inappropriate. Both the headline of Tariq Butt’s column yesterday and the content of Ansar Abbasi’s column today cross the line between reporting facts and making presumptions of guilt or innocence. Reporting is the proper role of media, determining guilt is the proper role of courts. Mr Tariq Butt and Mr Ansar Abbasi should restrain themselves for making such presumptions and stick to reporting facts only.
In a disappointing and callous move today, The News and its star “reporter” Ansar Abbasi use the suffering of KP flood victims to make a bizarre political attack. In yet another example of using its newspaper as a political organization, The News has published as a ‘top story’ an unsubstantiated opinion column – this time with little regard to the suffering of flood victims.
The article in discussion calls the government’s reaction to the flood “perfect demonstration of apathy” and criticises government ministers for carrying out government business.
While President Asif Ali Zardari flew off to his foreign visit to France and Britain despite this massive destruction and cries of millions at home and in spite of the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s anti-Pakistan utterances in India, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his cabinet have been busy in their usual routine chores that include party meetings and addressing election rallies.
Ansar Abbasi does not, of course, explain what he would expect the president or his ministers to do should they cancel all government business, though. Does he expect them to go to KP to volunteer as relief workers? Of course not.
Actually, the government must continue its business so that the nation may continue. Perhaps it is a sad truth, but everything cannot come to a stand still when there is a disaster. In fact, the real problem for politicians is that there is a public relations dilemma. Politicians often do some meaningless acts to get positive media coverage, even if those acts are only symbolic. This is why politicians are always at popular events. It is just for show.
Ansar Abbasi’s column is part of the problem. If politicians do not do some symbolic gesture, they risk being criticised by media commentators. But the truth is, Ansar Abbasi gives away his true intentions when he mentions UK PM David Cameron. What does the UK PM have to do with KP flooding? Nothing. It is just another way to smear the president who Ansar Abbasi does not like.
Ansar Abbasi then goes on to criticise the government officials for being too slow set up a fund for victims.
However, late in the evening, the announcement for the creation of the fund for flood victims and the areas hit by it came from the federal government . There has been, however, no justification why the federal government and the prime minister woke so late to hear the cries of millions of flood-affected people.
“members of the federal cabinet will donate their one-month salary, while officers in BPS-17 and above will donate one-day salary to the fund.”
It will be interesting to know if Ansar Abbasi will donate his one-month salary to victims, and how quickly he has promised to do so.
At the end of his column it is clear that Ansar Abbasi has written an opinion column that attempts to smear the president, PM, and government ministers based on no actual wrong doing, but only because he had the opportunity to exploit the painful feelings in the nation during a devastating emergency.
It is bad enough that Ansar Abbasi is so callous to exploit the suffering of flood victims, but it is worst that The News – a professional media corporation – approved the publication of this piece as a top news story and not even on the opinion page. In the aftermath of the Airblue tragedy, has The News learned nothing?
The News continues to mistake blatant opinion columns for actual news, and publishes them as top stories in the newspaper.
Today’s issue includes two stories about the second tenure as COAS granted to Gen. Ashraf Kayani by PM Gilani that offer no factual news reporting, but instead are opinion columns opposing Gen. Kayani’s continued service as head of the military.
In a dramatic late night announcement by the prime minister on July 22, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was given an extension as COAS for three years from the date his present term expires on November 29, 2010. By some coincidence in my article last Thursday, I had said: “A new COAS of the Pakistan Army must be promoted. It would be severely disappointing if Kayani accepted the offer of extension being dangled in front of him. He hasan image that would suffer for posterity. If he cannot be C-in-C, Kayani should refuse an extension in the Waheed Kakar tradition”.
In essence, Ikram Sehgal is even admitting that he is not a news reporter, but is actually a serial opinion columnist. This is fine, and he is certainly entitled to his opinions, but his columns should be moved to the Opinion page and not published as legitimate news stories.
The same problem is found with Ansar Abbasi. His column today is another opinion piece that opposes a new tenure for Gen. Kayani. In fact, Ansar Abbasi’s column does not even pretend to be a factual report, but includes his opinion in the very title of the column: “Was this extension really needed? Probably not.”
Ansar Abbasi goes on to repeat the same opinion voiced by Ikram Sehgal in his column – that Gen. Kayani should refuse to accept a new tenure and simply retire.
Kayani did perform extremely well as the Army chief, he remained apolitical, did not allow the military to intervene in politics, generally believed to have fought well against terrorism, ensured free and fair February 2008 elections and played his role quite sensibly during tense moments but still giving him an extension should have been avoided. It is yet to be seen if Kayani would accept the offer and continue till November 2013. It would, however, be good for the institution of Army if he does not.
The government must be feeling a sense of relief calculating that in the last two years General Kayani has kept the army away from politics, as much as he could, had not interfered even when there was a lot of noise against corruption, highhandedness and defiance to the superior judiciary and had ìtoleratedî the shortcomings or inadequacies of the elected government, deliberately looking away in the national interest.
Again, this is not news reporting but Shaheen Sehbai taking the opportunity to air his opinion against the elected government.
Shaheen Sehbai, Ikram Sehgal and Ansar Abbasi all wrote opinion columns opposing a new tenure as COAS for Gen. Kayani. They did not write news reports. These pieces do not belong as ‘top stories’ but would be appropriate on the opinion page. If The News is concerned that there are too many opinions to fit only the opinion page and thus they need to fill the rest of the newspaper with them, perhaps they need to change their name from The News to The Opinion.
There appears to be a curious conflict of conspiracies in reports published by The News (Jang Group) on Wednesday regarding the HEC report submitted to the Education Ministry.
Sources in the ministry confided to The News that the Education Minister Sardar Assef Ahmad Ali directed his secretary to ask the HEC chairman to withdraw the report and re-submit it with certain changes. The minister wanted the HEC chairman to delete the report’s portion mentioning the NA Committee on Education.
Following the minister’s direction, these sources said, the secretary education asked HEC Chairman Javed Leghari to withdraw the report and exclude from it the statement that the report should be forwarded to the NA Committee on Education.
It has also been learnt from the reliable sources that after meeting with the HEC chairman, Prime Minister Gilani held a detailed meeting with the education minister and Secretary Education Imtiaz Qazi in which they finalised the strategy to put the issue of fake degrees under the carpet.
According to the sources, the meeting remained focused on the ways to prolong and ultimately to do away with the issue of fake degrees of public representatives. However, Imtiaz Qazi denied having any knowledge about the meeting and the procedure to be followed in this regard. He also denied being present in the meeting. “I am not really aware about the whole issue. We are waiting for the in writing directives from the prime minister after which we would formulate our strategy,” he said.
According to the sources, nominating a minister for reviewing the process means that a single person would be handling the issue according to his own desire. “He would be accountable to nobody and there would not be any check over the process,” he said. Talking to The News, the Education Ministry spokesperson said that since the HEC comes under Education Ministry, therefore it could not communicate directly to parliamentary body.”
What makes these conflicting conspiracies especially interesting is that, according to Sabir Shah’s report, the report was not even delivered until late night.
The officials of Education Ministry did not receive any report in this regard till late night.
If the report was not delivered until late night, how did all of these people come up with so many conflicting conspiracies? And if there is some conspiracy, which is it?
On the editorial page of the same newspaper, The News writes about a fourth conspiracy:
Going by what Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan has said in an interview he gave to this newspaper, what may happen next is that the government could seek to promulgate new legislation, though the minister was vague as to its content. He said that there had been contact with several political parties (and that there was ‘documentary proof’ of this) seeking to lay the matter to rest. Their motivation for this will almost certainly be to protect politicians in the future from the withering blast of the media, as well as perhaps tightening their own internal selection procedures and criteria to ensure that those selected to represent us are less obviously liars and fakers. Considering his statement objectively, it does appear that the fake degree issue has given a severe jolt to those politicians who are self-serving and happy to deceive their electorates – who probably expect to be deceived anyway.
While it is disappointing that The News has such contempt for the people of Pakistan that it declares they “probably expect to be deceived anyway”, what is worse is that the editorial’s conspiracy theory contradicts what is reported elsewhere in the newspaper!
Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), Awami National Party (ANP) and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (Fazl), the three parties providing the numbers for survival of the coalition government, confirmed that neither the government consulted them nor they had approached the key functionaries on the fake degrees issue.
They dubbed the law minister’s assertion as totally out of context and against their respective stands, and said that those MPs, who gave wrong information about their respective education or any other matter, must be dealt in accordance with the law of the land.
It appears that, with no reliable source of information, The News is simply publishing anything and everything with the hope that ’something sticks’. But this is not journalism, is only guessing and gossiping. Furthermore, it is impossible to not notice that every ‘guess’ published in the newspaper has a particular angle – the government is doing something wrong. Certainly no journalist should assume that everything is done without some discussion of how to make uncomfortable matters ‘go away’, but also no responsible journalist should assume that there is always some dark scheme at work.
Whether or not someone thinks that the degree issue even matters, everyone deserves to have facts – not conspiracies. The web of conspiracies in The News has become so tangled that reading the newspaper one reader can come away with many different and conflicting versions of events. That’s not news reporting, it’s just gossip.
Ansar Abbasi today is continuing with his sad display of poor journalism and unsupported political attacks. His column in The News is titled “NAB used to target CJ on Presidency’s wishes“, but nowhere in the column does he present any evidence that such a claim is true. Rather Ansar Abbasi uses double standards and bald faced smear tactics to try to create some resentment against the government and promote his own political goals.
It’s ironic that Ansar Abbasi claims that the government is trying to “scandalise and ridicule the superior judiciary”, all the while his same newspaper publishes articles that uses phrases like “the government’s ugly effort” and “desparate”. Abbasi in his column says that “the government has launched this frontal attack against the Chief Justice”, but in another article in the same paper is titled, “Govt attacked, judiciary backed”. Which is it?
But that is not the only double-standard that is obvious. Ansar Abbasi says that in questioning the validity of President Zardari’s decision to reinstate the Chief Justice, NAB “ignored the basic fact that the issues regarding the judges restoration or those reappointed under the Naek formula have already settled and could not be questioned anymore.”
So the judges restoration which occurred in 2009 cannot be questioned anymore, but the Swiss cases which were dismissed in 2008 should be re-opened? NRO which was promulgated in 2007 can be repealed? Is there a rule that only that which can be used as a weapon against Zardari is fair to be questioned, and anything else is “already settled”?
This same logic is applied to the NAB statements about the restoration of the judiciary. Ansar Abbasi says that, “the NAB…has tried to question the validity of the March 2009 restoration of the judges through an executive order issued by Prime Minister Gilani”. He says that this cannot be questioned because “the Supreme Court in its July 31, 2009 decision has already settled all such matters”.
But Ansar Abbasi uses a different standard for NAB. He says that “The NAB’s reply to the Supreme Court in a BoP corruption case is not only contemptuous but is also flawed and filed by a person, Irfan Qadir, who along with the minister in-charge of the NAB Babar Awan is required to be questioned by NAB in the same BoP fraud case.”
According to Ansar Abbasi’s logic, Irfan Qadir and Babar Awan should not be able to file a reply in a BoP case because they may be affected by the case. But it is perfectly acceptable for the Supreme Court to settle the matter of its own restoration!
In fact, Ansar Abbasi tries to smear the names of Irfan Qadir and Babar Awan by saying they are accused by Harris Steel owner Afzal Sheikh. This is a bald faced attempt to smear the names of these men without giving them the proper right to have any complaints or accusations cleared in a court. For someone who claims to care about justice, Ansar Abbasi continues to be selective in who he believes deserves the right of fair treatment and who is guilty by his own decree.
And after he continues to behave this way, Ansar Abbasi has the cheek to whine that nobody will talk to him! He complains in his column,
The government at different levels was even contacted last week by a staffer of The News Investigations Wing regarding what was cooking up in the corridors of power against the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the superior judiciary but it was again denied.
Can you imagine this phone call?
“Assalamu Alaikum”
“Walaikum assalam. I am a staffer of The News. Please let me speak to the crony in charge of cooking up contemptuous attacks against the Chief Justice?”
“I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”
“You know who I am talking about! He is in the Corridors of Power and works on the ‘Scandalise and Ridicule the superior judiciary’ portfolio!”
“Sir, I do not know what you are talking about. This is the government of Pakistan, are you sure you have dialed the right number?”
“How can you not know what I am talking about! It was reported in The News last month!!! So you are denying me to speak with the crony in charge of conspiracy to target the Chief Justice!”
“Sir, I am going to have to hang up the phone because we have important work to do in the government and do not have time to waste with prank phone calls.”
Ansar Abbasi calls the NAB’s reply “simply disgraceful, unprecedented and unheard of”. His entire column is a poison pen letter that makes accusations with double standards, innuendo, and no evidence. All of this he thinks is okay because his column has been labeled “News Analysis”. But this is not analysis. It is simply a political speech, and another embarrassment for Mir Rahman.
Ahmad Noorani writes a ‘top story’ in The News today that is an example of yellow journalism at its worst. The article, “President confuses PPP Jialas and the nation“, is a political ‘hit job’ and not a serious piece of journalism. Moreover, the author’s argument contradicts recent reports found in his own newspaper.
Ahmed claims that the president does not want to locate and try the killers of Benazir Bhutto. This is a blatant mischaracterization of the president’s remarks in an effort to score political points.
Despite making this claim about the president’s statements, Noorani does not actually provide quotes that back up his claims. Perhaps that is because the actual statements of the president are not as Ahmad Noorani tries to twist them.
Actually, the president has repeatedly said the same thing – that his government will not practise revenge, but will respect the due process of proper law and order. This is even reported in The News on 22 April 2010:
“We do not believe in the politics of revenge. The law will take its own course and the people who are responsible for the martyrdom of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto will be brought to justice, not to revenge,” the president said while addressing PPP workers, members of the bar and the People’s Lawyer Forum from Bahawalpur, Multan and DG Khan divisions here at the Ashraf Sugar Mills.
This is clearly a call for a proper investigation and trial of the killers of Benazir Bhutto, not, as Ahmad Noorani falsely characterizes it, a call to abandon the investigation. Or does Ahmad Noorani believe that there should be simply a revenge killing of some scapegoat with no due process?
Because President Zardari’s statements about the ongoing investigation and forthcoming trials for Benazir Bhutto’s murderers have been quite clear, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that Ahmad Noorani is not engaging in journalism, but is using his position at The News to engage in a political ‘character assassination’ of the president.
In April 2000, Bahawalpur’s Civil Lines Police registered a case against AhmedNoorani for violating section 144 CrPC, which was imposed to refrain miscreants from provoking sectarian sentiments in the area known as a hotbed of sectarian militancy.Noorani had plastered the walls of Islamia University of Bahawalpur with posters carrying objectionable slogans against some sects (see the police report).
This raises the question of whether or not Ahmad Noorani is a reporter or a political operative. Judging by this article, the answer does not look good.
Ansar Abbasi accidentally reveals his elitism today. His column in The News accuses shows utter surprise at the amount of social problems in the country. Of course, he only blames the executive of responsibility of every ill in the nation, but he doesn’t even attempt to say how this is possible. Rather, he just writes a long list of social ills, blames the executive, and sends his driver out for some sweetmeats.
The article’s title is quite a plain accusation: “Judiciary over-burdened because of executive’s incompetence.” Ansar Abbasi then tells in some very surprised tones that the judiciary has to deal with a flood of complaints for “all sorts of injustices like rape, corruption, murder and other cases.” Abbasi states that
“Besides such requests for suo moto notices to the chief justices of the provincial high courts, a total of 2,643,182 new cases were filed before the judiciary at different levels during the last one year. According to the official figures recently released, a total of 3,093,658 cases were decided by the Supreme Court, Federal Shariat Court, high courts and the subordinate judiciary during the last one year, but despite this huge number of disposed of case, the judiciary is faced with the backlog of 1,296,816 cases.”
Apparently, it is news to Ansar Abbasi that there are some serious social problems in our society. It must be nice to live in such a life of luxury, completely removed from the day-to-day world of real Pakistanis that you can be surprised that there are social problems. It must be very strange to think that somehow the executive is responsible for all of these. What a busy man he must be!
Actually, the strangest part of the article is that Ansar Abbasi makes note of the fact that it was not until the independence of the judiciary was restored in March 2009 that the courts began to receive all of these complaints.
But Zardari was president and restored the independence of the judiciary in March 2009. Before this, there was no way for these people to get some justice because the courts were closed to them. So, actually does not Ansar Abbasi have it backwards? Or does he think, like his colleague Amir Mateen that Zardari is some evil genius who has hatched a scheme to confuse everyone by restoring the independent judiciary only to cause himself problems?
Ansar Abbasi doesn’t even try as hard as Amir Mateen to come up with some fantastic plot. Rather he just says, “I only today found out that there are problems in society! It must be Zardari’s fault!” I guess Ansar Abbasi thinks that he does not need any evidence or even logic. When you are as elitist as he is, if you say it you think it must be true.
Ansar Abbasi has been listening to those voices that are his ’sources’, and they appear to be giving him some pretty bad intelligence. Take his article in today’s The News, “A get-CJ Iftikhar operation on the cards?” in which Ansar hears from his nameless ’sources’ that all the political parties are plotting to overthrow the Chief Justice. Only problem, the political parties are singing a different tune.
According to Ansar Abbasi,
Feeling insecure from a fiercely independent judiciary because of their tainted past, President Asif Ali Zardari and a group of his advisers, including a few federal ministers, all of whom have their personal grudge against the judiciary, have chalked out this strategy to muster much-required support of political and legal fraternity to target the top judge. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is also said to be on-board.
Sure to win the support of all its coalition partners, including the ANP, the MQM and the JUI-F, all of them not too happy with the independent judiciary because of its decisions affecting them and their leaders, the PPP is also confident to take the PML-N on-board.
Unfortunately, Ansar Abbasi’s ’sources’ forgot to tell the accused plotters of their nefarious schemes. Not knowing that he is behind a secret plot to overthrow the Chief Justice, PM Gilani has been out praising the judiciary.
Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, addressing course participants at the National Defence University (NDU) on Tuesday, said the government was implementing the decisions of the Supreme Court.
“We respect the Supreme Court and have always worked for the restoration of the judiciary. I released the [detained] judges on the very first day of assuming office,” said the prime minister, adding, “We want independence of the judiciary, a free media and a vibrant civil society”.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani telephoned Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Saturday, informing him that the PPP-led government respects the judiciary and to assure the CJ of the government’s full cooperation in all matters, a private TV channel reported on Saturday.
“I telephoned the chief justice and informed him that the government respects the judiciary,” Gilani said while addressing a ceremony at the Lahore Expo Centre.
The prime minister said he assured the CJ that the government would take decisions on the reopening of the Swiss cases in accordance with the law and constitution.
Gilani said both parliament and the judiciary were passing through a process of evolution, adding that a clash among the institutions would not favour the country’s development and the democratic process.
He said he had no hesitation in working with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and its chief Nawaz Sharif in the greater interest of the nation.
Of course, this should really not be a surprise. Despite the voices in his head that are Ansar Abbasi’s ’sources’, everyone who he asked said the same.
Information Minister Qamaruzzaman Kaira, however, when approached categorically denied this and asked how the PPP government, which gave its blood during the judicial movement and restored the judges through an executive order, could even think of targeting any of the judges.
‘Neither there is any such thinking nor it will happen,’ he said, adding that the PPP, the government or the Presidency have nothing against any judge. The information minister said the government respects the judges and the courts and is obeying their orders and directions. He said there is no issue of President Asif Ali Zardari as the 18th Amendment was passed by parliament.
PML-N spokesman Ahsan Iqbal, however, emphatically said that his party, which has paid a heavy price for the restoration of the independent judiciary, would not let any attempt aimed at attacking it succeed.
Farooq Sattar (MQM) also told Abbasi that the rumour was rubbish.
Senior MQM leader Farooq Sattar, when approached told The News that no one from the government or Presidency has contacted his party for any such move against the chief justice.
ANP spokesman Zahid Khan also said the rumour is nonsense.
ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told The News that neither he was aware of any such development nor his party leadership was contacted by the government or the Presidency with such a proposal.
Even JUI-F spokesman Maulana Ajmad said the rumour is false.
JUI-F spokesman Maulana Ajmad when contacted said he is not aware of any such move and is hearing it from The News for the first time.
Actually, Ansar Abbasi even goes so far as to admit that he checked out more of the claims of his sources and could find no evidence.
The sources said Zardari’s confidants are also contemplating filing a formal reference before the Supreme Judicial Council against the chief justice.
About the grounds of such a reference, nothing could be ascertained by this correspondent except that the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Qazi Anwar, revealed to The News something is said to have already been received by President Zardari against the chief justice.
All of this raises the question – if Ansar Abbasi’s ’sources’ tell him some rumours and all of his investigating shows that they are not true – why does he still write an article declaring it to be true?
Last week The News published a column titled, “US asked to stand by forces of law in Pakistan” that calls on the US to oppose the present government. Aside from the obvious problem of publishing an obvious opinion piece as “news,” the article raises several questions about whether The News is acting as a political propaganda machine.
The article is based primarily on another article written in an American newspaper called, The Hill. This appears to be a political newspaper for the US Congress. The article, published originally on 28 May, was written by one Mr Thomas Houlahan who says he is,
a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He served as an election monitor during the 2008 elections in Pakistan
After looking into Mr Houlahan a little bit, though, it seems that perhaps there is more to this story than is being reported.
Many commentators seem to believe that the only reason Pakistan has not developed into a smoothly running democracy is that the Pakistani army is constantly involving itself in politics.
I think those commentators have gotten it pretty much backward. It is clear to me that the Pakistani army ends up involved in politics because Pakistan lacks some of the key prerequisites for the smooth functioning of a democracy.
He went on to say that Musharraf was ‘clearly entitled to run’ and that, by sacking the judges, he saved Pakistan:
The recent state of emergency stemmed from an attempt by the Supreme Court to expand its power.
There was already tension with the judiciary over what the government felt was excessive use of its right to take up issues on its own initiative, known as “suo-motu jurisdiction.” Issues like road traffic, prices, environmental problems, and appointment and transfers of senior officials were increasingly becoming court matters. In addition, government and civil service officials were being called to court with increasing regularity and dressed down by judges.
Musharraf felt that the judiciary’s activity rose to the level of interference with the conduct of government.
It has also been reported that two Supreme Court justices warned Musharraf that the court was preparing to rule him ineligible for election as president.
Such a ruling would have gone against not only any reasonable interpretation of the constitution, but an April 13, 2005 ruling by the Supreme Court on the very same issues.
It may not look good for a serving army general to run for president of a country, but under the constitution of Pakistan, Musharraf was clearly entitled to run.
…
Musharraf’s declaration of emergency may have served his own interests, but it may have also forestalled what would have been a dictionary-definition constitutional crisis.
In fact, while issuing praise for Pervez Musharraf and military rule, Mr Houlahan has some very bitter words to say about Pakistan’s political parties.
The PPP is essentially the fiefdom of Benazir Bhutto, its self-described “chairperson for life.” Before her, it was the fiefdom of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed after having been convicted of authorizing the murder of a political opponent.
The PML(N) is the fiefdom of Nawaz Sharif. In fact, the parenthetical “N” in the organization’s name stands for Nawaz.
Because these parties stress loyalty to the leader over honesty and competence, all four administrations of Bhutto and Sharif ended early due to corruption and mismanagement on a massive scale.
On March 11, I received an e-mail from a Thomas Houlahan who, apart from mentioning that he was the Director of the Military Assessment Program, Center for Security and Science, Washington DC, also drew my attention to his report on the judicial crisis in Pakistan.While my detailed assessment of his report (along with the download link and the tricky quotes from the author) will be shortly available on my website (www.pitafi.com), I must submit that upon reading its 47 pages I was seriously dismayed. Despite the fact that the author displayed considerable knowledge of the Pakistani history, he was quite consciously distorting facts and making some glaring omissions that suited his thesis perfectly. They say an analyst should never start researching with preconceived notions in mind. In this case, however, the analyst had entered the fray with a clear view to vindicating President Musharraf’s stance on the judiciary.
In 2008, the same Mr Thomas Houlahan was on PTV talking with Ahmed Quraishi and saying that the justices removed by Pervez Musharraf should not be reinstated. See the video below:
Thomas Houlahan and Ahmed Quraishi
Actually, Mr Thomas Houlahan is a regular guest of Ahmed Quraishi and has appeared on his shows more than once.
Mr Thomas Houlahan also works for the American Think Tank “Center for Security and Science” which is directed by Mr Stephen R Bowers who is a professor of government at Liberty University – a school that claims to be “the largest and fastest growing Christian Evangelical university in the world.” This school’s website says that:
Everything we do is designed to develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge and skills essential to impact tomorrow’s world.
Just as invitees were jelling in Islamabad, an American appeared unannounced on the scene as “group leader.” Short, fat, bald and given to un-ironic remarks like “listen, I’m from New Hampshire, we invented democracy,” Thomas Houlahan presented himself as almost a parody of the obnoxious American abroad. He’d show up at group meetings dressed in college sweats with his gut hanging out while loudly pronouncing on the Pakistani constitution.“Ya know Fox, CNN, the networks….I’m their go-to guy on Pakistan, there’s nothing I don’t know about what happens here.” Describing himself as a ‘distinguished constitutional scholar,’ he claimed to represent a Washington think-tank, the Center for Science and Security. That he was also ex-US military deeply concerned about the Dutch delegates, representing a peace group. He liked to name-drop, notably General Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf’s senior aide and a man much hated by Pakistanis. When we made a courtesy call on the president, Houlahan took with him his copy of Musharraf’s autobiography while nodding sagely at the strongman’s every remark. I told my colleagues of suspicions I’d picked up from diplomats that CMD was close to Mohammed Ali Durrani, a former information minister and a tight palace ally.
Two days out from the poll, we ousted a very agitated Houlahan in a coup. Munir apologized to the rest of us, claiming he had no idea what this guy was like. Then we tore up the CMD observer procedures and made our own, following EU guidelines. The group would have no official leader. But that didn’t stop Houlahan from spouting his pro-government line to the local press as our ‘leader.’ The rest of us were compelled to make our own media statements stressing our strict neutrality, dissociating ourselves from him and from CMD’s affiliations. Then we headed to the provinces to observe voting.
Obviously this all points to a political operation and not some independent analysis by Mr Houlahan. So why did The News take his words and republish them without doing any independent research? It took me only a few moments using Google to find all of this information. Surely with all their resources, the people at Jang could find even more.
It seems that nobody at The News bothered to check out this Mr Thomas Houlahan or investigate why he would be writing such things. Instead, they saw an opportunity to make a political hit. But that’s not reporting. That’s a political campaign.
Of course, all of this raises again the ridiculousness of a conspiracy theory being peddled by Ansar Abbasi and The News a few weeks ago. If you remember, at the the time Ansar Abbasi was trying to tell that the US media is being controlled by some secret forces in Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington. So again, I ask, was this article by Mr Thomas Houlahan a plant by the Embassy? Or does The News only believe conspiracies about stories that it doesn’t like? Why is one article a plant, and another worthy of front page publication?
Of course, when a newspaper will publish obviously fake stories without doing even a minute’s basic fact-checking, what do you expect?
Ansar Abbasi cannot seem to stop play acting as a Supreme Court Advocate. One can imagine him walking around his house in a black robe and wig taking suo moto notice of kabobs. Today, though, he has taken up his mighty pen to duel with Kamal Azfar, who is a real Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court.
Actually, the Court is very well staffed with Advocates who can argue for the government also and argue against the government’s positions also. It does not need Mr Ansar Abbasi to make any case before it. After reading his column today, it is rather obvious why this is the case.
Abbasi tries to find some contradiction in the statements of Kamal Azfar and the Asif Ali Zardari. What he finds, though, is only proof that he should leave the law to real lawyers and go back to doing his own job which is journalism.
Ansar Abbasi’s claim is that by saying that the Swiss case “was closed on merit after the Swiss prosecutor general examined and analysed the evidence on record,” Kamal Azfar has contradicted the president. First, let’s look at Kamal’s statement.
Swiss judicial authorities said on Tuesday they had closed a money-laundering case against Pakistani presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari and released $60 million frozen in Swiss accounts over the past decade.
Daniel Zappelli, Geneva’s chief prosecutor, said that he had no evidence to bring Zardari, 55, the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to trial.
Ansar Abbasi says that Kamal Azfar’s statement is contradicted by previous statements by Asif Ali Zardari. For these, he points to a February 2008 petition filed before the Sindh High Court.
Contrary to Kamal Azfar’s claim, Asif Ali Zardari’s February 2008 petition filed before the SHC had stated that after the issuance of the NRO, the government of Pakistan continued to pursue the corruption cases against him both in Switzerland and in Britain.
Abbasi’s problem, here, seems to be one of reading comprehension. The petition filed before the SHC does not refer to open cases in Switzerland, but to the insistence of elements in Pakistan to continue pursuing cases that had been closed by the Swiss.
This appears to be the same problem with the current insistence by some that the government open cases in Switzerland again, despite the fact that the Swiss continue to insist that they will not open them.
Therefore, the contradiction is not between Kamal Azfar and Asif Ali Zardari, but between Ansar Abbasi and the reality of the legal situation being debated.
The other question that seems to be asked at least once a week is why Ansar Abbasi’s opinions are published as news and not opinions, which they most certainly are. Whether the government is correct in its arguments is a decision for the courts and the parliament.
This is important for more reasons that basic journalistic ethics, though. In complex legal cases like the one discussed in this column, the people look to media for some explanation of the facts. By reading about what each side presents, each person can form his or her own opinion on the matter. By confusing the difference between fact and opinion, Ansar Abbasi runs the serious risk of having an improper influence on the outcome of a legal question that goes far beyond any person’s personal feelings about the president.
Certainly everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter, but please let’s leave the legal debate to the Advocates before the court. Ansar Abbasi should be doing his job of reporting, not trying to do someone elses job as Advocate. And The News should publish opinions clearly labeled as such so that readers are not misled into thinking that Ansar Abbasi’s opinions are actual facts.
In today’s issue of The News the grand inquisitor of media Ansar Abbasi plays judge and jury against PML-N following a FIR accusing certain persons of trying to rig by-polls in NA-100. His verdict is based on a prosecution delivered by his colleague, Tariq Butt.
