Winter blues

The mornings have begun to linger longer and the evening arrives early. And for those of us who get their personal energy from the sun it just seems like withering times. There are ways to brighten your evenings but you have to be blessed in a special way to rethink a cold evening into a bonanza of the spirit late into the night till it envelops you fully and a recourse to slumber comes to the rescue. For most others, dark thoughts envelop.

Of those they are plenty. The saga of the Panama leaks reverberates unabated, more like the winter shadow that keeps light from touching the soul. The soul, thus, is colder.          The pillars of the democratic culture assure those who revel in it that it will be their ultimate saviour.

A white collar crime is hard to prove. Yet criminal excess will beckon redemption in the name of democracy. Meant to be of them, for them and by them, it has reduced the voter to a vehicle to anoint its principal benefactors.

Forget the extraordinary claims routinely belted out by the Ministry of Finance on how glorious the economy is, what it fails to point out is the rather laissez faire construct of the economy which makes it entirely anarchic. But that ensures everyone is happy and the state can easily divest itself of any democratic responsibility to care for its citizens life – they have no property – and their educational and health needs.

These come via the parallel economy, outside of state control and regulated entirely by market dynamics which determine their own pace and extent and feed the ninety percent who are outside the state ambit. They have their own means and mechanisms, their own schools and hospitals, and rarely get touched ever by anything stately. Except, of course, when it is time for the votes. Those counted the ‘forgotten majority’ in the US are the ‘lost majority’ here – with no possibility of an early remedial. Hope fades in the face of such highhandedness of the governing elites. They continue to skim without a check, and without remorse. This adds to the burden of the winter.

Aitzaz Ahsan, the PPP stalwart and a noted lawyer, just reminded us recently that the Park Lane flats of the Sharif family were bought around the time the Motorway between Lahore and Islamabad was first launched with borrowed money. It may well have been, which really meant that there was money to work with. The tremendous accumulation of the FE kitty that Ishaq Dar claims is also similar money composed of handouts, borrowings and donations for services performed.         

The treasury thus is relatively bloated, adding to the opportunity for some more play. The Chinese, in addition, have brought in the $46 billion for even greater flexibility. Each will have to be paid back with interest by the following generations but that is a lifetime away. For the moment it is free money.

It must not confound at all how the rich continue to become richer when the state has absolutely nothing to give to the common man. They have enough in their hand to roil in, except when, as for the Panama Papers, another set of leaks decades down may inform us how we were short-changed again by the high and the mighty. Yet society sustains and that, to repeat, has to do with how the economy is structured; one feeding the controlling elites and the other sustaining the ordinary mortals. The middle class, infinitesimal in exploitative economies, exists and partakes on both sides of this deep divide. This remains the dilemma of weak third world economies.

And now to the next level of diabolism in this ecosystem of power. A highly popular and successful army chief is set to retire in a few days. For some time though what had seized the commentariat was the matter of his extension of tenure; would he wrest one or deny it were he to be offered one? All this after he had explicitly declared ten months back that he had not even entertained the thought. The media populated by the liberalist intelligentsia, deeply in league with the exploitative elites, and gloating in this self-generated controversy, began a wagering debate meant to belittle the gains of the popular general.   

There is also a strange sense of gloating that marks General Raheel’s end of tenure. It is as if a ten foot tall man had dwarfed all and his departure will end such diminution. His exemplary leadership and successful steering of a complex war against terror groups, both inside and from outside the country on behest of external players, established his unquestioned credentials as perhaps the most successful military commander of all times. Where superpowers failed to subdue, he dominated and delivered. The country and the nation are thus far more assured.

These detractors breathe in free air and function as they please, exercising their politics and their agendas without restrain. The military has returned the writ to areas that had been lost to alien control, thereby enabling exercise of unrestrained fundamental rights. As these discussants fearlessly express their thoughts in an environment of free debate, they target their benefactors – the military – by instilling fear of strong military leaders as perpetual threats to democracy. Such is the paradox and bankruptcy of the thought pervasive in this environment. They thus gloat over the departure of an effective, strong, popular and a successful military commander. Can a nation fall to lower depths?

The newer facet of this debate is now morphed to the appointment of the next army chief. Four candidates are regularly put up in the 24/7 news cycle with implicit characterisation of each. Popular undertones imply one to be the army’s candidate while another is projected as the PM’s preferred choice. Not that anyone from any source has it so delineated, but trust the media pundits with agendas that prey upon assumed difference.  

There is unrepressed glee as one presumed candidate is shown the dust against the other, cleverly soiling the environment for anyone who finally gets the nod. One such exponent questioned the need for a strong army commander in the face of adverse civ-mil balance. Implicitly then a weaker commander will serve the balance better? With such logic there is little hope in this land of intrigue and patrondom.       

Put together with the thickly enveloping smog that keeps the sun and its light out in a winter that anyway has little to offer in solace, the foreboding only gets darker. There is yet no light from the throes of ‘Dawn-leaks’ either. Only the dark sustains and envelops in its hold all shades which gorge on hope and anything resembling light. Can you bring me some hope?

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com