This recent deluge of cacophony across the media is unnecessary. Let the appropriate organs of the state awaken to the duties entrusted to them. Let the component charged with telling the story of the state be resuscitated to its rightful place—to its share of the tiling, to its proper voice, and to its solemn intention.
When a song forgets its rhythm and dissolves into a scatter of broken notes, the dancers lose their steps. The circle begins to fracture. Every foot searches for a different beat, and what was once a graceful dance becomes a disorder of movement. Those entrusted with keeping time can only watch, almost helplessly, as the rhythm slips quietly through their fingers. Alas!
The government is an institution, not a marketplace of competing voices; not a choir in which every singer strains to rise above the other. Its many organs are instruments in a single orchestra—different in timbre, distinct in purpose, yet bound to the same composition.
The trumpet need not become the drum, nor the violin the cymbal. The flute does not compete with the cello, and the percussion does not need to drown out the strings. Each instrument has its moment, its measure, its melody, and its place upon the score.
When each remembers its place, harmony rises almost of its own accord.
But when every instrument reaches for the same note, every drum insists upon its own rhythm, and every trumpet attempts to command the hall, even the grandest symphony is reduced to noise.
That appears to be the tragedy of the present moment.
These endless epistles, this avalanche of words shrouding social media, seem less like music and more like leaves scattered upon the wind—words without rhythm, voices without orchestration, sound without direction. One message collides with another; one explanation competes with the next; and somewhere beneath the thunder, the central melody is lost.
A state should not communicate as though it were a crowd gathered around a microphone.
There are voices fashioned to speak, to explain, to illuminate, to project, and to defend the story of public stewardship. There are institutions created precisely for this purpose. They should not be left backstage while every other instrument rushes into the spotlight.
Let them be strengthened. Let them be given room to breathe. Let them carry, with dignity, discipline and clarity, the melody entrusted to them.
For governance, like a great river, loses its majesty when every tributary attempts to become the river itself. The tributaries have their place. They feed the river; they give it strength; they add to its volume. But when every tributary abandons its course and attempts to carve its own riverbed, the landscape is no longer nourished by one great current. It becomes flooded, fragmented and directionless.
An administration is much the same. It is like a well-built ship crossing difficult waters. The captain may hold the wheel, the navigator may read the charts, the engineer may tend the engine, and the crew may secure the sails. Each has a responsibility. Each is indispensable.
But if every hand upon the deck reaches for the same wheel, the ship does not become safer.
It loses its course.
The answer, therefore, is not to multiply voices until meaning is drowned in noise. It is to restore the rhythm; to honour the architecture; to clarify the roles; to strengthen the proper institutions; and to allow each instrument to return to its measure.
A great orchestra does not produce music because every musician plays continuously. It produces music because musicians understand silence as well as sound. They know when to enter, when to withdraw, when to rise, and when to yield.
There is wisdom in that.
There is also wisdom in government knowing that not every silence is a weakness and not every controversy requires a chorus.
Sometimes, the most powerful act of communication is to allow the institution designed to speak to speak.
The conductor does not play every instrument. The conductor gives the orchestra its direction. The conductor listens for dissonance, restores tempo, and ensures that the individual brilliance of the musicians does not destroy the composition itself.
So it should be with governance. Let the institutions work. Let the appropriate voices speak. Let the unnecessary noise fall away.
Let the drum return to its beat, the violin to its strings, the trumpet to its call, and the conductor to the podium.
When every voice knows when to speak, when every instrument remembers its note, and every dancer rediscovers the beat, the disorder begins to recede.
The leaves settle.The waters find their course. The ship steadies. The orchestra listens. And in that moment of stillness, the music returns.
The conductor raises the baton. The dancers find their steps.The instruments rediscover their measure. The song remembers its rhythm.
And the symphony begins again.
