LETTER: This is apropos a Business Recorder editorial "President speech" carried by the newspaper yesterday. It is quite unfortunate that President Arif Alvi's mandated address to a joint session of Parliament the other day was no different from his predecessor Mamnoon Husain's. Both of them have, in my view, failed to see a bigger picture. While Mamnoon Husain was just a PML-N mouthpiece, Arif Alvi too, has been found expressing the opinions and beliefs of PTI government with a lot of enthusiasm.
How unfortunate it is that President Alvi, as pointed out by the newspaper, "chose to censure the media - already under unsavoury pressures - for not highlighting "positive news". As society's watchdog independent media in a democracy has an adversarial relationship with the government, its role being not to sing the government's praises but to point to its act of omission and commission. He could have done better, particularly when the minister for planning and development, Asad Umer, has publicly admitted the PTI government's failure in handling the media, by calling on the government to show tolerance for adverse opinion rather than looking for ever new ways to curb freedom of expression."
MAHARULLAH KHAN (ISLAMABAD)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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