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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (11985)	5/6/2002 8:58:52 AM
From: JPR	Respond to of 12475

A poster boy for referendum Pakistan moves from pillar to post- all in the name of democrac(z)y-JPR Paki Post Master-General has defined his post by persuading the Govt to arrest posthaste another Govt.official who was seen to rip the referendum poster of the poster boy, Musharaff, for referendum; who claimed that he was only attempting to repost the poster; and who is yet to post his bail. Who is going to tell the Post Master-General to move the mail posthaste rather than get involved with post-referendum ripped posters?--JPR Extract Tearing off a poster It is disturbing news that the Islamabad police have registered a case against a man - and a government official at that - for tearing off one of President Musharraf's referendum posters at the capital's General Post Office in Aabpara. The case was registered on the complaint of the post master-general. The man has managed to get a court grant him bail before arrest. If convicted, he could be imprisoned for three or so years which, according to an Islamabad Capital Territory official, is the penalty for tearing off any presidential poster or banner. It will be no less than a double penalty for the man in question because, if convicted, his career will stand destroyed. The incident speaks volumes about the democratic credentials the government has been trying hard to project. Even if the man had torn off the poster intentionally, the act can hardly be described as a crime that deserves three years in jail, considering the fact that it was not the president's official photograph hanging on the wall of a government office; it was merely a poster like the hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. Many of those posters and banners had been put up, as the government claims, by pro-Musharraf citizens in the run-up to the referendum. The referendum was, after all, a political affair, and every citizen had the right to express his views one way or the other. Removing someone else's posters is not one's democratic right. But the man should be given the benefit of the doubt specially because he claims that he was not tearing it off but re-pasting it.