We Are Not At War With the Chief Minister --- By Malik Siraj Akbar

I am not sure if Chief Minister Raisani Tweets. I even don’t know if he has a Facebook page. Yet, I know with what Pervez Musharraf would idiotically call “200% surety”, that he spends a good amount of time online. He, his media advisers confide, regularly visits The Baloch Hal; gets annoyed every time he reads the crap available online.

The Chief Minister has not been very happy with The Baloch Hal ever since the ‘three idiots’ launched Balochistan’s first online paper last November. He had been conveying his displeasure over our write-ups through his senior staff members. A high-ranking officer close to the chief minister told me at dinner in Sarena Hotel, without making an effort to influence our editorial policy, that the chief minister thought we had offended him in an editorial Raisani Must be Kidding.


On an other occasion, the chief minister sent out a message via the same officer in response to an editorial Chasing Ghandi’s Grandchildren (April 2, 2010) wondering why we urged him to Speak to Shahbaz Sharif to guard the Baloch students in Punjab after the latter had been attacked by Muslim Students Federation (MSF) activists.

As (what Lady Gaga would term as) the Bad Romance worsened, the chief minister decided to issue a public rebuttal in response to another editorial published in this newspaper. As far as I know, it was the first time in the history that the government of Balochistan issued a 700-word strong reaction to a write-up which the government described as the reflection of an ‘immature mindset’ backed by ‘vested interests’.

What was interesting about the rebuttal was the issuing authority. The officer who sent the rebuttal ( of course, he did not write it himself) was the same who served as the media officer of Jam Mohammad Yousaf, Raisani’s predecessor. If there was The Baloch Hal some four years ago, this officer would definitely send us a rebuttal singing the praises of Jam Yousaf and Musharraf’s mega projects which he’d say were destined to change Balochistan’s fate.

I regret Raisani has got the wrong guys in his team. Starting from the fellows in Muslim League, the halwa-loving mullahs of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and the crooks from BNP Awami, everyone surrounding the chief minister was once a loyalist of dictator Pervez Musharraf. He could have at least chosen the right media officer to give his government a saving face. So it means, the chief ministers are always wrong and the media officers are always right.

Having said that, we would like to assure the honorable chief minister and his government that The Baloch Hal is not at war with them. Since we are not registered with the government of Balochistan like other newspapers which get millions of rupees as “bribe” from the official advertisements, we find it much easier not to be blackmailed by the rulers. However, we staunchly believe in performing our professional duty with great responsibility. Every effort is made at The Baloch Hal to give equal coverage to the government, the military and the judiciary along with the Baloch armed groups, political parties and the members of the society.We are instinctively closer to the Baloch masses. We are not apologetic about it.

What gives us a sense of tremendous professional satisfactions and responsibility is the fact that The Baloch Hal (only after Wikipedia) emerges as the first result if the names of CM Raisani and Governor Nawab Magsi are Google searched. No government department or website has done this favor to the chief minister like this newspaper. Besides, we are delighted that the coverage to the government officials has not undermined our credibility among the Baloch nationalists and the people of the province who keep reading this newspaper as a window to Balochistan.

The government has unilaterally waged a war against The Baloch Hal by accusing it of working for the ‘vested interests’. On our part, we decline to become a part of the verbal confrontation. We pretend not to know Ron Suskind from Adam. We are even utterly oblivious about the ‘vested interests’ mentioned in The way of world. Our readers’ comments, which come mainly from the people of Balochistan, greatly assist us in ascertaining the public opinion. We’d like to stick to professionalism. This newspaper belongs to the whole of Balochistan, including Chief Minister Raisani, and everyone will get equal coverage depending on the significance of news stories that feature them.

Lastly, The Baloch Hal had editorially welcomed the Balochistan Package, new NFC (National Finance Commission) Award and the 18th amendment hoping that they would lead to some improvement in the situation in the province. It was the government that, unfortunately, failed to meet the public expectations. It is very tragic that the government is increasingly becoming unpopular perhaps not because of Raisani but the bunch of ministers, secretaries and staff members who surround him to give wrong advice. There is no poison worse than bad advice provided to a ruler. Journalists are only busy writing history in a great haste. Raisani is only a victim of bad advisers and rude colleagues like Rehman Malik.

(The writers is the editor of The Baloch Hal: editor@thebalochhal.com)


http://thebalochhal.com/2010/09/we-are-not-at-war-with-the-chief-minister/