The sole utility of GINA and NCN will in the end be archival

Dear Editor,

The sole utility of GINA and the NCN will, in the end, be archival. They, and their predecessors, would have served to lend citation and reference to any examination of the depths of the self-delusion, outright lies and pitiful attempts at brainwashing, which marked the style of governance of the ancestors in the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

They would have to be presented as prime examples of the way a limited and self-serving political narrative seeks to impose itself on the national perception, and the utter ridicule and rejection that awaits it. Examples of how not to do things. Studies in the futility of programmes that distort truth and that serve, in the end, only to reveal shameful aspects of the group psychology of their owners and of a people never short of its sycophants and fellow travellers, sell-outs and soup-drinkers.

GINA/NCN would be remembered for offering us, in defiance of all fact and common sense, that it was the PPP which

-brought back free elections and democracy and lean, clean and efficient government

-re-established freedom of the press and unbanned certain imports

-cut poverty rates from eighty or sixty five per cent to a manageable thirty-five in their first decade

-held in check an unscrupulous opposition voracious in its hunt for power

-flooded the country with foreign investors and lifted us into prosperity and peace even as the opposition and jealous or simply dull naysayers tried to block the train of progress.

GINA/NCN, and their predecessors, would figure prominently in the case study of the limits to the efficacy of propaganda, with the point being made that in the same way that the PNC fooled no one when it deployed its media, the PPP would have fooled none. The case study would then have to offer an explanation of the varying electoral fortunes of the two governments, with explanations of why it was that in 1992 the PNC, with visible works and despite ethnic voting, did so well at the polls, and why in 2011, despite its self-praise and damnification of the opposition, the PPP slipped. The role of GINA/ NCN and their predecessors in throwing dust in eyes, and the real weight of propaganda will have to be evaluated. And done so against case studies of the ex-communist countries or third world dictatorships, where similar media control did nothing to guarantee the ruling clique their perenniality in office and protection from the scepticism or scorn of a population that is fed only one “truth.”

In order to cast real light on the discussion of the value of GINA/NCN, we propose that a poll be done by a reputable agency, or even a UG team, in which opinion is measured about people’s confidence in these agencies and the Chronicle, as impartial, competent, persuasive sources of information. Let us measure the effectiveness of these media and their work of persuading the public that the myths, illusions, and lies are true. Or do people have more faith in the opposition press and CN Sharma?

If the PPP/Civic has learnt nothing from history, the history of their former friends in the red bloc or the PNC in its glory days, then one is left only with archival confirmation that an ossified political culture was all they possessed as habit and frame of analysis, or that it is in the nature of the party culture, when it is not renewed, to slide irretrievably into the ridiculous.

For when the poll is done to sound out public opinion of NCN/GINA and to measure credibility, ratings results would show how ineffective this type of propaganda really is. That it has not, even in cases of Berlin walls and isolation, persuaded any people that things were better than they were. Or that no Pradoville exists, or that government leaders are poorer now than in 1992, or that corruption is non-existent, or that the cost of living is lower, or that there is less stress and less of a public health problem of violence, theft, rape, drug abuse…

In other words, GINA/NCN is the kind of support that, in a modern novel, one would put down to the overly fertile imagination of a cynical writer, or a spoof on the ways of the developing world. The PPP ought to tell itself that propaganda becomes a form of self-mockery in the end, and is of little relevance to the man who will vote race, progress or not, or the man whose sole concern is making an honest living. In short, basically a waste of money except that it rewards certain friends and co-conspirators with jobs and maintains the image of serious activity going on.

Some lessons to be learnt from the case study:

The first is that the people crying “democracy and press freedom” in the opposition, once they get power in 1992, will aggressively continue the same politics for the media that they earlier decried, and may even find some former press freedom activists to become willing collaborators in the new order they install.

The second seems to be that denial of “press freedom” has as much to do with limiting the freedom of the national media that existed when you took power, as with the use and abuse of the state media you inherit and control, and also your readiness to extend the press freedom to people at Linden or elsewhere whose views you do not like.

The third is that an honest media can highlight and explain and support government initiatives and development programmes but that for this to be credible it has to be professionally done with real debate and discussion and respect for other views to the point of permitting them to be heard.

The thing to watch is that if parliament cuts subventions to NCN it has to be careful that government does not funnel money to NCN by simply increasing the government advertising it enjoys and depriving the private sector press as ads are re-directed.

Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr