CHARGES of election rigging and fake voters’ lists have mostly pertained to our politicians. Regrettably, the long list of alleged ‘tricksters’ has now come to include some journalists in the country.

Over the last one month, the country’s four leading press clubs in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Islamabad conducted annual elections to elect the governing body for 2016. The mainstream media did not cover these elections as closely as it does other polls. However, the social media was dominated by news of these elections which did not go well this year.

Serious allegations of corruption and fake voters echoed almost everywhere except in Karachi. Lahore proved the worst case where the elections supposed to be held on Dec 30, 2015, were rescheduled for Jan 17 to help prevent the situation from going from bad to worse. Unprecedented steps were taken to hold the polls in as transparent a manner as possible. Rival groups trying their best to dislodge the groups that ruled the clubs during 2015 alleged that ‘non-journalists’ were being allowed membership to help them win the elections

Allegations of corruption have marred the recent elections.

There were calls in the Peshawar Press Club for action against those accused of not following standard financing practices to ensure that the club’s money was utilised judiciously and transparently in 2014.

Some press clubs, such as those in Karachi and Lahore, have become institutions unto themselves. Here a democratic culture has developed over the years and appears to be stronger than before. Peshawar struggled harder to recover from the notorious eras of the 1980s and 1990s when a certain individual would offer trips to Bangkok to any challenger for ‘rest and recreation’ purposes in return for dropping opposition to his rule.

Today, no city in Pakistan is without a press club; even Fata, Pata and Azad Kashmir are no longer exceptions. In some districts of the country, there are more than one press clubs. Until the end of the 1980s, the press clubs did not enjoy the good financial health that they do today. Thanks to successive governments releasing annual grants in hundreds of thousands from discretionary funds in the 1990s, today the amount is in the millions. The Peshawar Press Club was granted Rs5 million in 2003 when Mir Zafarullah Jamali was the prime minister. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak approved a grant Rs10m in 2015. It is the first time that the press club received so big a grant.

These annual grants are not restricted to the press clubs. Regional unions of journalists are also beneficiaries. Earlier, these unions could not fund an elected member’s air ticket to any meeting of the central representative body — the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ).

Veteran unionists Mazhar Abbas and Abdullah Jan see this flow of government money as the beginning of a ‘lust for power’ among journalists opening the floodgates of corruption and upping the chances of fake voters to increase the vote bank to re-win the elections.

Besides annual grants, some leading press clubs have managed plots for their members from the provincial and federal governments. ‘Plot politics’, many argue, has led to the birth of ‘lust’ in every journalist. The leaders seized the opportunity to cash in on the desire for plots among the members.

The journalist community is no exception to groupings. With the PFUJ splitting into more than two groups the focus shifted to press club elections, with each group trying to dominate as many press clubs as possible. So, press clubs stand divided among the PFUJ groups.

Political interference is having a negative impact on the journalist community, its representative bodies and press clubs. Affiliation with one political party or another, politicised unionism and a partisan role dominate.

Not all media organisations are looking after the well-being of their staff, and unions and press clubs have taken it upon themselves to do welfare work for their members. Plots and grants are what unions and press club leaders say are part and parcel of the members’ welfare.

Press clubs and unions have to move swiftly on the issue of taking ‘non-journalists’ off voter lists. Press clubs should become more involved in members’ professional and ethical capacity-building than concentrating on their welfare — media organisations should have the responsibility for the latter. Senior journalist leaders and editors should resume coming to the press clubs.

Government grants should follow independent and third-party audit and next year’s grant may be linked to an ‘OK report’ from the auditor general to bring in transparency and accountability to the press clubs and unions which may follow the model of the Pakistan Bar Council and have an authority conducting elections and regulating voters’ lists to get both the unions and press clubs out of the alleged ‘tricksters’’ group.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @khattak63

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2016