Critical Review of Pamera Ordinance 2002:

Pakistan Electronic Media regulatory authority was establish under PAMERA ordinance 2002. In Musharraf’s Regime, certain amendments were proposed in the ordinance to restrict media’s right of freedom of speech; when media was playing its instrumental role in restoration of the chief justice if I may recall. Later on, those amendments were taken back by Musharraf.

Coming back to the ordinance, PAMERA has been under the influence of Federal Govt.

Refer to para no. 5 of the ordinance which makes federal government’s directives on a matter of policy were binding on the Authority

Quote

“The Federal Government may, as and when it considers necessary, issue directives to the Authority on matters of policy, and such directives shall be binding on the Authority, and if a question arises whether any matter is a matter of policy or not, the decision of the Federal Government shall be final”

Unquote

The Ultimate result, we see channel transmissions getting shut down and PAMERA cannot have its say if the channel was right because the Govt. over ruled it’s say.

Same is reflected in section 6

The Authority comprised a chairman and nine members, all appointed by the president. Out of the nine members, five had to be “eminent” citizens

Again, the government’s intervention reflected in clause 20:

The licensee was bound to broadcast programmes (in public interest) specified by the government or the Authority and comply with the rules and codes made by the Authority with the government approval.

At the moment, Media Experts say that PAMERA Ordinance has not been implemented the way it should have been. Where its objectives are to “improve the standards of information, education and entertainment”, to “enlarge the choice available to the people in the media for news, current affairs….music, sports, drama and other subjects of public and national interest”; to “facilitate the devolution of responsibility and power to the grass-roots by improving the access of the people to mass media at the local and community level”, and to “ensure accountability, transparency and good governance by optimising the free flow of information.” it instead created a mechanism to control the electronic media restricting their right of freedom of speech just because of Government’s intervention.

PAMERA’s performance needs to be monitored whether it’s optimising the free flow of information or trying to restrict the flow of information and it should be done by an independent body media ethics specialized people.

Regards,
Owais Moeen