It was no easy task to compile this. Only a handful ordinary citizens would have the expertise to search for this information online, or elsewhere. There is no easy record retrieval of the President’s attendance in Parliament on its official website. But what is immediately obvious when the scattered media reports are taken as a whole is that the 18th Amendment has in no way at all contributed to a more accountable Executive. ”

Excerpt from ‘Months after the 18th Amendment: Is the Executive really more accountable to Parliament?’, http://groundviews.org/2011/06/11/months-after-the-18th-amendment-is-the-executive-really-more-accountable-to-parliament/

For example we would like a return of democracy or the rule of law. These things have collapsed because we have gone beyond the minimum level of personal commitment required to sustain these principles. We are no longer a society bound by any common values. Our institutional structure has collapsed because of the absence of personal commitment.

What do I mean by personal commitment? I know a lot of my fellow citizens are under the delusion that they have personal commitment. They may have commitment but it is not personal. It is personal when you accept that the garbage we criticize ‘out there’ is also within us and we resolve to clean up our own act as part of a total clean up exercise. It means that in times of deep national crisis we ask ourselves the questions – where did I go wrong and how can I put it right? It is not whether you chose the right argument in your last article but whether you have kept faith with the fundamental principles of honesty and kindness that link each one of us as human beings. It is whether you have also contributed in some measure to the moral decline in society.

The true extent of our collective failure is this. We have not only allowed our collective consensus to disappear but we have also removed the whole issue of personal morality and commitment out of the national conversation. The concept of blame has effectively removed the ideas of honesty and personal duty. This is the zenith of frivolousness – a state of affairs that is being camouflaged by pseudo intellectual discussions.