“The airwaves are talking of nothing but…”
“Airwaves operate under an occupational hazard – they cannot ignore a news report that is being carried prominently by competitors…why are you laughing?”
“They should do what our other pressure groups have done in this country – formed organizations that enable them to operate under conditions of oligopoly even if their membership is close to a 100 and I am referring to trade bodies, resident associations, the…”
“There are such media organizations as well that…”
“Yes but with one difference: their own viewership overrides other considerations because that dictates their revenue inflows, while the other businesses that collude to seek profit maximization be it through setting a price higher than the market or seeking an export subsidy or…”
“I get it. Media is not like the exchange rate which is market determined as per the International Monetary Fund conditions!”
“In IMF staff dreams perhaps anyway when I mentioned airwaves talking of nothing but one topic I was referring to the letters sent by two lawyer’s bodies, Pakistan Bar Council and Supreme Court Bar Association, demanding the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) quits. That, needless to add, has everyone speculating on who is behind the move?”
“Hmmm, you mean is it a partisan move, and if so which party is behind it, or is it an institutional backed move or is it that those who submitted it had a run in with the CEC at personal level or are they on autopilot or…”
“You have covered the entire ambit of possibility so…”
“Not quite – could the letters be a delayed reaction on the part of these two entities? We have a tendency to delay and delay and delay…”
“Agreed in all, fields – sports, cricket and hockey which destroyed both, economic reforms that have brought us to the current impasse, then there are…”
“Yeah, yeah but I reckon it is also possible that someone gave them instructions a while back and they missed the deadline for expressing concerns over the delimitation exercise and…”
“Lawyers can appeal you know so a deadline is like…is like what Zia-ul-Haq said about our constitution – a piece of paper.”
“Right but my question is, can letters written by non-executive or non-institutional or non-senior bureaucratic members change the status quo of a constitutional position? I mean the President wrote a bunch of letters…”
“Hey he is in a limbo these days so no one is listening to him.”
“Well then not a single party leader wrote a letter recently about the need to dismiss the CEC that was made public…”
“In a country where conspiracy theories abound you are way behind the national average.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023