We must celebrate the few bright sparks, enhance them in 2017

Despite being the incurable optimist, I fear we are headed for a bleak and uncertain 2017. While the year 2016 started on a fairly hopeful note, it ends with worrying possibilities of doom, locally and in critical spots around the world.

Internationally, the uncertainty is informed by political developments in Europe and America where recent developments have undone several decades of multi-lateralism and liberal philosophy and brought in unknown, untested leaderships and ideologies. There have also been worrying rumblings in Asia, which threaten the peace that the world had come to assume for decades.