One year on

ET has come up with little apolitical bits and pieces here and there not common to all newspapers.

This past week, The Express Tribune marked its first anniversary — one year on and not only still going, but going strong. So congratulations to the team and may there be more power to your respective elbows.

Last April, there were murmurs and mumblings amongst the few of the 180 millions or so who inhabit this republic and are in touch with the English language press. What, ‘they’ asked, was the need for yet another daily newspaper in a country with a vastly limited readership? But then, democratically speaking, there can never be enough newspapers — or enough of the rest that makes up the media — offering divergent views to the English-reading public, miniscule as it may be. Some publications fall by the wayside, some appeal to those of a certain mindset, others to others of other mindsets, some take off, some stagnate.

From the objective reader’s point of view and giving credit where credit is due, this good-looking paper has welcomed all views expressed by a selection of columnists, who have, apparently and in general, been allowed freedom to vent their spleen or to say what they feel like saying. This is what the liberal press is all about — and liberal is not here meant in the local sense as a four-letter word. Readers have the choice to pick and choose, to praise or condemn.

News-wise, the republic’s press tends to towards much of a muchness, politically obsessed as it is, but the ET has come up with little apolitical bits and pieces here and there not common to all, particularly in its Karachi pages. It has also introduced a new, fresh lot of younger reporters and commentators.

Editorially, it has been spot on, not towing a line that has not been in the interests of democracy, human rights and equity. It has been tough on the various iniquities which inflict the republic, such as the demeaning laws on our statute books, with great and warranted emphasis on the blasphemy laws, which over the past year have been responsible for further murders and injustices and lay themselves open to the strongest international (but selective national) condemnation.

The first time this column appeared on these pages, its final sentence read: “How are democracy and human rights served — and how is democracy any form of revenge — when sitting in the Pakistan Penal Code are the iniquitous blasphemy laws dreamed up by Ziaul Haq, as a perfect tool to be used by those seeking personal revenge or material gain?” What should have been added: “. . . or a free passage to paradise.”

One year on and how fares the republic? It has been battered by floods as it has been battered by its political classes, which persist with their own personal agendas. The famous 18^th and 19^th Amendments have done zilch for the masses of Pakistan as a whole — just zilch. They have furthered the purposes of the parliamentarians and president and succeeded in putting the judiciary into a tizz. Asif Ali Zardari, who first came to us 23 years ago, courtesy his wife, and who, almost three years ago through sheer luck and the needs of the US was converted into a head of state, is a dodgy character. His clout, his money and his ‘ways and means’ are keeping him firmly in place. But he and his government are not and never will be any form of answer to the woes of the people of Pakistan.

This country needs fresh faces, with fresh ideas and the will and intent to actually perform — to use that much hackneyed, used and abused phrase — in the national interest. OK, there will always be corruption, but it can be contained within acceptable limits — do we need a minister for religious affairs who, in this country that survives on religion, manipulates religion to line his pockets?

Pakistan needs to move on — quickly.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th,  2011.