TMLP SPLITS

Kathmandu, 31 Dec.: Nine of 21 members of Terai Madesh Loktantrik Party (TMLP) defected Friday and formed the TMLP-Nepal.
Mahendra Prasad Yadav led the revolt.
Yadav charged there was no democratic practice in the party.
Chairman Subash Nemwang was formally notified
The party was the second biggest from the terai.
NSP and MJF have already split and MJFL is also facing internal dissent.
The latest split comes as parliament is meeting for a normal winter session.
Election of Caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal is top on the agenda.
Nepal Friday completed six months in office as Maoists can’t from a government with consensus or a majority.
Nepal has been lobbying support for NC Vice-president Ram Chandra Paudel as his designated successor as he picks up a duel in the UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal who is considered close to Maoists.
Nepal has publicly opposed a Maoist-led government.

BAN KI-MOON CALLS FOR COMPROMISES

Kathmandu, 31 Dec.: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Nepal’s peace process is at crossroads as UNMIN prepares to withdraw from Nepal 15 January 2011.
He called for compromises to overcome mistrust to complete the peace process ad constitution drafting.
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16 INJURED IN VEHICULAR ACCIDENT I SUKLAPHANTA

Kathmandu, 31 Dec.: Sixteen persons were injured, six seriously, when a vehicle overturned at the Suklaphanta National Park in
Kanchankpur Thursday.
The injured are undergoing treatment across th border in India.
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DENIAL AND DECEPTION

Kathmandu, 31 Dec.: Just as we thought Sri Lanka’s apology had settled that curious diplomatic fracas, Colombo strenuous denied ever having said sorry to us. So we are back to the old question. Did or didn’t President Ram Baran Yadav ask his Sri Lankan counterpart, Mahinda Rajapakse, to be a peace mediator in Nepal?, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris repeatedly told his country’s parliament that Yadav had done so during a meeting with Rajapakse in China in late October. Colombo’s latest stance bolsters that position. Peiris, of course, had a vested interest in extolling Rajapakse’s credentials as a peacemaker, especially as an alternative to the regional you know who. As his nation’s top diplomat, Peiris may have easily employed that time-tested tool of his profession in what he considered the pursuit of national interest.
Our own media had reported that Yadav had met Rajapakse in Shanghai, the only foreign counterpart he did so in China, saying they had discussed the peace process. From the local coverage, Yadav had made a bland request for Colombo’s support to the peace process. So when the Sri Lankan media reported Peiris’s far more definitive claim, our president’s press secretary issued a flat denial. Yet Peiris persisted.
When Sri Lanka’s Deputy Foreign Minister Neomal Perera arrived in Kathmandu for a regional conference, few Nepalis seemed to associate him with his boss’s assertions. During a courtesy call on Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, according to section of the Sri Lankan media, Perera offered an apology on behalf of Peiris. The idea ostensibly was to keep things quiet. Once word got out, Colombo issued a flat denial. Clearly, this is much more than a story of who lied.
To Maila Baje, the circumstances in which it gained traction remain far more complex and merit greater scrutiny. When Rajapakse suppressed the once seemingly invincible Tamil Tigers, he sparked easily audible voices of displeasure in India. Although the Tamil Tigers were responsible for the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, New Delhi did not seem too happy with the suppression of the group. Among other things, the overt backing of Beijing had made Colombo’s enterprise particularly galling for New Delhi.
Through that triumph, Colombo felt it had broken out of the sphere of India’s influence – psychologically if not physically – which New Delhi expected to have formalized even after its ill-fated military expedition two decades ago. Thus, as the Rajapakse government has discovered to its discomfiture, the storyline has now shifted to allegation of Sinhala war crimes against Sri Lankan minority Tamils.
President Yadav, for his part, had hosted Rajapakse as the first head of state to visit Nepal since it became a republic. Yadav thus went into the Shanghai meeting with a high comfort level. Our president, moreover, already had demonstrated his eagerness to gratify his Chinese hosts. In a republic as wobbly as ours, the presidency remains the most vulnerable institution. How far Beijing has reconciled itself to Nepal having become a republic – at least in its current form – remains open to question. Around the time of Yadav’s trip, Beijing had hosted Vice-President Parmananda Jha, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and leading Maoist commanders. And as far as China is concerned, every visit has a remarkable degree of official halo.
So President Yadav tread familiar path on befriending China. He urged Beijing (through its top rep in Lhasa) to accelerate the extension of its railway network up to Nepalese border, sidestepping the abiding obsession of the Indians. Any fallout from the south would be manageable, in Yadav’s estimation, by the sheer orientation of the Nepalese government.
Once in Shanghai, Yadav could have been carried away by his ebullience. It would not be hard to see how he might have sought Rajapakse’s role in Nepal’s peace process as part of his northern charm offensive.
It is easy to be sidetracked by Yadav’s current public persona as ceremonial president. Scratch the veneer a bit and you can see his keenness for a new version of that much-maligned Article 127, notwithstanding his professed desire to return to his village as a farmer. Yadav essentially remains a Nepali Congress stalwart and his partisan role during the recent party convention has been amply chronicled by the aggrieved faction.
While Yadav would indeed emerge stronger in the arena of plausible deniability, why would the Sri Lankan foreign minister lie – if that were indeed what he did – and stand firm? Projecting the smaller South Asian nations’ ability to extricate themselves from their own problems is an objective Colombo shares with Beijing, an aspiration non-official Nepal would easily endorse.
Then there is the fact that Peiris’s claim came after Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Sri Lanka, ostensibly to open consulates in the southern and northernmost parts of the island nation. Krishna travelled to the southern town of Hambantota to open a consulate barely a week after the government launched the first stage of a 1.5-billion-dollar Chinese-funded port there. The other new Indian mission is in northern Jaffna, the former stronghold of the Tamil Tigers and ostensibly the most ideal venue to whip up the war crimes allegations against Colombo.
Who would benefit from a falling out of the two nations on northern and southern ends of South Asia, intent on redefining the region’s strategic balance? That’s where the heart of the matter lies, regardless of who may be lying around the edges.
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NOT SO NOBEL NOBEL PRIZE

Kathmandu, 31 Dec.: There is a fairly large group that has made a career out of championing the cause and interests of neighboring India, known as a nation that rightly boasts of Mahatma Gandhi but contradicts the great man by intimidating and exploiting smaller neighbors. The “emerging economic superpower” has proxies in the land of Pashupatinath, Swayambhunath and Sagarmatha doing the dirty work, defending anything Delhi does. Some of the cleaners are in the “intellectual” community, some in the academic line; many are in the political sphere and quite a few in the news business. These pests can be seen springing into action as the so-called civil society as well.
Be they in the civil society or in the media, the so-called experts by and large do not have anything critical to comment on the many grievances large sections of Nepalis share regarding “unequal” treaties, Nepal’s water resources and such other issues. The long retired professor Lok Raj Baral, for instance, goes about saying that it is “useless” to blame others when we fail to keep our own house in order, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
Over the decades, Baral has never found a fault with India, though he is careful not to criticize China. This is so mainly because there is very little to criticize China after the border issue was settled five decades ago. After all, spontaneous popular demonstrations against China are extremely rare whereas such protests against India are quite a few, at times creating a major law and order problem.
Pro-Indian groups try to deflect focus on their dubious activities by terming any public protest against their patrons as the handiwork of “regressive” elements of “radical communists”. Nepali Congress and regional groups choose to either remain silent or come out in open defense of the “aggrieved” southern neighbor. Anyone or group raising a banner of protest against what is perceived as Indian “hegemony” is maligned and patronized agents in various sectors follow suit.
Some India-friendly media describe outright pro-Indian individuals as experts on international affairs, even if he is known for his consistently jaundiced view. There are intellectuals who sing praises of economic progress in all but Chinese economy. They fear that they may be excluded from the network that aligns itself with a particular ideology, irrespective of the merit of the stance taken. However, the retired professor, who is known more for his pedestrian statements, than for his classes at the Tribhuvan University, has quite a few who accompany him in the ridiculous track.
Human rights groups and the so-called civil society “leaders” try to foment issues regarding Free Tibet movement. But they are silent over the gross human rights violations in Kashmir and several northeastern states in India, for instance. Some sections are for encouraging Free Tibet activities because the move suits the donor countries that they try to please. It is not that China is a great democracy matching the Western definitions of the philosophy. Although a one-party state, its political institutions and mechanism are in many respects better than the government structures, institutions and processes in the many authoritarian regimes whose repression of their own people is hardly discussed in the democracies that find the autocratic rulers loyal to their dictates. China made swift economic strides despite being basically a communist country.
The Nobel Peace Prize is increasingly being used as a political tool, sometimes embarrassing the recipient himself and at other times making a laughing stock for the intellectually discerning. US President Barack Obama received it in his very first year in office for simply pledging to work for a nuclear-free world. It is a certainty that the man under 50 years will not see in his lifetime a nuclear free world. Two decades ago, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Myanmar’s democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi after barely three years in detention. Had she been awarded the prize after more years of observation, it could have made the Nobel committee proud.
Nelson Mandela would perhaps have missed the prize had it not been the case of Mahatma Gandhi never having been awarded it. Gandhi’s disciple, however, received it, though he has done the award itself a great service by the very gesture of accepting it. The Nobel committee does not see or hear the sufferings of Tek Nath Rizal, the Bhutanese democracy movement leader who suffered hell in prison for ten years and has had to live in exile. Chained and shackled in isolation for long spells by the royal regime, Rizal is an unknown character for the not so noble committee.
Comparison might be odious to those who find an argument inconvenient but it cannot be avoided to furnish a powerful case. Obama was embarrassed for being named for the Nobel because he had done nothing of substance to merit it. If promises were adequate, there are numerous other leaders in the developing world who promise the heavens and yet preside over a hell. Nobel Laureate Obama celebrated his peace honor by ordering tens of thousands of extra troops into Afghanistan in war, ostensibly for raising the prospects of peace. If a national referendum were to be conducted in Afghanistan today, the people there would overwhelmingly support the idea of packing off all foreign troops from their soil. In fact, public opinions in most countries contributing troops to the US-led campaign want their boys back from Afghanistan.
India boasts of being the world’s “largest democracy”. Yet New Delhi honored Bhutan’s absolute monarch Jigme Singye Wangchuck as the chief guest at its Republic Day celebrations twice, while a democratic leader Rizal languished in jail. What would Mahatma Gandhi and even Nehru have said if they were to be witnesses to such practices?
Our own Krishna Prasad Bhattarai was a prisoner of conscience for 14 years but he never figured anywhere to receiving the Nobel award. For awarding such individuals do not serve the political interests of specific groups that pull the strings behind an award that has been exposed for prejudice when the Chinese put their foot down recently after someone jailed for offences was declared this year’s winner.
The charitable hearts did not melt in Brussels or Vienna or the Vatican. If they themselves had suffered such situation they would have termed it duplicity or double standards. Nobel Prize is rapidly losing its prestige.
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