President Asif Ali Zardari has claimed that his PPP is press-friendly, and he has paid tributes to Benazir Bhutto for her move to open up the electronic media. As he was the guest of honour at the annual All-Pakistan Newspapers Society, he probably spoke without fear of contradiction, and no one else mentioned the many battles which the press had to fight, in her era as in those both preceding and succeeding her. The President fondly remembered the beginning of the cable revolution, but he spoke as if it was something over which Ms Bhutto had any control, in the sense of being able to stop the revolution that had started. President Zardari ignores the fact that press freedom was not given on a silver platter, but was the result of steadfastness and struggle, and Ms Bhuttos two governments played as adversarial a role as any government, retaining in place the entire repressive machinery inherited from colonial times, and using it in both her tenures. The reasons for the struggles with the press were the familiar ones of criticism of the government either for corruption or failing to deliver on its promises. To that extent, things do not seem to have changed, for its reporting of government corruption, and its failure to fulfill its campaign rhetoric is the main reason why the media, both electronic and print, is still critical of the government. As with previous governments, the present also tries to portray its inability to prevent this factual criticism as restraint, but it too should be aware that such tactics will no longer fool a public which is aware of the decline in its standard of living that it is facing. Another striking point made by the President is that he did not surrender powers to Parliament merely for them to be taken up by someone else. It was a clear reference to the stripping of presidential power by the 18th Amendment, which succeeded the 17th Amendment, through which Gen Pervez Musharraf, then President, had enhanced the powers of his office, and an equally clear reference to the military. It was reassuring that the President, even if he does take a particularly sunny view of his wifes governments role in press freedom, was both acquainted with the Constitution and with the principal threat to it, which has not changed from the past. Press freedom is something for the press, and it is not for the government to do more than not to oppose it. The Presidents mandate to the APNS to rationalise the distribution of advertisements, should be interpreted in that context.