Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokharel and Health Minister Bhanubhakta Dhakal may be many things, but they certainly don’t look like coldhearted crooks. Let’s hope that these alleged emblems of the downright degeneration of our shared existence are guilty of – if they are of anything at all – mere acts of omission.
True, the whole controversy surrounding the deal over the procurement of medical supplies from China reeks of the crony capitalism our communists have excelled in. It’s easy to believe a business entity enjoying proximity with the people around the prime minister got the contract for unspecified considerations. If anything, the sordidness is matched by its routineness, which enhances the plausibility of the storyline.
Once the sleaziness of that deal became apparent, the government annulled the deal. As the relevant agencies of the bureaucracy were preparing to invite fresh bids, the Nepal Army ended up with responsibility for the procurement of the medical supplies. A few cabinet members attending the pertinent meeting have expressed their cluelessness. Before we got to know if and how the meeting minutes were corrected, the storyline changed from the government’s greed to its weakness. Why not surrender executive power to the military, then?
Perhaps it’s a sign of our times. After all, the world’s sole superpower, facing the brunt of the pandemic, is reduced to blaming the tardiness of its response to an officially communist state’s concealment of the origin, extent and impact of the outbreak. (This, let’s not forget, after complaining for years about how the US’s former Cold War adversary has been seeking to interfere in American elections.) Demands to sue China for the pandemic are being made with little regard to the ghosts that might revive (Iraq, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the Opium Wars, imperialism being the tamer ones).
Together with best and worst, the pandemic has brought out the inane in us. It is easy to get entangled in all kinds of narratives, motivated and otherwise. Regardless of whether the government – and the system it represents – was about to collapse under its contradictions before COVID-19, the outbreak has certainly given it a new lease on life. Thus, the temptation to use a controversy of this scale is to undermine the status quo becomes quite irresistible.
Still, what do we know about what really happened? If people were actually involved in fleecing the country, let must face the consequences, but only after the facts are established. If other people are focused on fishing in troubled waters, we must show our ability to tell the difference.
We are already paying the price of having acquired an alternative based on a predetermined narrative that turned out to be far removed from the reality prevailing in the spring of 2006. An international emergency may be the time for many things, but it certainly isn’t one to lose our national cool.
