The last time things were this tense in Pakistan (in March 2007) was in 1999 when the army overthrew an elected government and seized power. The military takeover was facilitated - in 1999, as well as in 1958 and 1977 - by the absence of private local broadcast media. The military seized the state-owned TV and radio - until then the only terrestrial electronic media in the country and therefore the only mainstream source of information with universal geographic access - blanked the broadcasts and most Pakistanis only found out the next day that their fate had been sealed.

How different is it this time! Within minutes of the army chief-president 'sacking' the chief justice of Pakistan for refusing to tow his line, the news was flashed around the country by national private TV channels. The first major battle between key power wielders of Pakistan since the military coup was underway and it was played out live! By the end of the day there was nothing else but the battle royale on Pakistan's dozen or so current affairs channels (of a total of about 50 private TV channels) - in Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi and Punjabi.

Real-time information

Over the course of most of March 2007, a riveted Pakistani population has been sitting out their days - at home and in offices - before TV screens and have seen the event analyzed inside out like nothing ever before. This is the first time ever that the average citizen has been afforded sustained real-time access to information about an unfolding crisis of monumental proportions in which they have found they can be involved as well through the power of informed responses.

Life in Pakistan is anything but dull. Crises and upheavals are a national staple - military coups, hanging and forced exiles of prime ministers, bombing to death or jailing provincial chief ministers and governors, jailing serving parliamentarians and what not. The Orwellian 'Establishment' - the unholy nexus between the military and bureaucracy that has held sway over Pakistan's checkered fate - has usually managed to control events because it has controlled information flows and deployed sustained propaganda, thereby keeping people in the dark and blunting popular responses through enforcing delays on expressions of popular sentiments.

Expanded media space

This time round the establishment has been caught unguarded by a world that has changed at a dizzying pace over the last few years to the greater access to information by the average citizen. Part of its undoing has ironically comes from the Pakistan government's own policies of opening up the airwaves for private ownership. In 2002 the Musharraf regime set up the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority to issue the first licenses for private radio stations and TV channels. In the last 5 years, about 130 FM stations and around 50 TV channels have sprouted up as a result - breathing in a refreshing open information regime that has allowed the 160 million Pakistanis the first reliable alternative sources of information about issues affecting their lives in real time. This matters a great deal to a population only 35% functionally literate and where newspaper circulation is a mere 5 million.

One of Musharraf regime's consistent boasts has been its policy of opening up the media space to private TV channels. However, many argue that it was not a favor to the citizens but a right that had been denied for too many decades. The truth is that the government did not have the capacity to resist the enlarging of the public information sphere any more. It was Musharraf's Kargil fiasco - mounting a military conflict in Indian-administered Kashmir - that was the turning point. In the absence of private broadcast media and with state-owned TV and radio telling them virtually nothing of Pakistan's Kargil setbacks, Pakistanis were switching in their millions for information to Indian TV channels through satellite dishes beaming the military conflict live - in a language (Hindi) that they understood. The same happened when the 1999 military coup took place. The Musharraf regime had no choice but to open up the media space in Pakistan in a 'strategic' decision to wean away Pakistanis from Indian real-time information sources by allowing local TV channels.

The medium of violence

In the interim leading to the current crisis, the government has dealt with the private media, especially TV channels and radio stations, in the way the state always has - intimidation, coercion and violence. At least 25 journalists have been killed in Pakistan, including Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, since the 1999 military coup - many of them suspected to be by government functionaries including intelligence agencies. Several hundreds of others have been beaten up, intimidated, arrested and prevented from performing their duties. The attacks have included violence against TV channels, radio stations and newspaper offices.

Perturbed by the unprecedented live coverage of protests by lawyers and political parties and standard heavy-handed official violence by the authorities against them, the government started by disturbing broadcasts of TV channels, banning popular current affairs programs on them, registering court cases against channels, enforcing censorship through regular advice and finally an incredibly open show of hostility against Geo TV - which has become the CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera - all rolled into one - of Pakistan.

Uniformed police attacked the Geo TV office and its sister media publications, assaulting its journalists and smashing property. It even lobbed teargas shells into the office to force all journalists out in a bid to disrupt transmission. The attack was shown live and continued even in the presence of the government's information minister after he rushed there and failed to stop the violence.

Media-led mass popular defiance

The relentless 24/7 comment on the crisis and footage of the chief justice being humiliated by the minions of the military triggered unprecedented riots led by the lawyers across the country and quickly backed by the political parties. The Musharraf-led military dispensation has been humiliated and abused like never before live on TV. Hence the inevitable crackdown on the media concluding in brute force against Geo TV. However it was the reaction of the people in general and intelligentsia in particular to the naked government attack on Geo TV that triggered something far more significant and took the national crisis to a new level: mass popular defiance, led by a unified media up in arms, the newsrooms matching the spirit of the lawyers in the streets, which assumed such threatening proportions that Musharraf himself came live on TV to apologize - a first for him in his 8-year autocratic rule: a hasty public retreat.

The media lessons for Pakistan are stark:

• This is the most dramatic confrontation between a free and independent media and an autocratic state since the Georgian "Rose Revolution" and is already defining a turning point in Pakistan's future.
• Citizens are finally getting information in real time on a mass scale with the result that every citizen is discussing and speaking in homes, offices and in streets about the crisis. This is the end of the traditional military-enforced culture of "siyasi guftagoo mana hai [political discussion prohibited]" - the first signs of an institutionalization of empowerment of the people.
• Media has assumed a critical conscience about its emergence as a major power wielder by its open on-air defiance of military coercion and by standing its ground and forcing an official retreat in the face of live finger-pointing. One particular show by a channel even brought together political talk show hosts of all current affairs channels (setting aside competition rivalries for a common cause) to discuss various government pressures and tactics aimed at blunting criticism. The show revealed in gory details the dirty trickery employed by the government to curb dissent and ended on a note of consensus to defy all such pressures in the future.
• Pakistan's major power wielders seem to be formally acknowledging the emergence of media as a major organ of accountability that needs to be respected. Musharraf's apology and instant shows of support by lawyers, NGOs and political parties reflect this. There seem to be a general acknowledgement that Pakistan's courageous media has assumed the lead role in national discourse.
• Pakistan's media has articulated well the concerns of the disempowered citizens, seizing this role from the political parties by mobilizing public opinion as well as the intelligentsia - the role that usually political parties do but which have been otherwise rendered impotent by the Orwellian establishment through forced exiles and intimidation of political leaders and rendering the parliament - the only other space where public concerns can be articulated - impotent.

The news from Pakistan is loud and clear: The media has emerged as the prime voice of the people and has revealed, much to the dismay of the Establishment, the suppressed but still alive sprit of the people. There is no turning back!