New Info Minister; new hopes, gush of fresh air
By Makhdoom Babar
Editor-in-Chief

THE Information Minister in a government, anywhere in the world is supposed to be the most daring, vocal and the most sensible person. The mushroom growth of electronic media across the world has in fact made the position of an Information minister even more important. In today’s world, an Information Minister becomes more important than even the Foreign Minister as now, it is just the media game that can fall or elevate any government in any part of the world. A sharp and sensible Information Minister can take a government to new horizons of success and popularity and on the contrary one can easily sink the boat without any effort.
Unfortunately, in Pakistan, the importance of Information Minister was always underestimated. Sometimes the portfolio was given to someone as a political obligation and sometimes the Ministry was handed over to someone who could be very good at bashing the opposition. These used to be the only qualifications for the Information Minister. This is why, in Pakistan, the Information Minister were often dubbed as Disinformation Ministers both by the media personnel and the general public.
However, the able leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party has made no mistake in this direction and for the first time in history of the country, a lady Information Minister has been installed by the Federal Government and she is not merely the lady but a respected and celebrated journalist herself. Now, what could have been a better choice, particularly, when one has to keep the promise of ensuring tremendous Freedom of Press?
Sherry Rehman, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, is not merely a hardcore worker of her party or not merely a gorgeous, witty and vociferous lady but is having the honour of being a widely recognized and inspiring journalist for the past many years. Those who have been following her writings, over the past many years, know it very well that she has been a truly professional journalist and whatever she had been writing, always left a deep impact on the readers. Such a dedicated journalist could be sensitive enough to realize and recognize the importance of freedom of Press.
The way she has started handling the media affairs, soon after taking over the new responsibility, she has given a crystal clear signal to the media community that she means business and her business is projection of the truth and the real truth and not just the “Official Truth”.
The spectacularly calm and composed temperament that she had been showing while facing over-charged and over enthusiastic media personnel, clearly indicates that she knows the business, she knows the art and she knows rules of the game.
The Daily Mail believes that the party leadership’s decision of giving this coveted, important, yet sensitive portfolio to Ms. Rehman is not only wise decision for the government itself but it is, at the same time, going to be an amazing gift to the media community from the PPP.
The Daily Mail also believes that her appointment to this august post is indeed recognition of her long political struggle, her professional caliber as both the journalist and politician and her widely recognized insight of foreign and home policy issues and media affairs. We believe that she would come up with flying colours as far as relations with media are concerned.
Though it would be a tough task as media has become yet another (self declared) Holy Cow of the country, yet she has the ability to differentiate between professional interests and national interests and would never let anyone bring professional interests above the nation interests. We have a lot of new hopes with her and we believe that she has emerged as a gush of fresh air and would remain the same throughout her tenure.