[Dawn] Given the mayhem all around, one cannot have a very high opinion of the quality of political rhetoric in Pakistain. Missing all along are rudimentary concepts of restraint and responsibility so essential to political discourse. Nevertheless, realisation seems to be dawning on some of our senior politicians of the consequences of an unrestrained outpouring of political venom. This attempt to inject sanity into politics deserves to be welcomed.On Friday, the PPP and MQM, coalition partners in the federal and Sindh governments, agreed to a political ceasefire after the two sides had issued some wild statements in the wake of assassinations in Karachi. A day earlier, Mian Shahbaz Sharif apologised to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for the derogatory words uttered by a PML-N leader about the Bhuttos. Statements counselling restraint have also come from PPP leaders, including the prime minister.
While it would be difficult for us to pinpoint a specific era when political rhetoric started assuming the shape of animosity, the year-long campaign for Pakistain's first general election in 1970 -- when the nation stood polarised in the putative battle between 'Islam' and 'socialism' -- will be remembered for its viciousness. The level of debate plunged to new depths during the 1977 PNA movement when there were focused attacks on some political personalities and their families. Following Ziaul Haq's military coup, even sections of the media contributed in no small measure to the continued degeneration of political debate. The same hyperbolic style was witnessed in the political era between 1988 and 1999, with politicians discovering crimes and conspiracies by their opponents, staging 'long marches' and inviting the army to 'do its duty'. This might have served transient purposes, but it was democracy that lost.
Now that we have a democratic dispensation once again it would be a tragedy if irresponsible statements, threats of street agitation and unrestrained malevolence in utterances were to sabotage democracy. From this point of view the awakening of a new spirit of self-restraint deserves to be watched with the fond hope that expediency does not make our politicians oblivious to what should be the lodestar for them all -- the public good.