- The new team takes over
Federal Information Minister Shibli Faraz and Information SAPM Lt Gen (retd) Asim Bajwa have both said that the Information Ministry will be taken into the 21st century. Senator Shibli may not have a previous track record, but General Bajwa does, for he was previously DG ISPR, and played a major role in bringing the ISPR into the 21st century. His induction promises that he will look after the modernisation of the ministry, which it is in dire need of. At the same time, it is not just the Ministry that needs modernization, but the industry it is supposed to supervise, and it is not simply a matter of ensuring that matters remain under control.
A major difference that General Bajwa will find is that the organization he works for, the PTI, is a political party, where leg-pulling and undermining one another is almost a way of life. He need only look at the fact that he is part of the third team to hold this post the first being current Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry, and the second SAPM Firdous Ashiq Awan. There were also such figures as the late Naeemul Haq and Yousaf Baig Mirza who also had a finer in the pie. The Ministry controls such electronic media as PTV and Radio Pakistan, much reduced from their glory days, but still important, both as institutions and as tools to propagate the government’s point of view.
There may be a problem there. The messenger might not be at fault so much as the message itself. Before blaming the media for not projecting the towering achievements of the government, the new minister and SAPM need to look at what the government has actually achieved. If that record is thin, then the message will be thin. Another aspect the new men in must consider is that the current government’s infringements of press freedom, and the policy of confrontation pursued with the media by the previous SAPM, must be brought to an end. Bringing the ministry into the 21st century must not be taken as shorthand for moulding the media according to the government’s wishes. The PTI is not the first to have tried. It does not work.
