Pakistan president Asif Zardari bans jokes ridiculing him
Being President of Pakistan is something of a joke so I suppose one cannot entirely blame him
"Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, has been accused of suffering from a sense of humour failure after banning jokes ridiculing him. Pakistanis who send jokes about Asif Zardari by text message, email or blog risk being arrested and given a 14-year prison sentence.
The country's interior minister, Rehman Malik, announced the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been asked to trace electronically transmitted jokes that "slander the political leadership of the country" under the new Cyber Crimes Act. Mr Malik, said the move would punish the authors of "ill motivated and concocted stories through emails and text messages against the civilian leadership".
The step, which was described by human rights groups as "draconian and authoritarian", came after government was particularly riled by a barrage of caustic jokes being sent to the presidency's official email.
Critics have accused the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a party that espouses a liberal agenda, of stooping as low as the former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, who took television broadcasters off air when he faced political opposition.
Mr Zardari, the widower of the assassinated former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, has long courted controversy. During his wife's two tenures he earned the nickname of "Mr 10 per cent" on account of his alleged penchant for demanding kickbacks on government contracts.
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3 comments:
Does anyone get it yet? Has it dawned on anyone that the people of this entire region simply reject civilization and choose to continue living in the 10th century?
This behavior is not unique to Pakistan, nor to the "Middle East" in general. There has been many a South American regime which would have no qualms about passing such an act.
The New Zealand parliament, in July of 2007, granted itself broad powers to punish satire and academic criticism. Would you accuse them of living in the 10th century?
Even in America, such restrictions end up in law. In 2002, McCain-Feingold stipulated that broadcast ads that mentioned a candidate for federal office less than two months before a general election were subject to federal campaign finance law.
This isn't a "muslim vs modern" issue - this is a "power corrupts" issue.
Two thoughts come to my mind with this story: (1) "The devil cannot stand to be mocked." (2) Is the "liberal agenda" of the PPP liberal by the classic definition of the word (in favor of maintaining and expanding individual liberty), or the inverted meaning we in the U.S. understand it today as a synonym of Leftist?
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