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Planning to circulate a SMS joke on President Asif Zardari of Pakistan or even circulate a joke you have received on your cell, just forget about it. You may end up in prison for 14 years and your property might be seized by the Pakistani courts and if you are a foreigner just beware the Pakistani Government will seek help of Interpol to get you deported you would be no longer welcome in Pakistan.
Extreme measures just for a joke, it seems the government is tired of the way its head Zardari has been made butt of so many jokes that have been circulated around electronically. These jokes are seen as manifestations of the sluggish way of working of Government - be it power outages, inflation or floundering economy.
Mr. Zardari has been named as Mr. 10 percent because of his alleged involvement in receiving kickbacks in 1990's. Also he seems to be the least liked political leader and with 80 million mobile phone users with 50 million SMS's users and hundreds of jokes floating round his political image can sure be battered.
Pakistan Government is indeed very serious about salvaging the image of their head so the Interior Minister Rehman Mallick announced last week that Federal Investigation Agency has been tasked to trace SMS or e-mails that slander the political leadership of the country under vague Cyber Crimes Act.
Naturally such measures are been criticised by the Human Rights activists, local media and Bloggers. denouncing the proposed law as draconian and authoritarian. Some called it censorship against freedom of expression granted constitutionally.
The use of short staffed FIA would mean serious compromise with the anti terror investigations. But where there is a will there is a way. Students always the first ones to find ways of circumventing laws and rules have done it again they have not stopped passing jokes on Zardari but they have stopped using his name but everyone who reads these messages can immediately link it to the proper person.
