10 PARTIES ASK FOR SCHEDULE FOR CA EXTENTION

10 SMALL PARTIES ASK FOR SCHEDULE FOR PEACE AND CONSTITUTION DRAFTING TO FOR CA EXTENSION

Kathmandu, 26 May: Ten small parties of various hues in parliament Thursday asked Maoists, NC and UML to draw up a schedule for concluding peace and constitution drafting to be approved by parliament as a pre-condition for extending the constituent assembly (CA) tenure after Saturday.
The 10 parties should accept responsibility for failure to proclaim a constitution even in three years.
Government has registered a bill at the parliament secretariat to extend the assembly tenure by one year after 28 May; but a five-judge bench of the supreme court ruled Wednesday CA session can’t be extended indefinitely.
The apex ruled a tenure can be extended only for six months on the principle a doctrine of necessity explaining the reason for extension like an emergency The government bill has to be amended for approval after the court verdict, according to lawyers.
Meanwhile three Madeshbadi parties aligned with main opposition NC at a joint meeting concluded am assembly tenure can be extended after Maoist weapons are surrendered and past agreements are implemented.
MJFL, TMLP and NSP leaders also blamed the Big Three for the current deadlock.
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OPINION

NEPALI CONGRESS; IS IT FOR REAL?

Kathmandu, 26 May: The general response to the Nepali Congress’ latest public campaigns seems to have exceeded the leadership’s wildest expectations. Although no one had quite ventured to write the party’s epitaph, its progressive emaciation was apparent. The post-Girija Prasad Koirala leadership was both dreary and divided, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netnook.
The party’s resurgence – if one can call it that – appears to have energized the Indians as well. The venerable Times of India’s Nepal watcher, Indrani Bagchi, in a recent story credited Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee’s massive electoral success in West Bengal against the long-ruling left alliance with giving a new life to the Nepali Congress.
In fairness, the TOI correspondent is less parochial than the story’s headline makes it sound. The writer attributes the Nepali Congress’ success to the diminution of public fear of the Maoists and the dismal performance of Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal’s government. With each of the communist partners mired in deep internal rifts, it would be difficult to expect the government to perform any better. But, Maila Baje feels, our comrades surely know that such arguments, regardless of their validity, cannot win the argument.
Still, there is a place in the TOI story where Nepalis and the Nepali Congress must watch for. The party was on the verge of a rupture on the eve of Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit. “Giving the example of the Indian Congress party and how it had repositioned itself in Indian politics, Krishna reportedly told the NC leaders that they ran the risk of being their own
worst enemy.”
Suddenly things patched up in the party, long delayed appointments/nominations were formalized, and voluble leaders restrained themselves to the point where factionalism saw little, if any, place in the latest rallies. Sher Bahadur Deuba, the chief dissident, at one point even half-gyrated to the music amid the unfolding cultural tapestry.
The sense of rejuvenation reached a level where Nepali Congress cadres in Gorkha ended up thrashing six local activists of UCPN (Maoists).
To be sure, the Nepali Congress has seized the initiative by submitted a 10-point charter of demands to the UML-Maoist government, complete with an ultimatum. Unless the demands were fulfilled, the party insists, it would oppose the extension of the Constituent Assembly on May 28. In the end, the spirit of consensus will probably prevail in the Nepali Congress and the assembly will get a new lease of life.
How long after that can the personality-based rifts in the Nepali Congress be papered over? Power, after all, has always had a way of intoxicating the party to the point of implosion. Perhaps in the interest of its own well-being, the party should commit itself to staying out of the government for a while longer.
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OUT OF SLUMBER OR BLUNDER

Kathmandu, 26 May: One wonders what took the donor community in Nepal so long to shake themselves from their long slumber and realize the blunder of helping local NGOs that enforce closures of roads and shops. They have begun to sense that Nepalis suffer from strikes enforced as a form of protest, Trikall Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
All of a sudden the British and their cousins in the European Union the other day woke up to announce that they would withdraw their financial support to the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) if it did not withdraw its strike call for the next day. According to a statement issued on the eve of the recent call by NEFIN for a nationwide strike, the British Department For International Development (DEFID), this position was taken on the ground that the particular form of protest that could be enforced through the threat of violence worked against citizens’ rights and freedom of movement.
NEFIN’s head Raj Kumar Lekhi ignored the warning and went ahead with the protest, notwithstanding the fact that his organization had been a beneficiary of two million sterling pounds since 2004. There were sporadic cases of small groups trying to defy the protest call. On the whole, the strike was a “grand success”, as is generally the case.
The frantic efforts made by some donor agencies needed to be seen to be believed. Their staff members worked overtime to draw sympathy from large sections of the big media groups. News chiefs and editors at newspapers and television channels were briefed on the statement of warning. The ploy was to have the strike go unreported or grossly underreported.
Editors working as consultants or translators for some of these agencies, and media groups with significant volumes of sponsored programs keenly obliged the request. Others might have had their own individual reasons for underplaying the protest program that at other times would have been well highlighted.
NGOs, whose key figures have made their social service activities a profession and can be seen flashing in spick and span cars, living in large houses and developing expensive habits apart from turning themselves as globe-trotters, used their contacts to speak against the bandhs.
However, most civil society “leaders” did not come out in support or against the strike, as they, too, had organized many strikes in the past. Though termed “peaceful”, such strikes have always been accompanied by intimidation or even violence. The torch marches that take place on the eve of such strikes is a warning that defying the strike call would not be tolerated.
Remember the time in 2006 winter, during the direct rule of the king, when local elections were held even in the face of a boycott announced by “peaceful” political parties of the Nepali Congress and CPN (UML) types? Threats, intimidation and violence were widely applied by those in the boycott movement. Later, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal confirmed what was always speculated, i.e. NC President Girija Prasad Koirala had asked him to take actions against pro-election champions at some important places so that voters would be dissuaded from turning up at polling stations. Eventually, 20 per cent of the eligible voters turned up in what proved to be the lowest turnout in the country’s electoral history of any type but also the fairest one ever.
No human rights group, national or international, protested against such acts and promptings.
Over the decades, hundreds of motor vehicles have been attacked, tires burned on the middle of cross-sections of highways during strikes. Shopkeepers on the main highways dare not put their shutters down. This was taken as a spontaneous response to a genuine call by an organization that spoke for the people’s cause.
It was not that the donor agencies and foreign missions, as well as the human rights groups affiliated to various political parties and the so-called civil society leaders, were not aware of the inconvenience. They simply cruised around in luxury cars that carried stickers proclaiming the organization they belonged to. It so happened that they were exempt from abiding by the strike organizers’ writ ordering motor vehicles off the road. Some agencies simply did not have their cars on the road on such days.
As for underreporting, just for one example, “Kantipur” daily gave a small item in a sort of “news in brief” manner. The NEFIN story was dismissed to an inside page. A cursory look at quite a few other papers and channels spoke of a similar tale.
There is this busy bird who tells that some sections in the large political parties had of late accused donor agencies of sponsoring groups that raised slogans and movements that would have been termed objectionable in the countries of these funding agencies. A couple of these agencies are reported to have got quite a dressing down from some senior political leaders.
One word led to another, and the donor agencies might have calculated that more rigorous scrutiny of their activities would be unleashed in the days ahead. This could be the reason why the DEFID statement came out and all-out efforts were made to make the strike a damp squib. Unfortunately for the statement authors, the strike succeeded in its purpose. However, the people, as usual, suffered great inconvenience, except that this.
It is also no secret that foreign funded agencies of a particular type have been harvesting lots of money organizing “dharnas” at places like Baneshwar. They fund for footing bills for Rs. 500 plus as transport expenses and a few hundred rupees for “snacks” per person participating in a “dharna”. Coordination and overt head costs are separate.
Interestingly, the donor agencies and their protégés in Kathmandu did not raise any protest against the arrest of those involved in showing black flags against Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal in Sunsari. Showing a black flag is a very peaceful means of protesting. Some do it with black flags; some do it with wearing black bands around their arms.
It was ironic, rather sheer double standards, on the part of the UML-led but Maoist-directed government considering that UML holds the dubious distinction of waving black flags the most often against Girija Prasad Koirala, when the latter was prime minister half a dozen times. Koirala used to fume and fret but never had the black flag wavers arrested
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