May 20, 2024

Will Fawad be held accountable for manipulations in information ministry?

Capital Calling

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Apart from the charges that Fawad faces in the court of law, he has to be accounted for the murder of merit he committed in state media.

Finally, former information minister Fawad Chaudhry has been arrested in Islamabad. He was facing charges in cases ranging from terrorism to contempt of state institutions. Fawad is an impulsive turncoat or lota in local parlance. He has joined almost all political parties and remained very vocal in almost each of the party the joined.

PTI was his last crush. Mudslinging political opponents is his speciality. In the PTI government, he was information ministry. His intervention into professional matters of the ministry was so deep that even lower level officials were also distressed. He planted his people in every position in the institutions that fell in his ministry. This wholesale slaughter of merit earned the country a bad name in global media.

Media is a highly professional and sensitive organ. Pakistan is among the countries that have state sponsored media organs. Hence, it makes the country doubly vulnerable in the global village. It is so because the content that goes in state-run media outlets is considered the official stand of the state of Pakistan.

Flow of information in such a situation requires very high standards of professionalism. Apart from the charges that Fawad faces in the court of law, he has to be accounted for the murder of merit he committed in state media. In the offices of electronic media, he filled his favorites with little experience in the relevant field. As a result, our state media committed blunder upon blunder. Irony is that the successive governments also failed to do away with the mess he had created.

He bluntly and brazenly damaged Radio Pakistan and filled Pakistan Television with his favorites. For a short time, he was made minister of science and during that time, he committed blunders in the name of making ventilators to cure coronavirus patients. He himself never cared about his dignity when he ran away from police the last time they tried to arrest him. Even then, some of the deal makers in the guise of journalists are crying on his presentation in the court of law.

Astonishing is the fact that these people never uttered a single world on the murder of merit Fawad had repeatedly committed during his hay days. Most of these fake journalists are beneficiary of his corruption in one way or the other. We appeal to the incumbent information minister to investigate the matter and weed out Fawad’s implants from different institutions of the Information Ministry so that there is an improvement in presentation of the state image to the global world. If the incumbent minister fails to do so, it is logical that he could be found complacent in the crimes that Fawad has committed. Last but not the least, the authorities concerned need to establish rule of law for all and sundry.