PEMRA against regulatory regime principles
ISLAMABAD- Experts on media and regulatory affairs have expressed reservations over the recently established Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) for its being contrary to the principles of regulatory regime.
The policy-related provision of PEMRA Ordinance is open to discretionary interpretation as well as legalising government’s control over news-worthy contents of electronic media, they point out.
“It (the binding instructions) will legalise the government interference in electronic media affairs. It is going to jeopardise the independence of the electronic channels,” said former News Director of PTV Habibullah Farooqi.
“With the powers of federal government to issue policy instructions, PEMRA carries the fundamental risk to unmeet the objectives of establishing an independent regulatory body. The law in its present shape will frustrate the very purpose of creating an independent statuary regulatory body,” observed Barrister Ijaz Ishaq Khan, a legal expert on regulatory affairs.
Ijaz said the standard practice in good regulatory regime is that policy guidelines or in certain cases policy directives are specified as in case of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and NEPRA to ensure transparency and independence of regulatory bodies, he added.
Experts said the objective of setting up a media regulatory body will become irrelevant as the federal government will formalise its leverage of power through PEMRA in matters of media regulatory affairs under the head of policy matters.
“Under the regulatory regime, policy instructions have to be very limited and specific these cannot be binding,” observed Salman Humayun, Director, Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan.
‘In Britain, there is an independent body completely beyond the control of the government. It looks after the regulatory affairs of private TV channels and Radio Stations” observed, Agha Nasir, a media expert who was part of the team in the past which had worked on original draft of PEMRA.
The experts say the promulgated law on the subject provide more than sufficient leverage to PEMRA to restrict “unwanted” material from being broadcast or telecast as it is evident from the provision: “The Authority shall by order; give reasons in writing for declaring the order to prohibit any broadcaster or CTV (Cable Television) operator from broadcasting or re-broadcasting or distributing any programme if it is of opinion that such particular programme is likely to create hatred among the people or is prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order or likely to disturb public peace and tranquility or endangers national security.”
Burhanuddin Hasan, author of the book “Uncensored” and former News Director, PTV, observed that the independence of private electronic media will be the same as those of PTV and PBC (Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation) if provision of binding policy instructions was not amended in PEMRA.
He said the government should have appointed a retired judge of the Supreme Court as Chairman of the Authority to handle the affairs of electronic channel with a “better perspective”.
Given the track record of the successive governments, the binding official policy instructions being unspecified in nature, will give an unlimited leverage to federal government to over-stretch its mandate possibly to pre-empt any issue of genuine public interest from being highlighted in the electronic media, said another expert.
The experts observed that the federal government at the most should restrict itself by giving broad-based unbinding policy guidelines or some limited and specific policy directives on the issue of national security to PEMRA to regulate private electronic media.
Experts pointed out that the following provision of promulgated ordinance pertaining to policy instructions, will be an additional tool for the government of the day to suppress the freedom of Press.
“The federal government may, as and when it considers necessary, issue directives to the Authority on the matters of policy, and such directives shall be binding on the Authority.”
Binding and unspecified policy directives will hit hard the transparency of PEMRA as there is a strong possibility that public will never know the very nature of any such unspecific policy instructions, opined Barrister Ishaq.
“We had requested Ministry of Information to provide us the draft of PEMRA in advance so that we could evaluate it critically and include our inputs to optimise the law. But the Ministry replied that the draft will be provided only after its promulgation,” complained CRCP Director who said the government should have generated public debate and consulted all stakeholders before finalising such an important piece of legislation.
Legal experts pinpointed the duplicity and overlapping of PEMRA function and operation with that of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). They cited the existing laws of PTA and PEMRA under which the both regulatory bodies in tele-communication and media sectors will be responsible for regulating the establishment and operation of all broadcasts and CTV stations in Pakistan simultaneously.
Under Cable Television Operation Rules-2000 and Cable TV Regulations, 2000 based on PTA Act and PEMRA ordinance, the operation of both regulators will overlap in issuance of licenses for the purpose of broadcasting and setting of CTV stations in different categories including, international national , provincial scale stations; local Area or Community based stations; specific and specialised subject stations; and Cable Television Network stations.
The legal experts said that the military rulers should have amended PTA act suitably much before the promulgation of ordinance setting up PEMRA to avoid the operational overlapping of both regulatory bodies.
Maj. Gen. (Retd) Shahzada Alam who was recently notified as Chairman PTA for four years on February 28, on his retirement from army on February 27,2002, admitted possible operational overlapping of PEMRA and PTA.
“The moment PEMRA formally starts functioning, we will hand over PTA’s operation related to cable TVs to PEMRA,” he concluded.
“We’d look into the issue (of overlapping function) while finalising operational modalities of the Authority, said Saleem Gul Sheikh, recently appointed member of PEMRA.
Source: The Nation
Date:3/30/2002
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