EVERY day one politician or another takes advantage of the current situation in the country, holds a press conference and tries to prove that last year’s elections were held with lots of rigging. He blames some influential personalities and makes the situation even worse. For the time being, he becomes the centre of attraction.

At protest demonstrations, PTI chief Imran Khan accuses the former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of rigging the elections, but repents later after realising the facts.

Another politician holds a press conference and gives an interview to a private channel, accusing the integrity of the justice system.

May I ask these politicians whether these issues are supposed to be solved at sit-ins and by the media?

Why are they given such importance on various news channels? Do they have enough integrity so as to decide the good and the bad of the people?

Such problems are always solved in parliament and not on the media.

Agha Attaullah Khan
Islamabad

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IF it was not for the marathon transmission of the electronic media for the past couple of days, there would be no panic and thus no hype created by the revolution or the long march. Also it seems we have become oblivious to the fate of the IDPs and Zarb-i-Azb.

On the part of the government, to have had a knee-jerk reaction by unnecessarily ‘containerising’ Islamabad also proved counter-productive. I think they liked to wait to cross the bridge till they came to it .The hapless citizens are tired of the cliché of every leader doing anything and everything in the name of 190m people.

To be a leader and a negotiator one has to learn the art of brinkmanship and not behave like a bull in a china shop. If this government is removed so easily, then I have only this to say as the punch line: “A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit upon it.”

Wing Cmdr ( r) Jamshed Savul
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2014