Life goes on no matter what. But it sure seems like everything else is on the backburner, and the only thing burning at the fore is the issue of the Panama leaks. Nothing shocking, nothing earth shattering, the information perhaps known to everyone has surfaced, and now people can see a few documents that piece together a few things that everyone suspected all along. Politicians are being chastised on the tube as usual in a nightly exercise. Others who have been named, people are not so concerned about them, as always it is the politicians, the most ‘corrupt’ by perception, who truly tickle the public’s fancy.
Speaking of politicians, you hear the time tested and discarded sound bites from them, such as “Corruption is the basis of all ills”, or “democracy is in peril” or “who will get to be the saviour of this country.” As a marginal student of history, I can say that these suspicions of corruption were always a source of contention or a basis for dissolution of the so-called democratic set up since the inception of our country. The path has been more than tainted and marred with such allegations.
The loud cry against our premier by the opposition trying to implicate him in some criminal activitybased on information from the Panama revelations will not bear any fruit. The overly fragile and arguably dysfunctional set-up will continue at its pace, and with all the turbulence and roadblocks reach its destination of 2018 general elections. The humps, bumps and hiccups will keep the audience glued, but the show will go on until that time.
If memories have not faded, we can just look back a little bit and see how sparks were created and how the idiot box created mega storms in the last five years. If you have any doubts, go online and check how in 2011 the Kerry Lugar Bill was a matter of life and death. The restoration of the judiciary where our current prime minister was leading the caravan was the need of the hour or the country was heading to an abyss. Raymond Davis had challenged our honour with his gun. The same year God knows how Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad in a raid, and TV channels had termed it as an attack on our ‘sovereignty’. Then came the infamous ‘Memogate’ where nation’s security was allegedly bargained by an ambassador.
Who can forget the very dramatic ‘Arsalan saga’, which was a readymade recipe for a Bollywood blockbuster and it kept the hearts racing. The scriptwriters of ‘memo’ were into secretarial andadmin assistant themes so they came up with a ‘letter’ as the new flavor. It almost felt that oxygen that people needed to breathe was dependent on that letter. Everyone was mesmerised by the drama that unfolded every night. A prime minister was sent packing, the other kept on his toes. In between came ‘rental’ into our lexicon, as the rental power units were the major impediment in our growth and prosperity.
The 2013 elections were ‘do-or-die’, and people bought into the opium of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and once its effects wore off, the reality was quite the contrary. Then came the year of revolution, where again the people were sold the dreams of salvation, and the idiots were in overdrive predicting a major turning point in our history.
I can go on and on and on. You will eventually yawn out of sheer boredom. This is precisely the point here. What most viewers, readers and spectators are made to believe is for lack of a better word an illusion. The hangover of all of this is quite painful, but the reality is what eventually sinks in. The reality is that every slogan, every cliché and every sound bite has a shelf life.
The purpose of this write up is not to regurgitate the events of the recent past. The purpose is a quick reminder that the expectation of miracles is foolish, and improving the crippled and broken and perhaps dysfunctional system is what will make some positive difference. The news item, scoop, scandal, and exposé like all products have a limited shelf life. After this something else and then something else will emerge on the horizon. The attention span will shift and focus will be compromised.After hearing the ‘gladiators’ speak on the floor of the august floor of parliament, one can simply sum up all the commotion in the catchall slang of the mean streets of the port city: “Lagey raho”(keep going). I can safely say this without yawning that ‘this too shall pass’ without any major breakthrough.
The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at [email protected]. He tweets at
http://twitter.com/dasghar