Najam Sethi

Najam Sethi, 1948, is the Editor in Chief of The Friday Times which was once described by Newsweek magazine as a “crusading” journal for exposing corruption in the governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s. Nawaz was so angered that he arrested him against a trumped-up case of treason and asked the then army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, to get the ISI to court martial him under army law. But the plan went awry when, amidst an international outcry, the charges against him fell flat. Asma Jehangir, the human rights lawyer, defended him in the Supreme Court and the case against him was dismissed.

When Nawaz Sharif fell to a coup by Musharraf in 1999, Sethi made a BBC documentary on the inside story of the coup which highlighted the failings of previous civilian regimes that paved the way for latest coup. His editorials in The Friday Times, for the first six months of the Musharraf regime, also seemed to hold out some hope that Pakistan might progress under Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation”. But Sethi became critical of Musharraf soon thereafter when the general succumbed to the advice of his conservative allies and advisors on policy and abandoned his original seven point program to reform Pakistan into a liberal and progressive state.

In 2002, as Editor in Chief, Sethi partnered with Salmaan Taseer, as publisher, to launch Daily Times which quickly became the flag bearer of secular liberal Pakistan. And in 2007, they launched Daily Aajkal, an Urdu liberal daily which was one of a kind in the conservative and reactionary vernacular media. Both dailies were at slight odds with the lawyers movement for the restoration of the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, from 2007-09 and took issue with those of its many supporters who described it as a “revolutionary transformation” of society. Sethi and his editorial colleagues Khaled Ahmed and Ejaz Haider saw it as a “transitional” turn of events rather than a “transformative” moment and were criticized by the youthful supporters of the movement for being “pro-establishment.” Later events were to vindicate their views when the lawyers movement degenerated into a power-and-money-grab by its leaders after achieving its mission of reinstating the chief justice.

Sethi started a TV program in Urdu in March 2009 at Dunya TV Aaj Raat Najam Sethi Kay Saath which established him as a solitary liberal, anti-establishment voice on the box. He parted ways with Taseer in October 2009 following differences over editorial and management policy since Tasser’s appointment as Governor of the Punjab in the new PPP regime in 2008. In 2011, Sethi switched to Geo TV where his Aapas Ki Baat program made him a popular TV host and household name.

Sethi has run afoul of all radical and extremist elements in the country like the Taliban, military intelligence agencies, and Jehadi and sectarian parties. Such elements have launched a hate and violence-inciting campaign against him on local print and electronic media by calling him an “American Agent”. He has gone public with the threats he has received from “state and non-state” actors. When the threats assumed dangerous proportions late 2011, he and his family were compelled to leave the country for a couple of months. The Punjab government has provided him with round-the-clock armed security.

Sethi is the recipient of many international media awards, including the Golden Pen for Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers in 2009. He also received Pakistan highest civilian award, Hilal i Pakistan, in 2010 for distinguished services to civil society and to his profession.

Sethi has been called “an equal opportunity offender”. He was also imprisoned for two years by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime in the 1970s for siding with the Baloch nationalist movement. In 1984 General Zia ul Haq imprisoned him for a month for publishing a book (From Jinnah to Zia) by a former chief justice of Pakistan, Mohammad Munir, which was highly critical of the 1977 coup.

Sethi did a brief stint as Federal Minister for Accountability and Political Affairs in the caretaker government of 1996-97. He admits “it was a big mistake” because the accountability bill that reputed lawyer Fakhrudidn G Ibrahim, as law minister, and he piloted in that government against corruption later became a tool of repression in the hand of the governments of Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Mushharaf that followed against their political opponents.

Najam Sethi has a Masters from Cambridge University UK in Economics and Politics. He reported as the Pakistan Correspondent of The Economist London from 1990-2010. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences on security and media.

He is married to Jugnu Moshin who is the managing editor of both The Friday Times and Good Times. Their son Ali Sethi is a published novelist (The Wish Maker) and daughter Mira Sethi is Assistant Books Editor at the Wall Street Journal in New York.

See also

• List of Pakistani journalists