Author: Jawad A. Raja

The legislation, regulation, and policy making in Pakistan is always to benefit one interest by depriving the other interest of its rights. There are always victors and victims of the process. However there are hardly any winners in long term. Life is not stagnant and the dynamism of life changes the role of the people. So the victors of today become victims of tomorrow. The people who are deprived complain and the beneficiaries celebrate. This vicious circle is repeated over and over by the interchanging of victors to victims with the passage of time. The fact remains that everyone losses in this process of rule making. The rule making which is not a consultative, consensual, and open process is deemed to harm people and the nation. We have not learned this lesson after the 60 years of “Garbage in Garbage out� practices. The problem is not with any particular provision but the intent of the legislation. I will argue that it is not even the intent but the guiding principles aspiring rule making. The mentality shown by the establishment is that people outside their circle are stupid to know the national interest so we have to teach them the national interest through force.

Don’t we have factions in our society? Factions refer to various interest groups here. There are many interest groups such as journalist, political parties, NGOs, Trade associations (such as bar associations), and various human right groups. These all are equal Pakistanis. All have stakes in the country. All are committed to make Pakistan a better place despite individual weaknesses. The regulation which does not include all willing groups to be the integral part of rule making through dialogue is bound to hurt people. The dialogue is between all the groups as co-equals with an objective to convince and get convinced without attachment to pre-conceived group positions. The problem is that Almighty Military Inc. considers itself as source of national interest. The rest of the state machinery considers to preserving the Almighty Military Inc. interests as its sole objective. The public servants use their energies on the assumption that general public is stupid and we should protect general public from themselves through force. In my opinion that is wrong more than anything else with the PEMRA ordinance.

Almighty PEMRA under the auspices of a group of self-proclaimed “Enlightened Moderate� tries to deprive everyone else in the country to have the opportunity to enlighten themselves through the media. The leading journalists using the same Almighty mentality entirely ignore that presenting the facts and crusade against any political issue are two entirely concerns. Few judges aspiring for this Almighty power want to change the country as per their own dictates. This story of over apathy towards mutual dependence and co-existence keeps re-writing itself with change of names of the characters. However the script and role of characters never change. Can we take a deep breath and try to comprehend the nadir of our humanity? We are PPP, PMLN, PMLQ, TI, JI, JUI, ANP, and MQM supporters for not the reasons of mutual co-existence but for the reasons for seeing others to fall from grace. It is not that one political party or leader falls, it is the whole political system takes the brunt. We are so right that every voice of reason seems to be wrong. Let’s acknowledge each others equal right to the process of rule making. No authority or group has the ultimate wisdom to think for all. The rules which are negotiated among factions (interest groups) in open discussion are mutually agreed upon by the most segments of the society. This mutual agreement creates people as winners without declaring some victors or some victims. Our failure as a nation will be a matter of time if we still can not agree to accept all as equal partners in our national destiny. If we still not agree that all disagreeing parties have to deliberate and agree to the mutual decisions then the current PEMRA ordinance and its likes are our destiny as it has been for past 60 years. We are still living in the ages of Kings and fighting Princes and expect rule of law to prevail. May we are blessed with the wisdom of putting people first.