DEUBA CONVENING MEETING OF SUPPORTERS

Kathmandu, 27 Nov. Three-time former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is convening a meeting of his supporters Saturday as NC President Sushil Koirala prepares to call a meeting of the party central working committee (CWC) probably Sunday.
Koirala Friday called on Deuba at the latter’s residence to collect the former premier’s support and cooperation to run the party; Deuba considers himself NO.2 in the party hierarchy after Koirala..
Deuba was non-committal in extending support.
Koirala, Deuba held discussions amid reports the president is appointing Ram Chandra Paudel vice-chairman and Krishna Prasad Shitaula secretary.
Paudel is the leader of the parliamentary party and considers himself senior to Deuba; Paudel and Shitaula are also loyalists of Grija Prasad Koirala who died earlier this year.
Koirala has only appointed Deuba member of the central committee although he can nominate 21 members to the committee according to party statute.
Deuba is pressing Koirala to appoint his supporters although the
president would like strengthen his own hold on the organization by
nominating his own loyalists.
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ANOHER SHOOTING INCIDENT IN SAPTARI

Kathmandu, 27 Nov.: In another shooting incident in Saptari, Radha Debi Shah was injured in a shooting incident in the lawless district
Saturday morning.
She’s undergoing treatment at a Dharan hospital.
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TASL FORCE FOR RENOVATION IN PASHUPATI COMPLEX

Kathmandu, 27 Nov.: A nine-member task force headed by Narottam Baidya, treasurer of Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT)
was formed Friday and submit a report within 10 days on the
dilapidated condition of temples in the complex.
A renovation, especially of the northern area, is being launched.
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STILL WAGING OUR PEACE WAR


Kathmandu, 27 Nov.: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal exonerates the Maoists from damaging allegations that they are training India’s Naxalite guerrillas. In return, our former rebels beat up Finance Minister Surendra Pandey in parliament just when he thought he had the Maoists’ approval to present the delayed budget, maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
The minister happens to be an in-law of Premier Nepal’s chief rival in his CPN-UML, the chairman Jhal Nath Khanal. Amid the bedlam, the prime minister rams his budget through a presidential ordinance and announces his intention to go to Russia for a tiger summit.
The Maoists, upholding their pledge to block a full-fledged budget, get to growl inwards at their Gorkha plenum. The Nepali Congress’ Ram Chandra Poudel, the sole candidate for much of the legislature’s embarrassing search for a new prime minister, is left in limbo. However, he, too, gets to boast that his hanging candidacy is what stops the Maoists from capturing the state.
Meanwhile, the chief of the Armed Police Force denies ever having suggested that he had found no evidence of the Maoists’ training the Naxalites – which had ostensibly underpinned Premier Nepal’s exculpation. And so the peace process completed four agonized years.
When the nation is expected to pin its hopes on secret conclaves, peace in pieces looks better than nothing. But what exactly is it that we have been collectively seeking?
For the mainstream parties, the peace process was something to hit back at the monarchy with. The Maoists went along because their principal external patron shared that sentiment, all the while hedging its bets.
Today, the international community is anxious to see the integration of the state and former rebel armies as the most compelling evidence of peace. This comes at a time when fewer and fewer ex-fighters seem to consider that as a prerequisite to peace. The human rights wings of the world body want to see that part of their agenda on the front-burner, something their cousins in the non-state sector are far more incendiary in asserting. Words like justice and reconciliation would have retained their sonorous ring if the truth of it all had not kept shifting so swiftly.
A chastened Nepali Congress today wants the Maoists to prove their commitment to the democratic process, despite the fact that the voters validated those credentials by electing them the largest party over two years ago. Even then, the Nepali Congress wears a far more substantive aura than the UML, which does not seem to know what it wants from the ex-rebels.
The Indians want the Maoists sidelined because they had envisaged the ex-rebels merely as something that would propel the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) protests beyond Ratna Park. The SPA’s subsequent performance has fallen far short of New Delhi’s expectations. The mainstream parties may have succeeded in pulling the Maoists to their own level of ordinariness. But they did little to foil the ex-rebels’ overtures to Chinese pragmatism. Beijing, which once helped the palace and the parties in their effort to crush the rebels, today wants the Great Helmsman’s local offspring to head a broad patriotic front.
The Americans want the ex-rebels to maintain equidistance between the regional behemoths and have been extending a lateral hand in all directions. The Europeans, Russians, Japanese, Pakistanis, Arabs are all staking their claims. The international left is more interested in peddling such pet issues as homosexuality and abortion – not to mention that perfect watermelon, environmentalism – as the defining characteristics of Nepal’s newness over everything else. The global right is not only resisting with full force, but the evangelical variant also wants to spread the Good News in such a way that there is no Second Going.
What do Nepalis want? Surely, there must be something more than the CNN Hero and Alternative Nobel laurels.

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CREDIBILITY ALL AROUND

Kathmandu, 27 Nov.: Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, after his October visit to China, said that Beijing wanted him and his party to develop better ties with Indian government. Never short of over-enthusiasm, he spoke of visiting New Delhi in the near future and help improve not only his party’s relationship with New Delhi but also ties between India and China, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
Prachanda does not realize that Beijing assesses him as India’s potential handmaiden in the ultimate run. The UCPN (Maoist) leaders, who made set up their base of command India for eight and half years, have not been able to explain how they eluded the intelligence network of the world’s fifth largest military and economic might.
When he first visited Beijing as prime minister before calling on the Indian government in New Delhi, he was in a tearing hurry to announce at the Tribhuvan International Airport that his visit was not an official one. What he wanted to clarify was that his first official visit would be to New Delhi. This pleased neither the Chinese nor the Indians.
If the Chinese advised Prachanda to maintain good relations with New Delhi, it was a backhanded compliment. Under pressure from different corners, Prachanda and his faction in his party conclude that New Delhi was behind preventing the Maoist supremo from becoming prime minister for a second time. Not sure that anything of substance they said would be guarded from being leaked, the Chinese leaders said something that Prachanda would cling to, as does a drowning man at a straw.
New Delhi will not be impressed by the message. It is well aware of the existing status of Sino-Indian ties. It may even take the Prachanda’s message from China as a subtle form of taunt from the World No. 2 economy. A number of Indian newspapers, apparently briefed by South Block, have carried news alleging that the Nepali Maoists had been training Indian Maoists in India. The Indian Express recently claimed that Nepali Maoists had not long ago trained 200 Indian Maoists. This happened when the Nepali Maoists were making a series of anti-India speeches.
New Delhi’s credibility can be gauged from the manner it chose not to see the Nepali Maoists, during their insurgency, crawling all over Delhi and its outskirts when the latter were declared terrorists and a red corner notice was issued against them.
The shoe-throwing incident against Sood at Solukhumbu extracts a raging interest from the chaps at Lazimpat corner. Most media in Nepal did not mention the Solukhumbu shoes of China make but the same ones that chose to spike or underreport the news highlighted statements by Maoist leaders that shoe throwing was not a dignified way of protesting. Now we know the definition, scope and classification of the Real juicy story.
Former King Gyanendra’s temple visit in Patan earlier this autumn was attended by known local Maoist leaders who chanted slogans calling for unity among “patriots”. Could this be the result of Beijing having advised Prachanda and his party members again and again that they should improve ties with nationalist forces in Nepal? The former monarch is learnt to have maintained a cool distance from the Maoist overtures so far, even though he is informed of what the Chinese have advised the Maoists.
Having burnt his body parts so severely for supporting the Chinese entry into the SAARC forum that triggered and hastened New Delhi’s decision to denigrate, demoralize and demonize monarchy, the former king is keeping the cards closed to his chest. He knows he is being watched and monitored. However, his uttering in the recent weeks indicate a new-found confidence that does not come overnight for someone having lost so much and with such crushing blow.
Beijing is in desperate search for a reliable group with significant presence to bank upon for its interests in Nepal. The Maoists have not been able to win its confidence because of some of their leaders’ vacillating nature, saying something abruptly and making an about turn before the sound of their earlier statement dies down.
In the past five years, the Chinese government has witnessed many foreign players carving out roles for themselves in Nepal in a manner that would have been impossible elsewhere in South Asia, especially Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. And who dare interfere in India, an aspirant for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council?
China has, therefore, begun taking active interest in promoting its interests. An example can be its preparation to disseminate China Radio International (CRI) programs all over Nepal through the 300 or so FM radio stations in the country. For this, the Chinese have obtained “downlink” permission to rebroadcast in Nepal. CRI has already set up its Kathmandu bureau.
So far, the BBC is the only international broadcasting service with such downlink facility in Nepal and rebroadcasting its programs across Nepal through many local stations. As a test case, the CRI had begun broadcasting its programs a few years ago through a local radio station. Now it wants to go a big way. An English daily in Kathmandu recently quoted officials at the ministry of information and communications, mentioning the significance of the Chinese broadcast interests in Nepal to produce and disseminate programs especially after the fall of monarchy and “anti-China” demonstrations by Tibetan refugees two years ago.
The Chinese are yet to find a reliable partner. Previously, they banked on the palace for initiating measures against anti-China activities by Free Tibet Movement groups and other forces. Bejing has now begun to feel that its soft underbelly, Tibet, is more vulnerable than ever before. It got a glimpse of potential trouble during the series of anti-China demonstrations held in Kathmandu not long ago, apparently to embarrass Beijing, the host to the 2008 Olympics that sought to showcase to the world the country’s development strides.
There were many actors behind the sponsored demonstrations. Traditional supporters of Beijing merely stood silent. Some of them said that the development was an outcome of Beijing’s complacency regarding its status in Nepal. Traditionally, leftist forces were generally active sympathizers of China. That no longer is the case. What the Nepali leftist groups do is to maintain a balance between Beijing and New Delhi. If the crunch comes, Beijing has found them to tilt toward New Delhi.
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