ISLAMABAD: As the government showed its determination to set up the controversial Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) to regulate the country’s media, the opposition parties on Tuesday vowed to resist the move, terming it an attempt to further gag the media and the voices of dissent.

Calling it a ‘draconian law’, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) declared the proposed legislation in violation of the Constitution.

Through the proposed law seeking to set up the PMDA, the government wants to regulate films, electronic, print and digital media, including Web TV and news websites, while repealing all the current media-related laws.

A joint committee of the media organisations in the country had already unanimously rejected the government’s attempt to establish the PMDA. The committee comprising the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors, All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Pakistan Broadcasters Association, Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and Association of Electronic Media Editors and News Directors in a statement is planning to invite all human rights groups, lawyers and other sections of civil society to join hands in stopping the outrageous move by the government to put further curbs on the media.

Proposed legislation for PMDA termed violative of Constitution

Despite resistance by the opposition parties and representatives of media bodies, federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, while talking to representatives of digital media platforms on Sunday, had again expressed the government’s desire to set up the regulatory authority.

“We need to think over fake news, sectarian news and hate material. We are setting up PMDA. Digital media is our future,” the minister had stated. According to him, it was in the public interest that digital media should be regulated to control abusive, harmful and hateful contents.

PPP Senator Raza Rabbani in a statement on Tuesday said the PMDA was a “draconian law” and surpassed the Press and Publication Ordinance, 1960, and subsequent martial law regulations promulgated from time to time under the military rules.

“Therefore, the PMDA is rejected,” he declared.

Mr Rabbani said: “It is in total violation of Articles 18, 19 and 19-A of the Constitution as the regulations sought to be enforced on the media are not reasonable.

“This is the blackest of black laws with a deliberate intent of crushing the media and all voices of dissent. This, along with the attack on academic freedom, students and intelligentsia, is a clear reflection that the present government seeks to impose a fascist rule in Pakistan.”

PPP vice president Sherry Rehman in a separate statement suggested to the government to withdraw the proposed law after its opposition by journalists and their bodies.

“The PMDA law is a media martial law,” Ms Rehman said.

Instead of ensuring press freedom in the country, she alleged, the government wanted to regulate the media. She said keeping all the media under its thumb reflected “the dictatorial mindset” of the regime.

Ms Rehman asked the rulers not to consider them as “kings”, saying that the criticism by the opposition and the media was the actual beauty of democracy. She advised the government to focus on governance and improvement in its performance, instead of wasting its energies in hatching conspiracies to curb media freedom.

PML-N information secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb termed the proposed law “an act of terrorism against media, Constitution and press freedom by the Imran Khan government”.

She said the statement of the joint committee of the media organisations had exposed the government’s lie. She said the PMDA was an outcome of the “fascist mindset”.

Ms Aurangzeb, who had served as the information minister in the previous PML-N government, said her party would not let the government establish ‘Nazi-ism’ in the country through the PMDA.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2021