ISLAMABAD: Amid a torrent of protests from the journalist community in Pakistan, the government has said it will review a new ordinance aimed at regulating television broadcasts, and restrained PEMRA, the electronic media regulatory authority, from using it to initiate action against private networks.

But the journalists went ahead with their plan and observed Thursday as a "Black Day," with peaceful rallies and processions in all major cities including the capital, where hundreds of them gathered to demand the immediate withdrawal of the ordinance.

"Our fight is for the right to information for each and every citizen of this country. Our struggle will continue until the PEMRA ordinance is taken back, and the press is completely free," Mazhar Abbas, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, said at a rally outside the Islamabad Press Club.

Earlier in the day, the journalists protested outside the National Assembly after Speaker Amir Hussain barred reporters from Parliament following their unprecedented protests inside the House on Wednesday night.

He cancelled reporters' passes issued before every session, and is said to be considering new rules for allowing journalists inside the House.

Shouting slogans, reporters surrounded the vehicles of parliamentarians as they arrived for the session. In the National Assembly, the Opposition parties protested the bar on journalists and said they should be allowed back into the press gallery.

Following the Government's suspension of action under the new ordinance, private television networks that had either gone off the air for nearly a week or were being shuffled around from one channel to another have reappeared on screens in their original slots. It is not clear yet whether live transmissions have been permitted again.

On instructions from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the police withdrew an FIR against 250 journalists for a protest they held earlier in the week in violation of prohibitory orders in the capital.

I am left in the lurch: Musharraf

Meanwhile, in an indication that President Pervez Musharraf is feeling increasingly isolated in his worst ever crisis in seven years, he is said to have berated ruling party parliamentarians for leaving him "in the lurch."

"I bluntly say you always leave me alone in times of trial and tribulation. Whether it was a change in the Afghan policy, Dr. A.Q. Khan or the Bugti issue, the judicial crisis or the May 12 incidents, you never came to my support," newspapers quoted him as saying.

He is reported to have said, "I feel disturbed for the first time." He said there was nothing to feel embarrassed about the present crisis and urged the parliamentarians to use every platform to "make a hue and cry and defend the government."

Legal battle

In another development that has heated up the legal battle initiated by the ousted Chief Justice Ifthikar Chaudhary against the Government in the Supreme Court, the heads of Pakistan's military intelligence, Intelligence Bureau and President Musharraf's chief of staff filed affidavits challenging Justice Chaudhary's version of the happenings on March 9, the day he was made "non-functional."

In his affidavit, Justice Chaudhary said he was kept against his will in General Musharraf's Army House office in Rawalpindi for more than five hours during which the President, the Prime Minister and the heads of the three intelligence agencies tried to force him to resign.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail