Motivated disinformation
This beautiful country of ours is a hapless victim of motivated disinformation, a mixture of lies and distortions laced with truths which when aired take on a life of their own and more often than not influence decision-making at the highest level. What is happening today in this country is a series of knee-jerk reactions at half-truths and outright falsehoods when mature people who make up the hierarchy should know better and have verified not only the facts but the reasons why the falsehoods being disseminated as facts are being propagated at all. In many cases a direct approach is enough to ascertain the truth, unfortunately as we go higher up the pecking order our overblown egos come in the way and we always seem more inclined to seek an elliptical approach, with disastrous results as in the process it is easy to doctor facts and impute false motives. The present crisis is a case-study of disinformation, not only in being effective in distorting decision-making at the highest level but also in creating multiple problems that vitiate a conducive environment for rapprochement. Unfortunately such falsehood creation seems vicariously to be admired as an art by our society, we have become so used to accepting lies over truth.
One of the major unofficial advisors to the President, a person who even became a Governor, is famed for his inventions. If fact, the joke is that he was once forced to tell at least one truth every week. What such disinformation does to our social fabric as a nation is not a joke, what it is doing as an end result to our economic fabric needs no elucidation.
Twisting of facts to malign someone is another problem. A few years ago, at an international forum in Singapore which was discussing regional trade and cooperation between East Asian nations, the leader of official Indian delegation started a tirade against Pakistan, particularly against perceived ISI clandestine operations in India, listing a number of incidents from bomb explosions to bus accidents, from Kashmir and Khalistan to Madras. The audience, which was more attuned to hearing about building bridges of peace and cooperation got quite restive. At the end of the Indian “presentation”, the Rapporteur conducting the meeting, Former Prime Minister Raymond Barare of France, gave a fine minutes right of reply to the Pakistan delegation. Since there was no official Pakistan delegation, I was pushed by my friends to give a reply. I said that I did not realize that the ISI was so effective but if the Indian said so, what could I say to refute their allegations but that I had one protest to make, as to why the Indians would not acknowledge the ISI’s greatest success, inserting the plague in New Delhi. When up the resulting laughter died down, I sat down cock-a-hoop quite smug with myself. Among the people who came and shook my hand were Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia, President Fidel Ramos gave me a thumb-up sign and I realized how uncomfortable the audience had been because of the Indian tirade against Pakistan. When I returned home, a couple of weeks later a friend of mine in Islamabad rang me up and asked what was wrong with me, why did I have to open my big mouth in Singapore against ISI knowing that the ISI had no love lost for me. It seemed that the then head of ISI, appropriately nicknamed “Cobra” by his Hasan Abdal mates when in school, had made it known to the hierarchy that I had said that “ISI had planted the plague in India”! This personal example is shown as to how motivated spin-doctors can twist anything anytime to suit their personal agendas.
A horrible example of motivated disinformation being converted into vicious personal vendetta is that of a Federal female Grade-19 officer. She fell afoul of a uniformed Public Relations (PR) officer who presented his boss with “doctored” spates as “evidence” and got him to send a summary for her dismissal from service. However, instead of routing it through routine channels this was sent direct to the then Interior Minister. A report was then made to the then COAS about this “violation” of official channels by the formation commander.
In the meantime intelligence operatives in Islamabad physically attacked the lady. In January 1994 she was also dismissed from service. On later investigation, after Ms Benazir’s dismissal as PM, it was found that the PR official had falsely instigated the whole drama. When the concerned formation commander realised his mistake and the fact that he had been set up, he had the courage to write a reversal of his previous communication.
On the strength of that clearance and detailed inquiry, the lady Grade-19 officer will probably be reinstated in the near future. One may well ask what about the three years plus of torture visited upon this poor woman for no fault of hers? Is there any punishment for those responsible or will they go scot-free? How many more incidents have been perpetrated as individual vendetta, how much more disinformation has been disseminated for individual ulterior motives? One of the major ploys of the PR spin-doctors is to plant items in newspapers, either as news stories, opinion or “letters to the editor”. The other ploy used to discredit someone is to attribute to him (or her) a statement that the person has never made. First of all, the person is put on the defensive trying to deny the statement, than he (or she) engages in a fruitless exercise meant to shore up the rapid erosion of one’s credibility as the figment of imagination lays eggs and the fiction begins to be accepted as a fact.
Such people abound in all walks of life, especially in sensitive agencies in critical positions and appointments. They thrive in such conditions as are now obtaining in Pakistan where confusion about authority has led to the present constitutional crisis. For the last 2-3 weeks, rumour machines have been very actively destroying the credibility of various institutions and personalities, sparing no one. Even the ISPR was forced to come out with a statement which amounted to denying that they had denied anything worth denying about denials.
Unfortunately, our PR machine has become so entangled with intelligence operations or those acting in individual capacity for their own agendas that they are now part of a bigger game confusing the national issues. That is why it becomes important for those affected at the highest level to meet periodically to sift through fact and fiction, lest rumours dictate policy rather than the facts of life!
There is a directly elected National Assembly and an indirectly elected Senate forming Parliament. Their elected leader is the head of government exercising the people’s mandate on behalf of the people. The most potent pillar of the State is Parliament. Necessarily the other pillar of the State, that is the judiciary, has to remain in an adversarial role in order to protect the citizenry against high-handedness of the government. This is an acceptable situation in any civilised society.
Any disagreement must be civil, not the crisis-laden confrontation we have seen till date. To ensure civility we must stop motivated rumour mongering. To stop that we must remove the perpetrators of rumours from positions of influence, whether in the PM’s Secretariat, in the Presidency, in the secret agencies or any of the institutions of the State that can influence the method of governance in any manner.
It makes no sense to recount the rumours circulating all over the country for the past several weeks. Some have been proved false in the past few days. This country must break out of the shackles of disinformation, must not become a hostage to falsehood. The only way to do it is to recognise that each pillar of the State has a place and authority of its own.
One must have transparent discussions based on logic and understanding that will lead to an ending of the rapid erosion of authority. We must bring an immediate end to the present crisis and restore the credibility and authority that allows governance of civilised society. A start can be made by putting a stop to motivated disinformation.
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