President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday urged media to stop selling negativity as a commodity and play its part in making Pakistan a strong and prosperous nation.
Addressing the 4th national conference of South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) here at Aiwan-e-Sadar, he said Pakistan People's Party decided to stay away from a media group to say enough was enough and taking that decision was its political right.
"It is a format of showing our displeasure," he said adding the negative propaganda against his party was going on for years. He said PPP did not take the route to dominate media as others before it did.
"We want you (media) to evolve and become strong," he said adding media should also show the good that is happening in the country.
The President called for cohesiveness in policies and said in the past discontinuity of programmes made the country suffer greatly.
"Too many cook spoil the broth. Growth of the country was stemmed because of lack of vision and abandoning of policies," he added.
The President said once he had a discussion with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi about production of edible oils and on cutting back its imports.
After that the Indian Prime Minister went back and put in place a policy to produce edible oils and this continued after even he left office.
Now India exports edible oil but Pakistan is still an importer and spends about $800 million of its foreign exchange on it, he added.
He said it was not necessary that everybody should be part of Pakistan People's Party but some decisions should be beyond personal interests.
"We may have weaknesses but giving solution takes a lot and to cause destruction takes a little."
The President referred to the destruction of infrastructure in Swat, which was built over a period of 60 years.
He said Pakistan sent back home 1.8 million of its internally displaced people from Swat in months whereas people uprooted in countries like Afghanistan and Iran were still living landless and cultureless.
The people of Swat learned a lesson to not let the Taliban get back, he said adding the government gave political ownership to war on terror.
"When you have no political ownership, you are the bad guys," he remarked.
Pakistan even stopped the Soviets from coming as its people did not want to live as robots, landless and without religion, he observed.
The President said Benazir Bhutto taught him to follow the policy of political reconciliation which has taken forward the democratic system this far.
"We are open to dialogue. We have spoken to everybody. We do not want to lose the initiative.
Democracy is as good as the people are," he added.
The President said the government was spending a huge amount on schemes like smart card and Watan card to transfer cash grants to the poor people.
"You can't find fault with them," he said while emphasising the transparency of the schemes.
President Zardari said Pakistan needed a double digit growth rate over a long period of time in a sustained manner to meet needs of its huge population, 65 percent of which consists of youth.
He said he was visiting China after every three months to learn from their story of successful economic transformation.
"They (China) have progressed through use of knowledge and good policies," he added.
Briefing the media about President's address to South Asian Free Media Association's (SAFMA) Fourth National conference titled "Setting a National Agenda on Media, Democracy and Good Governance", Spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said the President said that economic growth has been stymied because economic policies adopted were not given the ownership and were reversed with the change of government.
"Our industrialists and entrepreneurs need to give ownership to economic policies," the President added.
The President said that every dictator and adventurer had tried to reinvent the wheel and in the process took the nation behind by a decade.
The President said that militants and extremists not only want to impose their political ideology on the people of Pakistan, they also want to change the world order. "We cannot allow this, we will not allow it".
The Spokesperson quoted the President as saying, "As a political party, we know that withdrawal of subsidies is an unpopular decision. No political party wants to pay political price of such decision.
But how long can subsidies be given ? One day the subsidies will have to be cut down. A beginning has to be made and has been made even though it is a politically costly decision".
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