Islamabad: Pakistan has decided to block media coverage and interviews of politicians who are convicts or on trial.
They have also directed the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to fulfil its “responsibility” to discourage airing of such programmes.
Later in a press conference, Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood said that Prime Minister Imran Khan and members of his cabinet unanimously made this decision.
“Those who have plundered national wealth and brought the country on the verge of collapse should not be glorified. No democracy permits interviews and media coverage of those who have been arrested on charges of corruption,” the minister quoted the prime minister as saying.
A cabinet meeting on Tuesday, presided over by Imran, also unveiled details of foreign visits by former president Asif Ali Zardari and former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. It claimed that they had made 245 foreign visits, which cost more than Rs3.5 billion (Dh80 million) was spent, Dawn newspaper reported.
On the issue of the video leak related to an alleged conversation between Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik and Nasir Butt, a close aide of Nawaz Sharif, the cabinet reached the conclusion that as the video was made public by Maryam Nawaz, daughter of Sharif and a senior leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), therefore the onus to prove the allegations against the judge was on her and not the judge and the judiciary.
He, however, said the government had not directed Pemra to close down any private TV channel as it was an independent body competent to take its own decisions.
Pemra suspended transmission of three private TV channels a couple of days ago for airing an interview of PPP leader Zardari, who is in the custody of the National Accountability Bureau and facing trial in a fake accounts/money laundering case.
The authority also took off air an interview of the former president that was being conducted by anchor Hamid Mir on July 1, on the premises of the Parliament House where the former had come to attend a National Assembly session after the house’s speaker had issued his production order.
The government is reportedly of the view that the production orders for Zardari were issued only to enable him to attend the assembly session and not for him to give any interview to ‘undermine’ the judiciary and trial court.
Responding to the allegations, the government’s spokesperson Firdous Ashiq Awan Awan explained that the interview was pulled under Pemra rules for specific reasons.
“[Firstly], an under-trial suspect who is in the custody of the National Accountability Bureau cannot appear in an interview before cameras in the parliament” she said.
Secondly, the permission of the National Assembly speaker is a prerequisite to bring cameras in the parliament.
“This interview was conducted in violation of the rules of parliament,” she concluded.
