BREAKTHROUGH AGREEMENT TO BRING PLA UNDER SPECIAL COMMITTEE

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 16 Sept.: In a breakthrough agreement Thursday, Maoists agreed to bring 19,000 former PLA fighters under the command and control of a special committee on integration, resettlement and supervision headed by the prime minister.
The fighters were still under the command and control of the party even after signing the comprehensive peace agreement four years ago and Maoist Chairman Prachanda was its chief.
Maoists have in theory given up command and control of the fighters
from Thursday.
“Combatants have in principle come under the command and control of the special committee,” said NC member of the special committee Dr Ram Sharan Mahat.
“We have completed a big responsibility. It will help push the political process,” Maoist member of the special committee and military leader of Maoists Barsha Man Pun said.
The special committee meeting approved a code of conduct for former fighters.
An eight-member technical committee under the special committee will be expanded to 12 members by including one representative each of Nepal Army, Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and Maoists by converting it into a secretariat.
Special committee didn’t decide on the leadership of the secretariat demanded by Maoists.
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SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS APPOINTMENTS TO CONSTITUTIONAL BODIES

Kathmandu, 16 Sept.: A three-man bench of the supreme court Thursday overturned a decision of the constitutional council that appointed 10 members of four constitutional bodies three months ago, including chiefs of the election commission, CIAA, public service commission and attorney general.
The verdict is an big blow to the government and an embarrassment.
Maoist Chairman Prachanda asked the court to overturn the appointments claiming he was invited to the councilmember as leader of the main opposition only 24 hours before the meeting without being informed of the agenda.
A procedure says council members should be invited with a 48-hourmotice along with the agenda.
The prime minister heads the council and the chief justice is a member.
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KISHUNJI CALLS NC A NAKKALI PARTY, REJECTS INVITATION TO ATTEND CONVENTION

Kathmandu, 16 Sept.: Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, the only surviving founder member of Nepali Congress, Nepal’s oldest country, hit out at the party Thursday calling it ‘nakkali’ or fake.
The former prime minister rejected a party invitation to attend Friday’s 12th party general convention in a letter to Acting President Sushil Koirala, who invited Bhattarai who severed links with the party after Girija Prasad Koirala without debate in the party adopted a republican line.Bhattarai said it ‘was “useless to attend the convention of a ‘nakkali’ party.
Bhattarai said he was for constitutional monarchy—the traditional party policy.
He said the party should adopt the line of BP Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh.
The Bhattarai position came after his caustic comments when Girija Prasad Koirala died.
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PRACHANDA REITERATES FOREIGN INTERVENTION PREVENTED PM ELECTION

Kathmandu, 16 Sept.: Maoist Prachanda reiterated Thursday ‘foreign intervention’ prevented the repeated bid to elect a prime minister to replace Caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.
He made the charge at a programme in the capital.
Foreigners intervened ‘not to give leadership of government to Maoists and isolate it,” he said ‘with faith in agents’.
‘Wireless message’ and ‘remote control’ aborted the election in the 7th round, the Maoist chief claimed.
He asked people to rise up against foreign interference and border encroachment.
He warned:” The next war will be a national war.”
Prachanda indicated the party could withdraw from the election process before the scheduled 8th round vote 26 September.
Party Spokesman CP Gajurel Thursday clearly hinted at such a possibility.
‘A wrong party police is defaming it,” he said.
The party has consulted UML and will hold parleys with other parties, he revealed.
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FURTHER COMMENTS OF BAN LANDGREN NEPAL REPORTS


Kathmandu, 16 Sept.; In further criticism on Nepal reports of UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and UNMIN Chief Karin Landgren to the security council this month, government said Thursday, Nepal was ‘not treated as a sovereign state’.
A government statement objected to the ‘positive’ treatment of a Maoist seize of the capital this year to topple government.
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PM MEETS REPRESENTATIVES OF THIRD GENDER

Kathmandu, 16 Sept,: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Thursday held rate discussions with representatives of the third gender who pushed for their rights.
They demanded an environment should be created to pursue their rights.
A participant at the meeting said third gender population in the country is estimated at 50,000.
Police earlier cracked down on third representatives attempting to meet the prime minister at Singh Durbar.
Third gender activists have heightened their campaign after British ambassador-designate John Tucknott attended their public meeting even before presenting his credentials to the president.
The British embassy has opened a new human rights front even the country is facing enormous political, economic, and other social problems.
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SUNSARI BOARDING SCHOOLS TO REOPEN SUNDAY

Kathmandu, 16 Sept.: Boarding schools in Sunsari, cloed for 10 days, will reopen Sunday after a 10-day closure forced by Maoist teachers pressing demands.
A tripartite agreement was reached Thursday between teachers, schools and government education authorities.
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Anxiety attack, conventional conceit

As it prepares for its crucial 12th general convention, the Nepali Congress has notched up some notable successes in its self-rejuvenation campaign. The organization has drawn in some 180,000 new members, with those in the 18-35 age group comprising some 29 percent of the entrants. Regardless of whether this would be enough to reverse what was becoming a gerontocracy, there is a palpable sense of optimism within, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook..
.

The leadership has been busy projecting the upcoming event as a celebration of unity. This is understandable since it is the first convention after the reunification of the Koirala and Deuba factions. Concerns that the rift remains to be fully healed have pervaded the discourse on both sides.

In spreading the unity message, some of the Nepali Congress’ traditional smugness has returned. Former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba reminded the country the other day that, like it or not, the Nepali Congress is the only democratic party. A few days later, assistant general secretary Arjun Narsingh K.C. went a step further by likening the Maoists and the CPN-UML as kindergarteners when it came to democracy.

Such egotism is bound to unnerve the other major and minor parties that have stood the popular test. But the more relevant dimension of that contention is internal. How could the party that claims to have led all three of Nepal’s democratic upsurges end up contributing the most to squandering the promise of two and imperiling the third?

Did the party really play such a monumental role in, to borrow a favorite line, restoring a king that had escaped to Delhi in 1950? Or did the Nepali Congress leadership peddle that narrative to mask the ignominy of having merely signed the dotted line in the Indian capital? B.P. Koirala’s effort to marginalize the monarchy, while ideologically consistent for a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, reflected a monumental misreading of the geopolitics of the time.

The 1959 election did not mark – to borrow a more recent phrase – the end of history. The admixture of charisma and rigidity glued with impetuosity was bound to come unstuck. Prison and exile did not diminish B.P. Koirala’s sense of righteousness. When he finally acknowledged the paramountcy of external factors in Nepal, B.P. crafted it in the guise of a national reconciliation policy, which was essentially an effort to mask the original letdown.

The Nepali Congress’ retelling of the 1990 story was another self-serving embellishment of what was a new geopolitical turn. Fear of the extremists taking the field nudged the palace and opposition parties, in tandem with the external protagonists, to accelerate what was essentially a work in progress. In the ensuing tussle, the Nepali Congress had time and popular tide on its side.

The arrogance bred by the desire to monopolize the democratic space could only come with its natural corollary: an abiding fear of relegation to the opposition in open and competitive politics. In blaming the palace, the CPN-UML or the Maoists for the October 2002 meltdown, the Nepali Congress establishment simply refused to take responsibility for the sequence events that culminated in the party split earlier in the year.

By forcing the palace to restore the House of Representatives, G.P. Koirala vindicated a stance that some of his closest colleagues had begun to doubt. But to what effect? Compared to 1951 and 1990, the 2006 script had even far little to do with the Nepali Congress. That the Nepalese people had to return to the man most responsible for the last democratic debacle for their supposed salvation was a reflection of the anomaly of the time, something the Maoists played on.

If the former rebels ended up driving the early phase of the peace process, it was because they had entered the mainstream with a firm intent to hammer away the Nepali Congress quest to monopolize the political space, if not necessarily to supplant it. It has become amusing for a far wider audience to see some of the same people in the Nepali Congress who once found it politically chic to hail the Maoists for having raised their weapons in defense of the people to now come out and criticize the former rebels for failing to become full-fledged civilian party.

You did not have to have a tinge of a Marx, Lenin or Maoist to recognize the common political, economic and social cords the Nepali Congress and the monarchy shared. With that link sundered, the party could only be left gasping for air. The death of the patriarch accelerated the sputters.

From the flux, the Nepali Congress may still be able to reinvent itself in accordance with the country’s requirements. And Nepal would be better for it. So when Deuba and his ilk regurgitate how the Nepali Congress is the only democratic party around, their conceit is not the real problem. It is their attempt to palm off an anxiety attack as a burst of confidence.
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