KARACHI: This is with reference to the lead story on the Karachi pages of your newspaper “Opposition whips up crowd in Badin against PPP” (October 13). The Sindh Peoples Local Government Ordinance 2012, (now an Act duly passed by the Sindh Assembly), is not a 293-page long document as stated in your report. It is merely a 97.4-page document in font size 12. There is a 4.6-page long schedule at the end in font size 18, while the total length of the 213 sections and the schedule is 102 pages. The total number of words (numbering of sections, items, etc.) is 34,436. It does not take more than an hour to go through the document. Perhaps, your story relied on the many rumours floating in the market before the law was enacted.
The system of metropolitan centres is not at all “complex” as stated in your story. Much more so because metropolitan councils, district councils, town and union councils have been around for a long time. It is a fairly simple law. Any “average citizen or resident of Sindh’s cities”, including most above-average media reporters, can easily understand it, provided they care to go through it. Reading, too, cannot be selective, rumour-based or out of context. It has to be read as a whole. But what can we say if even the pages have not been correctly counted.
The PPP has struggled for the freedom of the media. We shall always defend it. But is it really too much to expect that people are not misinformed, especially by a newspaper of your high reputation, which the readers trust? Your reporter has honestly stated that “informed discussion and analysis has been scant and nationalist rhetoric has merely played to the gallery”. Let us fill up the gaps. Let your esteemed newspaper start an “informed discussion and analysis” on this law. We have to move from emotionalism to rationalism.
Taj Haider
General Secretary PPP, Sindh
Published in The Express Tribune, October 16th, 2012.
