“FREEDOM of the press is said to be one of the basic pre-requisites of democracy. In Pakistan’s chequered history the press has never experienced freedom as now..”. (Letter to the Editor, Sep 12). And then Freeman Arshad Hyder of Peshawar goes on to grumble that this freedom we have is no use as “the government does not pay any heed to what is written about it in the press...”.

What makes Mr Hyder feel that the men who rule Pakistan are intelligent, well read, or even enlightened moderates? Ever since the demise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, all who have assumed power, grabbed power, or claimed that it was thrust upon them have played the same game : stay in the top slot for as long as possible, adopt any ways and means to win the ‘grab as grab can’ tournament, until shot out ignominiously or rendered dead.

One thing we need to understand is that the local press feels that it is justified in printing whatever it is paid to print, whether it be true or false, sense or senseless, believable or unbelievable, palatable or unpalatable. The obligation to the million or so readers (that’s about it when it comes to the literates able to tackle a newspaper) is fulfilled as long as the declaration is clear : the matter is an ‘advertisement’, or, as has become the fashion, an ‘advertisement supplement’.

For instance, yesterday the English-language press and for sure the Urdu press carried ‘advertisement supplements’ greeting the man in self-exile, the man who on his own admittance cannot set one foot in Pakistan in case he is killed, the man who had (prior to the present government and its coalition partner) a string of criminal cases against him — none other than Altaf Hussain of London Town, citizen of the United Kingdom, Quaid-i-Tehreek to his loyal followers.

He was sent ‘hearty greetings’ on the auspicious occasion of his 52nd birthday, inter alia, by Salahuddin Haider, adviser to the chief minister ‘For Information & Archives’ who also penned a paen to the Quaid under the heading ‘A portrait in sincerity’, by Shoaib Ahmed Bokhari, Sindh minister for planning & development, by the National Highway Authority, by the National Highways & Motorways Police, by the Karachi Port Trust, by Port Qasim Authority, by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation, by the Pakistan Public Works Department, by Wasim Akhtar, adviser to chief minister, Sindh, for local government, etc, by Syed Safwanullah, federal minister of housing and works, etc — in other words, dear readers, by you and I, the taxpayers who have footed the bill for these supplements so generously inserted by our beloved chosen representatives.

Such is the freedom allowed by Musharraf’s government that even supplements on Asif Zardari are printed. There is no discrimination or self-censorship when it comes to money flowing in.

Moving on to matters of greater import, President General Pervez Musharraf has reportedly made yet another bad blunder. According to the Washington Post, on September 13 in New York, whilst being interviewed and questioned on the Mukhtaran Mai issue, he is quoted as having said : “You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada and citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.” He has since denied that he himself made any such suggestion ; he was merely repeating what “a lot of people say.” Why does he have to mindlessly repeat what “a lot of people say”?

There are many who wonder why it is that he has allowed himself to be surrounded by arch-sycophants and tuft-hunters who cocoon and misguide him. Should we feel sorry for the man? After all, it can be extremely lonely at the top. An editorial in this newspaper on September 16 on the subject of his disastrous remark in New York ends by stating that “the president owes it to the women of Pakistan to clarify his comments.” This would be fatal. His sycophantic wardens will further sink him.

But all is not lost. For almost 60 years I have been a reader of Dawn and without fail read the third editorial first. On September 15, the subject of the third editorial was the ‘Mounting backlog of cases’ in the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, is starting off this new judicial year with a backlog of over 30,000 cases. Whew! This is enormous and must be addressed somehow or the other.

Yet, with all this at his back, Chief Justice Chaudhry, prompted by a column printed in Dawn on September 8 (the latest of one of the many columns written on the subject), has taken suo moto notice of the environmentally disastrous ‘New Murree’ scheme (or scam) which, if it happens, will cause the murder of hundreds of thousands of coniferous trees, thus causing soil erosion, with consequential landslides, and affecting the annual rainfall and thus the storage of the Rawal dams.

Our rulers and their politicians, together with their ‘developer’ sidekicks, will stop at nothing to assuage their greed — they blatantly and shamelessly air their contempt for their country and its people.

Well done, our new Chief Justice, who obviously loves and knows the value of trees and forests and can feel for the environment. We must just hope that this case does not get lost amidst the 30,000.