Tilting at the windmills

ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to your coverage of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s appearance before the Supreme Court on January 19 on the charge of contempt of court.

There are perhaps three sets of actors tilting at these windmills ever since the PPP government came to power almost four years ago. They comprise: 1) Those with an unflagging visceral hatred of the president and the PPP government for ideological, political, and vested interest reasons. 2) Those who may not have begun life in the first category but have become increasingly disappointed and disillusioned with the performance of the government since it assumed power in 2008. 3) Our permanent establishment and their satraps that may still harbour suspicions about the PPP despite the latter’s bending over backwards to keep the former sweet. Taken in order, there seems little hope of rescue for the first category, blinkered as its vision is. The second offers at least the possibility of being persuaded that whatever their view of the present incumbents and their performance in office, efforts to see the back of the incumbents must not stray into territory where along with the bathwater (the government) the baby (democracy) also gets thrown out.

To those who pooh-pooh democracy because they feel it has failed to deliver, there is only one counsel: patience. Democracy does not offer guarantees for the solution of problems per se. What it does offer is a participatory political process under the umbrella of the freedoms that are an inherent core of any democratic system worth the name.

Freedom to organise, express opinions and exercise the right to oppose through peaceful and constitutional means offer the possibility of putting forth a new, or amending/changing the existing national political agenda. In other words, the struggle for solutions and rights can be waged openly and without fear.

Khawaja Jalal

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2012.