Licence Or Restraint

The essence of elective, participatory, parliamentary democracy is tolerance, that quality which enables a people to accept a different point of view, even if disagreeable. For the majority, an irreplaceable attribute thus is a sense of fallibility; simply because numbers sustain them the views that they hold on the great issues of the day are not, as a matter of linear logic necessarily correct. The minority, too, needs tolerance, and more than a required degree of phlegm, only this would enable them to not confuse between dissent and combat.

The democratic method, afterall, is but a means, of achieving an answerable and a more effective government. That is the end. If the means, however, of attaining office were themselves to become the end, then where will be the energy or the will left for good governance? Of course, then great confusion follows, as is happening today. This is by no means an advocacy of political vegetarianism, or even a suggestion that political parties abjure power. Far from it, for what are parties for if they cannot acquire the levers of executive authority. And that is where, more than in other spheres this competition between license and restraint is so starkly revealed. We do, and can have cut throat competition in trade, or industry, or commerce. Can we afford it in our competitive bids for office?

 

Licence or restraint, in governance thereafter surfaces as a concern. Principally, because the central objective is after all, better governance. If democracy is a system of governing through discussion and discourse, then it is axiomatic that surely at quite an early stage some at least of the people have to stop talking. Otherwise all that we would end doing is to engage in constant, passionate, often violent and almost always partisan debate, neither ending it nor ever actually governing. And this holds good for all, because governance is not by the executive alone, all contribute: What applies to the legislative holds equally good for the executive, almost by extension, and this is a factor that the judiciary, too, must reflect upon, seriously.

There is another point that I wish to make. The ratio between accountability and restraint is inverse: The higher the answerability greater the