Monday, 13 January, 2025
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OPINION

Analyst, Not Astrologer



analyst-not-astrologer

P Kharel

In a recent statement, the United States’ President Joe Biden made a lofty announcement that, health permitting, he would seek four more years in office in 2024. With the observation of the past three dozen years and commenting on world affairs, this scribe can say with confidence that Biden won’t contest for four more years at the White House. His Democratic Party is unlikely to have an 82-year-old sitting on the powerful seat until he reaches 86-plus.

Over the years, this humble scribe has come pretty right on many issues. One of them was that the US and its allies would launch a war in 1991 to evict the occupying forces of Saddam Hussein from the tiny but strategically placed oil-rich Kuwait. Eventually it did, and the Iraqis suffered defeat in the six-week war that ended on February 28.

In 2003, the same scribe emphatically said that Iraq did not possess banned weapons of mass destruction. The then US President George W. Bush claimed otherwise and invaded the oil-rich country, had Saddam arrested, jailed and paved way for him to be hanged to death. Most likely many Western journalists, too, must have drawn a similar conclusion but their concealed considerations restrained them from saying so.

Toast to a boast
Whether in the context of the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan for a decade since December 1979 or the US-led multinational forces occupying Afghanistan for two decades this millennium, dozens of articles were penned for The Rising Nepal predicting that the foreign forces would be compelled to quit the poverty-stricken, landlocked country on account of passionately nationalist forces that abhorred foreign military presence on their soil. For Afghans throughout history have rejected repelled, defeated or compelled war-fatigued foreign forces to quit the land sooner or later.

After two decades of fighting, spending more $1.25 trillion and finding its international credibility eroded, the US pulled out from Afghanistan in the year just gone by — and without any significant breakthrough. In fact, the Biden administration is being criticised for withdrawing without any modicum of breakthrough. The Taliban is back in power.

Recent reports showed how the key that locked Nelson Mandela behind bars for two decades in a South African prison fetched more than 1 million sterling pounds at an auction. A modest looking lock opener actually carried a monumental history, whose memory was revered and hence the staggering price for the appreciator who so demonstratively treasured it. When South Africa’s first black President Mandela decided not to contest for a second term, I wrote that the great freedom fighter would only gain more height and weight in stature and international recognition even without a formal office; rulers and presidents of powerful nations would be keen to meet him.

Lo and behold, former two-term American President Tony Blair, during his visit to South Africa, made it a point to pay a call on the globally admired leader and showed a keen desire for a photo opportunity with the legendary humanitarian who fought for his apartheid-ridden country’s gruelling long walk to freedom. Readers flipping over the opinion pages of The Rising Nepal of any given year of the respective periods of events will obtain confirmation of this loud and clear in black and white, under this scribe’s byline.


The world beyond the old ensures the thread of succession in human community keep going. There is life beyond the traditional ways handed down since ages. Things and thinking get refined and adapted. Moving with the times means timely anticipation of events for appropriate steps to survive and probably thrive as well. Reaching audiences in new ways through multiple communication channels and avenues is amazing.
The need is for learning to heed the fresh demands and warnings of the times. Analysts should invent alternatives instead of being cocooned in generalisation. False pride and pretentious ambitions should be identified and discarded, especially in one of the most media-saturated societies like Nepal’s. Failure on this score invites the inevitable consequences of debilitating effects.

Pressures & predators
Democratic lawmakers in the American House of Representatives in December called for expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene over some inflammatory statements the Republican Congressman made. The accused harassed a survivor of a school shooting in Florida state and made an “appalling” suggestion that many of mass shooting incidents were staged. Greene’s comments were found “deeply disturbing” to her party members and constituents in Georgia’s 6th District. The fury against the Congresswoman was echoed in a petition, carrying 100,000 signatures in 24 hours, which called for her resignation.

Greene figured among those making efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential triumph. She joined 146 other Republican lawmakers in voting against the election results. Support for a policy or cause might not automatically prove successful, which is a normal process. But unflinching commitment to one’s publicly declared belief reiterates the integrity involved a highly commendable consistency.

University of Chicago’s President Robert Hutchins in 1942, with support from $500,000 fund available made by Time magazine’s publisher Henry Luce, headed a 12-member commission that was entrusted with the task of reviewing the existing pattern of media ownership and proper functioning of the media in a democracy. In its report published in 1947, the commission acknowledged the significance the media role in a society but cautioned that shirking responsibilities could invite state intervention.

The question is whether Reporters Without Borders itself is a victim of politicisation, if not a willing partner in sideling issues that go to negatively project some of its key supporting governments and agencies on whom the latter exercise great influence. In July, the group declared India’s Prime Minister Narendra in the list of 37 worst predators of press freedom while ranking India 142nd in the list of 180 countries.

The substance of professional news media boils down to putting up the best in an all-embracing manner and without bias but proactively committed to free, independent and competent institution. Admittedly, opinion contributors have no claim being astrologers. Analysts as well as commentators should respond to their conscience and fair sense in making observations and conclusions that leave little or no room for regret in their queries and subsequent narratives.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)