Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s unintentional words of wisdom

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s unintentional words of wisdom

In a day and age where the divide between the government and its people is wider than many feel comfortable with almost everything a politician or leader says is instantly revered by his supporters and just as quickly retorted by those who oppose him.

Yet, once in a blue moon, amongst all the public rants and arguments we are used to seeing on nearly every news channel in Pakistan, there come these rare words of wisdom, which makes you believe, albeit only for a second, that maybe this country is not doomed after all.

The latest moment occurred recently in a TV interview with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. He was asked a typical question, one that every journalist seems to ask these days, about how half the population was of the opinion that Pakistan was in bad shape and the other half thought that it was improving.

A typical response would be a rant on the part of the Prime Minister and the typical ‘we are working to resolve the issues’ response, yet be it intentionally or otherwise, his response was more sensible than one would have expected.

In a calm, yet commanding, fashion, the Prime Minister argued why everyone bothered listening to what people had to say when the information was readily available and accessible to all and why everyone made such a large fuss about opinions instead of facts.

It took a while for that to settle in, after the initial shock, and then when one delved deeper into it, the depth of what he said began to sink in.

As a nation we seem to be prefer drama, arguments and conspiracy theories; we love rants and the arguments on the various talk shows. We enjoy watching shows where politicians are pressurised to give answers and all forms of etiquette are abandoned.

In short, when we switch on our television sets and flip over to a news channel we expect to be entertained instead of informed and the media are feeding this craving of ours.

Maybe Mr. Gilani is right. Maybe if we stop worrying and caring about who said what and to whom and focused on the facts the nation could actually get an idea of what the country’s situation actually is, instead of what the leader of political parties make it out to be.

To be fair however, he did not mention any of the ‘facts’ and did go on to give his own opinion. Ironic.

Posted by Musa Afridi on Oct 18 2011. Filed under National, Pakistan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry