Year 2017: aspirations

“Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.”

–        General Dwight Eisenhower 

Why begin with this quote? Because I must begin with one sometime, in the hope that it is let in as is. Beyond that, don’t read much into it. Any similarities to characters and events are purely incidental. For the rest, turn to social media which is sizzling with opinion on matters of iconic attribution. Man indeed is a complex composition.

The year 2016 was a bummer. It didn’t rain in the last three months of the year. People fell sick all over and the strain was so bad as to take away some at the hand of the vicious disease that came with dry cold. In a better year many, old and young, would have survived. 2017 has brought us rains, in fact as soon as it dawned. Climate change or no, the turn of the year for the Pakistanis held in it the hope for a better turn of events. And if it begins with some rain, voila, we are in for a treat.

But there are a few things that 2016 bequeathed. The case of the Panama Papers is the Supreme Court’s first order of business in 2017 and will remain perhaps the most telling element of defining the political landscape of the country in the new year. Friend Mosharraf Zaidi postulated that it was the unnoticed incremental aggregation that moved the can forward for this nation. I will suggest that it was the shackled politics in 2016 – built on scandals such as Panama – that did not permit this nation to achieve anything beyond incremental aggregation.

The year 2016 also saw the end of Raheel Sharif’s tenure as army chief. Good or bad, I don’t know. He was required to go at the end of his tenure and he went and that should have been it. But around his time, especially in the last year of his tenure, emerged consequences that had and continue to muddle the civil-military relations in this country. RS did well on the war against terror and managed to bring an increased sense of stability to the nation and the state. This was no mean achievement under his watch but to build him into a ten-foot giant was neither right nor appropriate. This new year has begun with a rather mild-mannered Gen Qamar Bajwa at the helm and things look much quieter. That should help civ-mil relations keep an even keel.

But as we were all engrossed in working the complexities of a transition in the army, wondering if the new chief too would keep the government unnerved in an effort to establish its hold over the direction this country took, surreptitiously and subtly the cabinet of ministers decided to eke for itself further space by bringing key regulators meant to regulate key ministries under those ministries.       This is called a coup d’état. There are military takeovers and then there are coup d’états.

This is an old problem with Mian Sahib. Give him two-thirds majority and he will want to be an amirul momineen.    His decision to regulate the regulators emerges from that necessary imperative of getting the 10,000 MW which to him will win him the 2018 elections. Neither Pepra nor Nepra or Ogra were ready to play ball with the government to build in more flexibility in awarding contracts for new projects, or to set tariffs that would enable viability to electricity projects already in place and awaiting operation or signed under sovereign guarantees with the Chinese. Nandipur, the solar park and the coal-based projects come to mind. LNG-based plants too need a higher tariff to validate both the feasibility and the contracted price with the Qataris.

Look at the order and its absolute criticality in the scheme of things for the PML-N and one can understand that the honeymoon opportunity presented while the new army chief settled in was not a moment to be wasted; it struck. Clearly, there are implications. The world, and any reluctant investor, will be   wary of investing where no independent arbiter of fair competition exists. Also, most have their own governments to answer to when they invest and are doubly careful. The Chinese have a level playing-field tilted to their advantage. You get the pun. The Chinese are the happiest when it is the case of a single bidder, and premise most of their investment on this important clause.

Go, work the cost to the consumer under such a construct, and see what is going to become of him in due course in tariffs, subsidies and the piling debt – unless of course the CPEC begins to bear early fruit. How that might  happen is another story presently beyond the pale of Pakistan’s existing politico-military establishment since that entails east-west connectivity to the spine that the CPEC should finally become. And that is a major foreign policy asking when relations on either border almost verge on being dysfunctional. Messrs Modi and Ghani too may have different thoughts and timelines on repairing the rupture.

The real bombshell in the new year, though, will be the decision in the Panama carry-over from 2016. Given the crystallisation of the crux by the new court, Mian Sahib will at least need to clarify the matter on Maryam Safdar’s real role and relationship to the Mayfair flats and to him.        This is even if the court overlooks the matter of the ownership of the monies involved and their trail of movement. It seems with the invocation of the ‘late’ patriarch Mian Sharif it just might be right to not question the arrangement between a grandfather and his chosen set of grandchildren. The PM’s credibility, though, will still hinge on issues involving his progeny.

Will the court instead ask the government to make sure no politician, especially a government leader, ever repeat intransigence of moral and legal conduct through misappropriating authority? Or – will it bell the cat?

The year 2017 is certain to be politically vibrant. Politics will be on the boil mostly and may settle only with a decision on the Panama leaks.        Early elections or a fractious political landscape will dominate far more than anything that Javed Hashmi can throw at the military. It just may be a year in which the military may go off the radar, letting others display their wares.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com