However, on the ground, the Geo network has been blocked in most parts of the country without any legal order from any authority. This situation is a mockery of the law, Constitution and legal course and has all the potential to invite international pressures and possible sanctions.
In case of any “violation” by any media house, the law prescribes certain procedures, including filing of a complaint, which have been followed in this case by the ISI through the Defence Ministry. However, without allowing the law to take its course, the Geo network in most parts of the country has been closed through coercive measures.
The law of the land and the decisions of the Supreme Court do not allow the cable operators to act as an adjudicator or arbitrarily block or shuffle the number of any channel on the cable. But in the case of Geo, it has been done without any fear of accountability.
Pemra, which is without any chairman and is faced with the worst kind of internal bickering, has been unable to check the illegal suspension of Geo transmission. Neither Pemra has passed any order on Geo’s controversial April 19th coverage regarding the ISI nor any such judgment has been handed over by any court of law, yet the channel has been made to bleed through illegal means.
Background interactions reveal that the government is anxious to get the Geo-ISI tiff resolved amicably whereby the respect of the institutions of Pak Army and ISI is upheld without the closure of the channel. The government believes that what Geo did on April 19th was unfair but it does not want to go to the extent of closing down the leading television channel of the country.
Sources said that the ISI, however, is desirous to see the Geo channel suspended, if not closed. The government, however, is apprehensive that such an extreme action against Geo would not only compromise its democratic credentials but would also bring a lot of pressure from international players.
Some major economic concessions, including the GSP-Plus offered to Pakistan by the European Union, would be under serious threat in case Geo was shut down. The sources said that freedom of expression has been one of the conditions for the grant of GSP-Plus status to Pakistan.
More importantly, the government realises that no channel could be arbitrarily shut down in the presence of an independent judiciary. What happened on April 19th has to be adjudged ultimately by the judiciary in line with the law and Constitution. The court has to ultimately decide whether it was a bad editorial judgment or a conspiracy to defame the ISI.
The government is, in fact, in a dilemma over the Geo-ISI tiff. On the one hand, it is under pressure to shut Geo and also get from it an apology while, on the other hand, it has received a large number of complaints that Geo has been either closed or its place has been changed to last numbers on the cable by cable operators.
The government does not want to close Geo because it can be used as a precedent by the present and future governments to close any channel on the complaint of anyone against it. Politically, it suits the government to close any channel any time that criticises it but Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid and others do not want to use such negative tactics. The government is of the view that the issue should be resolved by apology and fine. Moreover, the government does not want to shut Geo because Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif realised that the journalist unions and Jang Group workers are planning to launch countrywide protests if journalists and workers were rendered jobless as a result of a ban on Geo.
The government, however, is not taking action on the complaints against the cable operators just to please the military establishment that wants Geo’s closure and an apology.According to a Geo spokesman, Geo has sustained losses of billions of rupees besides damage to its reputation because of its illegal closure or change of number on the cable.
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