Last week democracy played a testing trick against the members of the Karachi Union of Journalists-Burna Group. For the first time in the history of the Karachi Press Club, the opposition faction, the KUJ-D (Dastoori Group), managed to win the Clubs annual General Body election.

Formed in the mid-1960s during the Ayub Khan regime, the KUJ-D emerged as a right-wing faction and was mainly backed by the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Its members usually include journalists working for the conservative press.
Some observers of this years elections suggest that the KUJ-Ds victory should not be treated as a surprise, especially in the event of the Club dishing out a record number of new memberships in the last three years or so to working journalists from the bludgeoning, mainly populist-rightist electronic media and a spat of right-wing dailies.
This may very well be true because in this years election, the Club saw one of the highest turn-outs. Some 700 votes were cast. The foremost question arising now is what does this election result mean to the historical nature of the Karachi Press Club?

To date it has been one of the most dynamic press clubs in the country that over the decades has seen itself evolve from being a hot bed of leftist press movements, to becoming perhaps the countrys most liberal and secular sanctuary even in most trying of times.

The Clubs progressive atmosphere was moulded by the constant electoral victories of panels nominated by the KUJ-B, a group historically associated with journalists from all shades of progressive, secular and leftist politics. Of course, the general ideological make-up of the Club cannot be purged overnight. The conservative KUJ-D will have to win a spat of future elections to finally achieve what it has always propagated and projected i.e. “to regulate certain activities and make the Club a more serious place for journalists.”

That may be a tall order because what the KUJ-D criticises as being “un-ethical activities” and “non-serious” events have always been seen by most Club members as part and parcel of the many social and intellectual freedoms that the journalists of Karachi have struggled for.

For example, even during the repressive dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, the Karachi Press Club stood tall not only as a bastion of radical and democratic protest and activism, it also maintained a hard fought status quo that actually managed to keep the police from ever entering the Clubs premises.

I remember visiting the Club as a college student on numerous occasions, attending progressive mushairas, speeches and passionate anti-dictatorship gatherings, as Zias plain-clothesmen stood outside taking down the numbers of the various cars and bikes parked outside the Club. “Un-ethical” acts that only perhaps a minority indulged in, such as drinking or harmless betting, became expressions of defiance because they were being indulged in almost as a political statement, smack-dab in the middle of Zias reign of coercive moralism and a violent exercise of a hypocritical and authoritarian strain of state-backed religiosity.

The victory of the KUJ-D has come through a proud tradition of democracy that the Club has practised for so many years. Whats more, there was also a growing feeling among a number of new KUJ-B supporters that the expanding status of the Club and the nature of alterations that this expansion required needed a change of sorts at the helm.
But even though one can criticise the KUJ-B of becoming complacent and unable to accommodate the demands of the new members, one should not forget to mention the role the KUJ-D played during the many years it remained on the losing side. Whereas the KUJ-B was never above infighting, a portion of the KUJ-Ds history too is rather stained.

Their opponents have always accused the KUJ-D for supporting media organisations headed by newspaper owners, and thus hampering the KUJ-Bs many attempts to help working journalists achieve more rights and better pay.
Secondly, since the KUJ-D was close to the JI; when the JI became part of Zias first civilian cabinet (1978-79), the group was also said to be in the forefront of helping the dictator silence the many movements that emerged from the Karachi Press Club against the military regime.

When a number of journalists were being flogged by the military regime in the late 1970s, the KUJ-D is on record as having agreed with the then JI chief who described the KUJ-B as being “full of anti-Pakistan journalists,  atheists and communists.”

Interestingly, this years elections also offered another development. It is believed that many young and supposedly liberal employees from the electronic media also ended up voting for the conservative KUJ-D. This is perhaps a reflection of the nature of protest gatherings that took place in Pakistan last year during the lawyers` movement where one saw liberal/leftist young people quite willingly rubbing shoulders with fiery reactionary and rightist activists.
It is this last point that doesnt seem to bode well for the future of the Clubs traditionally liberal, secular and progressive orientation. Only time, or more so, the results of next years elections would be able to shed more light on this awkward question.