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At a time when public confidence in the judiciary is somewhat on the wane, the Supreme Court by giving a courageous verdict on the Broadcasting Authority Bill last Tuesday has held the torch of liberty high and proclaimed to all that the independence of the judiciary is still very much alive. Tuesday's landmark verdict restored public faith not only in the judiciary but also in democracy and all that is decent in a free society.
At the heart of the much heralded verdict was Voltaire's hallowed principle on the freedom of thought and expression "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It is not free thought for only those who agree with us, but even freedom for the thought that we hate that gives the concept its most enduring value, the Supreme Court said.
The much condemned Broadcasting Authority Bill was so bad in law it was beyond mending or redemption and we saw the sad spectacle of the Additional Solicitor General hopelessly trying to defend the indefensible. Now a major question is why the Attorney General gave his consent to a bill that was so obviously unconstitutional that the Supreme Court was constrained to say that the bill as a whole violated Article 10 of the Constitution, i.e. the provision on Fundamental Rights of the people. It would thus be fair to say that whoever drafted the bill and whoever approved it has a thought process that is very much out of line with the spirit of the Constitution and certainly the spirit of a free media. . In other democratic countries such a damning rebuff to the government's lawmakers would have brought about some high level resignations.
We fully endorse the concluding remarks of the 'Island' editorial of last Thursday - 'Within three years it (the PA) has, for no valid reasons, tried hard to isolate itself from journalists and succeeded to a great extent. In doing that, the PA is isolating itself from the people." The print media quite naturally feared that the absurd if not outrageous licensing process that the bill proposed for private TV and radio stations, was a precursor to the imposition of similar constraints on newspapers.
Fortunately the PR system has ensured that the Govt.. hasn't the two-third majority in Parliament to over-ride the Supreme Court and steamroll the bill, like it did with the Press Council Bill 24 years ago after the then Constitutional Court held that the bill was unconstitutional. We have often urged this Govt. to abandon its confrontation course with the free media of this country. The Govt. is only fighting with shadows. We hope at least now there will be more co-operation.
Amidst a crying need for an infusion of dynamism, leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation — the babe of all world regional bodies — meet in Male with little tangible results to offer to one fifth of world's humanity after 12 years of its existence.
SAARC has achieved a somewhat lose unity but moves to form sub-regional groups within South Asia are threatening to sow the seeds of division. India, Bangladesh Bhutan and Nepal are to form a sub-regional group to solve what they call problems distinctive to them. India's new Prime Minister, I. K. Gujral also moves towards this direction and he has apparently assured Sri Lanka that it would not threaten SAARC with disintegration. Though SAARC Foreign Secretaries have agreed to take the issue off the agenda, the issue itself has not been shelved.
The twilight of the 20th century has been witnessing a proliferation of regional bodies. While being members of SAARC, we have also joined the Indian Ocean Rim. Sri Lanka has been invited by Thailand to join a regional body of Bay of Bengal nations along with India and Bangladesh but leaving out Myanmar. Amidst this sudden spurt of regional bodies, SAARC should stand out as it is a body based on territorial and geo-political identity of South Asia. Whether regionalism, sub-regionalism or extra-regionalism is good or bad should be judged by its benefits to the ordinary folk. In the case of SAARC, it should be tangible benefits to the teeming millions of people living in abject poverty that matters most.
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