It is interesting to note that in today’s The News, the OpEd written by Shaheen Sehbai, an Editor in the newspaper, has been relegated to the inner pages. It seems like even The News governing board has realized that Mr Sehbai is not a journalist, but a campaigner. And that his stories are not based on fact, they are based on conspiracy theories

Let us take a look at today’s story titled ‘Where did the minus-1 formula come from?’. In this story Mr Sehbai alleges that there was a one-to-one meeting between the President and the Prime Minister during which certain issues were discussed. Now, if there was no one else present in the meeting and I am sure President Zardari did not provide Mr Sehbai with information about the meeting, then who did? Did Mr Sehbbai receive information from the Prime Minister himself or from his office? Or did Mr Sehbai receive information from those who “listen” to conversations? Maybe that is what Sehbai means when he repeatedly refers to ‘fly on the wall’ informing him about what happened! But if this is the case then his story is totally unreliable and it is time someone exposed these dubious links.

Mr Sehbai’s piece is not a OpEd piece it is fiction. Here are some snippets. First, “…started taking shape in the power corridors of Islamabad and Rawalpindi when coupled with political failures, there was a torrent of reports of corruption, mainly by people associated and appointed by the presidency on key government and corporate positions, with a turnover of billions in shady deals.” Or “Secret meetings with uniformed star officers were held in the wee hours of cold nights.” And “Political amateurs, who had grabbed the high place coming from tiny bit jobs in hospitals, jails, and stud farms or from apartments in exile, could not keep the secret.” Better still, “A Presidency insider narrated the story of how the lifestyles of people around the president had transformed within weeks and months.” If I am not mistaken this is what we read in most mystery or romantic novels!

Mr Sehbai never mentions his sources, all he does is refers to meeting “politicians, retired and working civil and military bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen.”  If there are so many people he has met and so many who are willing to open up to him – as he supposedly argues – why does he have a problem in telling his viewers who these sources are? How is it that Mr Sehbai knows what is happening behind closed doors, in one-to-one meetings, has the confidence of everyone from the media to the civilian to the military establishment? Who gives him all this information? The public has a right to know especially when all he says about his sources is words to the effect, “A fly on the wall said a Maulana would appear regularly in the PM House to take what he needed and this was no secret.”

Or is it possible that Mr Sehbai has his own agenda. Ten years ago in an article in Dawn titled “The Patient and the Surgeon” (October 22, 1999), Mr. Sehbai described Pakistan as a “patient” and General Musharraf as the “surgeon.” Quoting unnamed sources Mr Sehbai advised General Musharraf on what he should do, namely, “General Musharraf cannot dawdle and straggle any more as he is losing the critical strike time that could give him the advantage of an early sweep against the mafias and layers and layers of corrupt elements all over the place. His administration has a very soft face so far and this has not caused enough fear and panic in the ranks of the corrupt. Publicity  of his image of a relaxed  man sitting with his dogs may have waited until he had shown some results.”

If we look at today’s piece Mr Sehbai seems to be doing exactly the same except this time round he is advising Prime Minister Gilani by asking him to come “out of the shadows of Zardari on the one hand and keep the loyalties of as many PPP MPs as possible so that his government’s majority in parliament is not threatened. The Opposition is helping him out, to a degree.” And further, “ The PM should, therefore, stop all such deals and decisions until he becomes a PM in his own right and the decisions are seen as collective decisions to be implemented in a transparent manner and not dictated to suit the deep pockets of presidential friends who have already made billions. The PM, when he gets out of the shadows of the Presidency, will have to catch these big fish to establish his credibility. Nothing short of a massive hunt for such wheeler dealers with a criminal mind will bring Gilani some credit. He has lived too long as a sheepish lame duck.”

So what we at PMW see is a pattern. Mr Sehbai runs campaigns and conspiracies against individuals and then uses his column to propagate these campaigns. This is not journalism, this is campaigning.