Daily Times

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain Monday said Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed the government team to make another contact with the opposition parties on the proposed electoral reforms.

In a tweet, the minister said Attorney General for Pakistan Khalid Javed Khan will brief the prime minister about main features of electoral reforms after holding a meeting with the legal team of the opposition parties and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). He said the attorney general will present a report containing the opposition’s suggestions on electoral reforms to the prime minister.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan Monday said that now the people of the country will witness improvement and reforms in all sectors of life as they have left behind the difficult times. Addressing a gathering of parliamentarians belonging to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and its allies, the prime minister said “there were always resistance and difficulties when you bring changes or reforms.” “The people and mafias getting benefits from the corrupt system will resist and they will create hurdles to protect their privileges they are getting from such system,” he said.

He said the government faced resistance while introducing reforms in different sectors. He referred to the functioning of the government-run hospitals and said they had been trying for reforms in their management system during the last three years but are still facing resistance. He observed that on the other hand, in the private hospitals, there was a system of reward and punishment.

The prime minister also stressed upon revamping of standards of medical institutes. He said Pakistan has been among the few countries of the world which saw unprecedented growth rate of 4 per cent during the Covid 19 pandemic.

The prime minister said under the Ehsaas programme, 90 per cent data had been collected, and now they would provide direct subsidy to the poor segments of society. Referring to construction of houses for the low-income group, he said the people would soon see ‘a revolution unfolding’. He also thanked all the parliamentarians and the allied parties for fully supporting the government.

Separately, Fawad Ch said that the non-serious political leadership is a great challenge for the country due to its immature approach. In a tweet, he said some foreign networks start disseminating various rumours first, then a specific group initiates posting comments on these rumours and subsequently any leader of opposition’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) pick those comments like their religious obligation and further spread the rumours in the mainstream media.

Commenting on rumours about former special assistant to prime minister on Overseas Pakistanis Zulfi Bukhari’s Israel visit, he said it is absolutely ridiculous to talk that Bukhari had visited Israel as the representative of Pakistan Army. “PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari started commenting on the rumours in a stupid manner without applying his mind a bit, and verifying the veracity of the rumour,” he added.

Meanwhile, speaking in the National Assembly, Fawad Chaudhary said Pakistan has offered numerous sacrifices in the war against terrorism but past governments failed to articulate its narrative in an effective way through use of media globally, adding that they did not work vociferously to create public opinion. He said the media is an important tool in the states around the globe to help mould public opinion in their favour. The media can play an important role in promoting the narrative of the states, he added.

The information minister said wars in the world are now fought through the victory of one’s narrative. Ironically, no heed was paid to that aspect in the past, he lamented.

He said recently an info-lab was captured through which it was observed that 845 fake websites were running against Pakistan while disseminating wrong news on sensitive subjects like Balochistan, Kashmir. He claimed that more than 300,000 tweets were shared from India’s Ahmedabad city. “Today’s world is a world of public opinion, now wars are fought through rhetoric, the more the narrative is accepted, the more victory would be determined. With the use of advanced technology and strengthening the state media with more allocations, we can effectively fight the media war against enemies of Pakistan,” the minister said. He said all this happened due to weak media policies of the past governments as they did nothing for image building of Pakistan as well as regarding the media tactics of enemies against Pakistan.