Why Javed Chaudhry needs to offer an unconditional apology to the ANP
The Tube
Uncle Sargam is sad. He has been attracting a lot of flak recently on the social media, where his slobberingly apologetic placation of TTP leader Ehsan-ullah Ehsan on a live TV show, in which he beseeched the man to spare the media (a DSNG van of the Express group had been attacked recently) and they would let them project their point of view.
The social media lot called him a coward. And then, as is the norm on the social media, the names kept getting more and more colourful. Shortly afterwards, Javed Chaudhry wrote a column in his group’s Urdu daily Express titled Buzdil sahafi ka bahaduron se aik sawaal.
The article actually did make a lot of sense. Let us delve into it:-
First things first. Javed Chaudhry is, in fact, a buzdil. There are no two views about it. If he thought the candour in his article would spare him from being pilloried for this, then he is wrong.
Second, he belittled the cause of the journalists who were killed (who knew and chose their line of work) and also of the journalists before them who had been killed in the line of duty. Third, by promising to modify his coverage and views for being spared, he is directly stating that factors other than the truth determine his work ethic; this is the only one we got to know about, what about the others? So if he can’t criticize the Taliban, then who should he be criticizing? Corruption in the irrigation department? Till the department’s officials also take out guns?
I would have gone on about this but the social media has done more than I can.
Consider, instead, the argument made in the column: Okay, I am a coward, but what is to be expected of me? Look at the chief minister (KP), who did not meet the victims of the church blast in Peshawar or his entire cabinet, which doesn’t go and visit the bereaved of the victims of terrorism. Look at the chief minister (Punjab), who publically appealed to the Taliban to spare his province. How could he show courage when the government is too scared of even taking the militants’ name? How could he be expected to show courage in a country where an operative of a militant outfit (Javed Chaudhry’s allegation) was released in order to end the siege that had been laid to the GHQ in ‘Pindi.
Valid points all of them. (Minor digression: if Chaudhry is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, taking money from someone to write a favourable story, would his defence be, how can I show honesty in a country where everyone’s a crook?)
Though he made valid points, he did gloss over some very important ones. The ANP, a party he has trashed to no end, did not shy away from taking the Taliban’s name. Their leaders visited the families of victims of terrorism, often at great personal risk. Their leaders used to be the first on the spot whenever an incident of terror occurred.
As opposed to pundits, politicians actually have to stay amongst the people. The ANP bore that cross and had to pay for it. And that they did. Rather early into their government, the party started getting attacked. In the most strict, semantic literal meaning of the word survival, it was an issue of survival for the party. Political parties in the country have changed course for much less. They didn’t. Consider for a brief moment that they party was on the payroll of the Americans to this end, as is the recurring allegation. Well, the party didn’t change its initial line on the issue, the one it had since the ZAB government in the 1970s; it is the US that has come round to the ANP’s point of view, not the other way around. Furthermore, it must be an absolutely huge amount of money that made the party’s leadership and lower cadre disregard their lives. Though somehow not big enough to make it to the WikiLeaks.
Right before the elections, the ANP had asked for a measure of security. Javed Chaudhry’s programme on that issue was insulting, to say the least. Which was profiled in this column.
On the already frayed logic of I-did-it-because-everyone-is-doing-it is the inconvenient fact of the matter than everyone, in fact, is not doing it.
Apologise to the ANP, Javed Chaudhry. Go on. Do it.