TV THOUGHTS: Musharraf talks of NAB's war against corruption:

Hafeez Pirzada, General Arif (Retd) focus on Bhutto's hanging
My channel surfing on Monday night got me glued to PTV World where I was able to hear in small measure, a recording of President General Pervez Musharraf's address in Lahore earlier in the day. Let me state here that it is always very useful to hear the President of Pakistan, or the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Television, even if it be a recording.
It is far better than reading a report in the newspapers the next day. It enables me to understand ambience of current affairs. One of the themes that the President was speaking very candidly and realistically was the subject of corruption.
Presumably he had been asked about it by one of the newsmen present. The President said categorically that "corruption had been eliminated to a large extent", and that it was incorrect for anyone to content or claim that corruption had been eliminated from the country. But it is much less than before, is what he was saying.
Emphasising the role of the National Accountability Bureau the President explained forcefully the positive role that it had played in not only reducing corruption at all levels, but it had also created a fear in the minds of the people.
He also referred to the role played by the NAB in ensuring that over 1000 co-op scam victims have been returned about Rs14 6million so far. He underlined the point that the plunderers of the co-operative operations had exploited the poor of society, and subjected them to untold long standing hardships. The NAB had played a major role in providing relief to these poor people.
President Musharraf referred briefly and realistically to the way in which there was corruption in various sectors of society, and how various projects were created or ruined due to corruption.
He gave some very interesting examples which I am sure must have enabled viewers to understand what he was saying. Coming as it was from the President of Pakistan, it indicated the extent to which, and the manner in which huge projects are created and public money and resource plundered.
In passing I would like to mention here that a news report in this daily of July 26 has a detailed report of what the President said on this theme when he spoke earlier the same day in Lahore, at a special ceremony arranged by the NAB where 1000 victims of co-operative scams were paid about Rs146million. I am tempted to reproduce an extract from the above report which says: "The President said that the level of corruption could be adjudged from the fact that when he took over in 1999, he was told about a project that was to be completed at a cost of Rs116 billion. But when the military, under his directive, re-evaluated it, he was apprised that it could be done in just Rs 14 billion.
You will be surprised to hear that the same project is being completed at a cost of Rs16 billion only. Likewise, another project in Punjab, which was to be completed at a cost of Rs14 billion was abandoned, and now all the related affairs are being run smoothly without this high- cost project."
I now want to refer to another speech that President Musharraf made on Television on Friday (July 22).
That was his address to the nation, in which he also gave a deadline to the madaris and religious schools in the country to get themselves registered by the end of this year (December 2005). He also urged the masses to rise against extremism, and added that banned organisations would not be allowed to merge with other names, and some who try to, would be dealt with an iron hand.
President Musharraf, whose speech on PTV was picked up by other channels, spoke in English when he said that the government in Britain "also has a problem." He said that "there are extremists organisations in England too.
Hizbul Tehreer and Hizbul Muhajireen, one of the two was also involved in attempts on my life. Still they are allowed to operate in England. "One of the other points that he emphasised was that "Pakistan's destiny is with the Ummah, because we are also a Muslim country, we are not only the Islamic country, but the only country created by the ideology of Islam. So we are the important country of the Ummah."
Moving on, I am a little distracted now by what the Prime Minister has said at the PTV headquarters during the week. I will however, first mention the channel surfing that enabled me to see parts of two interviews that dealt in fair measure with the theme of the hanging of the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It brought back memories of the seventies and the eighties that followed.
Both these interviews were on the Geo channel in the Jawab Deh programme which is done in somewhat peculiar a manner by Iftikhar. The interviews are, generally speaking, absorbing.
These two interviews that I am referring to were first with Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, a former Federal Education and Law Minister, and a founder member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and the second was with General (Retd) Khalid Mahmud Arif, who was close to the former President General Mohammad Zia-ul- Haq.
Of course, one wonders on how the younger generation of viewers may have responded to these highly engaging and thought provoking interviews, and one question that came to mind was about the hanging of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
That the people of Pakistan still want to know more about the circumstances, the context, the background etc of how the ousted Prime Minister was hanged in Rawalpindi on of April 4, 1979. That perhaps the general public feels that there is still a great deal that they have not been told about the hanging, and what was the role of the leadership of the country, the politicians and the other decision makers.
One of the questions that interviewer Iftikhar asked of Abdul Hafeez Pirzada pertained to the role that he had played in the hanging of the former Prime Minister, and whether he had done enough to have it stopped.
The latter explained the circumstances under which he was unable to do his best for his friend and leader.
He went on to say that had Bhutto not been hanged, he (Pirzada) would have become the Prime Minister of the country. In the other interview, General (Retd) Arif said that President Zia-ul-Haq had informed all the Corps Commanders of the decision to hang Z. A Bhutto.
The other points that General (Retd) Arif told interviewer Iftikhar Ahmed were that "even if the elections were not rigged, Bhutto's party would have won the elections; that Chaudhry Zahur Elahi asked General Zia to give him the pen he used to reject the review petition, as a souvenir; and that when Martial Law was imposed (in July 1997), neither the PNA nor the PPP leaders uttered anything about their agreement.
"I know there are viewers who believe that we should move on with the future and ignore what has happened. But there are others who believe that we need to contemplate the past, regularly and dispassionately. There is much in our lives that is disturbing, to say the least.
Moving on, and one focuses on the NWFP for that a great deal that is happening there is being discussed by the television channels as well. Let me quote am English daily, 'The Frontier Post', which appears from Peshawar and Quetta which says that "The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government in the NWFP, after passing the Hisba Bill from the NWFP Assembly, has made another daring and bold decision for renaming the province, a long standing demand around which most of the nationalist politics rotates since the partition of the sub-continent. "One may mention here that the names suggested by various political parties include Abaseen, Afghania, Pukhtoonkhwa, Pakhtonistan and Khyber. And a committee has been formed comprising parliamentary leaders assigned the task of selecting a new name for North West Frontier Province.
The Hisba Bill is being discussed not just in the NWFP, but all over the country and the media is focusing on it in a substantial way.
Television channels have been having panel discussions on this subject and Geo's Capital Talk discussed it during the week with a leading question being "How will the Hisba Act affect a common man.?" The other question that is being asked is whether this Hisba Act is a prelude to Talibinisation? Suffice it to say here that a presidential reference has been filed in the Supreme Court and its hearing has been postponed to August 1.
The Aaj TV in what Syed Talat Hussain described as a first ever for any TV channel in Pakistan had a special programme on Wednesday (was it a repeat I don't know) in which he took TV cameras into a mosque in Peshawar and recorded a question-answer discussion on the Hisba Bill and related questions that inevitably arise. The special guest was Maulana Fayyazur Rehman Alvi MNA and President of the MMAP.
And with him there were other people also, and while the programme was in Urdu, there was atleast one person who answered in Pushto and Talat requested for a simple and brief translation. Aaj TV, which is doing some amazingly good work, both in its current affairs and the entertainment sectors, is planning to record more programmes inside the mosques. It appears to be a very good idea, and reflects the changes that are taking place in society.
And as I move towards the end of the column, I find myself confronted once again with the feeling that it is becoming difficult to do justice to the full range of themes and handling of themes that cable TV is exposing local viewers to.
There is on the one hand the diverse range that comes form the London bomb blasts that once again dragged Pakistan into the situation, insinuating that Pakistan was a link in the terrorism chain.
A great deal of discussion and argument on the channels about this. Some six Pakistanis got entangled into the devastating multiple bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheiukh. The Egyptian government later denied the involvement of any Pakistanis, and even the Egyptian ambassador to Pakistan clarified.
On the other hand there is a visibly growing preoccupation with the forthcoming local bodies polls. I am, this evening, contemplating the impact of all this media focus on the society that will unfold in the future. Will this communication via mass media enhance dialogue or terrorism?