NO CA TENURE EXTENSION WITHOUT DEMANDS BEING MET

NC CENTRAL FIRM NO CA TENURE EXTENSION IF ITS CONDITIONS AREN’T MET

Kathmandu, 19 May: Main opposition central committee meeting chaired by President Sushil Koirala approved a 10-point proposal of a Sher Bahadur Deuba committee to create conditions for extending a constituent assembly (CA) after 28 May.
The committee said CA tenure won’t be extended if its conditions aren’t met.
The assembly tenure won’t be extended if conditions relating to the peace process aren’t completed by 24 May
The party official position on peace and constitution will be made public at a public meeting in the capital Friday.
The committee endorsed a 10-point proposal developed by the Deuba body
“Maoists have weapons. They think this should be accepted Our proposal is the party shouldn’t take a stiff position There is a proposal to integrate 4,000 to 5,000 fighterS,” central committee member Narahari Acharya said.
“Extension under present circumstance is meaningless,” Spokesman Arjun Narsingh KC said.’ The party position is justifiable.”
“Start process to implement past agreements,” KC said.
“The ball is in the Maoist court now and it has responsibilities,” Sushil Koirala earlier said.
The central committee said conditions should be created for formation of a national government replacing the current communist majority government led by Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal who is also UML chairman.
Three ruling parties have rejected the demand saying the incumbent government can be converted into a national government.
The party endorsed a recommendation of a Ram Chandra Paudel committee for seven provinces—one in the capital and six outside.
NC also said preparations have been completed for Friday’s public meeting in the capital; the meeting will be the last of a month-long awareness campaign for peace and constitution
Party said an estimated 200,000 people will come out of the street in the capital Friday.
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FORMER CHAIRMAN D.B.BAMJAN OF GORKHA DEVELOPMENT BANK ARRESTED

Kathmandu 19 May: Former Chairman D.B.Bamjan of Gorkha Development Bank was arrested Thursday from the capital. for banking irregularities,
The bank has been declared troubled by Nepal Rashtra Bank for irregularities.
Police have been asked to book 18 persons affiliated to Gorkha Development Bank and NSM Financial Company.
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RPP-NEPAL SIT-IN DISRUPTS
VEHICULAR MOVEMENT

Kathmandu, 19 May: Movement of vehicles was disrupted for two hours during a sit-in Thursday by RPP-Nepal in front of International Convention Center at Naya Baneshwor opposing another one-year extension of the constituent assembly (CA) by one year after 28 May.
’A year’s experience has proved a constituent won’t be drafted even after another extension,’ Party Chairman Kamal Thapa told a meeting in front of the center.
Parliament and assembly meet there.
The party repeated demand for fresh assembly election
Several party activists during a baton charge by police
Daily sit-ins are being staged at Naya Baneshwor ridiculing and mocking lawmakers for their failure to promulgate a constitution for the second time in three years.
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OPINION

BETWEEN ELITISM AND ILLUSION

Kathmandu, 19 May: Exasperated by the ideological muddle ensnaring his party, Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist firebrand Bam Dev Gautam has hit back at his rivals in the leadership. The former deputy prime minister no longer seems in a mood to consider them communists, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
Although Gautam was careful not to name names during a speech in Nepalgunj the other day, his targets were clear. “We cannot take those Nepali Congress cohorts as communists, can we?” Gautam asked the audience. The images of Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli and Madhav Kumar Nepal must have been swirling around the place in their assorted manifestations.
At one level, Gautam merely articulated something that has been intriguing a far wider section of the populace. Oli’s public remarks have tended to fall at the right end of the political spectrum, on occasion surpassing those of Kamal Thapa of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, if you take the monarchy out of the equation.
Unlike Oli, Madhav Nepal has been vituperative in his public references to former king Gyanendra Shah. But on other matters, Nepal has generally positioned himself on the right of many in the Nepali Congress. Although both seem to have trained their guns on the Maoists, deeper down it looks like they are going after a particular mind-set.
Yet other parts of Gautam’s speech were a bit grating. “What a surprise, some of our own senior leaders have been supporting a status-quoist party like Nepali Congress,” he thundered. What status quo, exactly? In post-April Uprising 2006 Nepal, the term status quo, at least in the political context Gautam refers to, is too amorphous to understand. When Chettris are able to bring significant parts of the country to a halt claiming discrimination, you have to concede how our notions of new and old are changing by moment.
Ideological consistency may not be Gautam’s stronghold. But he persisted nevertheless. “Our ideology is Peoples’ Multiparty Democracy (PMD) [and] the heart of PMD is revolutionary change”, Gautam insisted. That was the kind of language Oli and Nepal have long used to position themselves between radicals and moderates, all the while Gautam was taking turns consorting with the palace and the Maoists.
Still, the larger question pertains to the general direction of our politics. There those outside the arena who tend to dismiss as grossly insulting clear manifestations of popular disenchantment with the political class’ inability to deliver the constitution. Many in this group have a history of magnifying and even manufacturing grievances and institutionalizing an industry while masquerading as dispassionate observers. Now that the change they peddled had started losing some of its luster, it’s the people’s fault.
Then there are those in the political class who believe in the power of national consensus to work wonders when it comes to the crunch. It doesn’t matter a bit that the rest of the year is not so conducive to common cause. Those without similar faith in – or perhaps, more appropriately, fantasies about – the durability of last-minute deals are somehow roadblocks that must be cast aside.
Between this crass elitism and eternal confidence, Gautam’s comments point to the imperative of each one of us fighting our individual battles and reconciling ourselves within before pretending to know what it is that we collectively seek.
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CORRUPTING PRACTICES OF INGOs

Kathmandu, 19 May: It is only a question of time before long the INGOs and their surrogates functioning like NGOs and paid activists will be the subject of Nepali public wrath. For long the more than 200 INGOs operating in this country have been functioning with a cavalier attitude the like of which could not be even imagined in other countries, particularly India, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.

Unless they shape up, many of these INGOs in Nepal can be expected to be incessantly grounded organizations, so far known as “dollar” organizations. Journalists, civil society or NGO members and lawyers are the prime target of international groups and national intelligence agencies for spotting “potential” recruits to their organizations.

Funds are routed to the intended ones through front organizations. During the decade-long Maoist rebellion in Nepal, quite a few INGOs were learnt to have funded and assisted Maoist groups through NGOs.

Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal recently attacked NGOs acting against the national interests. This echoed what King Gyanendra had said five and a half years ago, "They are flowing money like a river." Dahal, ever since he was compelled to resign as prime minister, is bitter about “foreign agencies and INGOs” that work against “Nepal’s national interests”.

Previously he used to tag as “regressive elements” anyone that criticized foreign agencies. Such double-speak has not done him any good at a time when his credibility has been so dramatically losing ground within and outside the Nepali society.

Most INGOs in Kathmandu admit that it is “very difficult” to operate in India. Quite a few of them operate in Nepal after failure to get registered in the world’s “largest democracy”. Issues like foreign policy, defense and human rights are so “sensitive” that organizations organizing programs focusing on these issues are required to obtain prior approval from at least two government ministries (External Affairs and Home Affairs).

INGOs and NGOs have been seen in Nepal as “partners” trying to play with dollars--the former setting and getting their agendas through and the latter willing to toe any line the source of the munificence outline for them.

The situation undoubtedly calls for a comprehensive code for INGOs and NGOs to observe if they are to operate in Nepal and have their registrations renewed regularly. The ones failing to get their registrations renewed should be made to stop functioning. As for agencies that operate without registrations, a new regulation should be introduced with a provision for flogging the culprits publicly.

Nepali Congress activists among civil society leaders, university teachers, human rights activists and politicians, take great pains at explaining to anyone sparing some time to listen as to how the UML raises enormous income through NGOs. An NC parliamentarian also complains against agencies proselytizing Nepalese, with the prime targets as economically poor sections. They are the ones that are pressing for federalism not for the larger welfare of the people but mainly to ensure them unhindered opportunities to harvest converts with all sorts of allurements.

ICCO-Dutch Church, for instance, has come under scan, for its aid programs. Similarly, SNV is learnt to be teaming up with the pro-UML and “secular” INSEC. Whether INSEC, whose boss Subodh Pyakurel, contested for a top job of UML during the party’s general convention in Butwal two years ago, is transparent or not about this is an area for an interesting course of study.

Interestingly, communist parties are found to be most receptive to the idea of proselytizing. Maoists, UML and a number of other leftist groups have senior leaders directly or indirectly supporting the cause of promoting conversion by activists. One of the reasons why the Chinese do not trust the communists, which logically should have been comrades-in-arm, is the religion-money-agenda-politics being practiced with Western donor countries and agencies.

According to a well-placed source, some minority interest NGOs are planned to be developed as political parties once a federal structure comes into operation when a new Constitution is ready. This way the politics is aimed at being greatly influenced and even dominated by such political groups that will allow proselytizing on a grand scale that would swell the hearts of the financiers in particular European Union member countries.

Norwegians, Danes, Swiss and even the French are hyperactive in activities that they would not like to advertise but relentlessly expand and succeed. But the activities are well known to the Kathmandu-based missions from also Muslim-majority countries.

Amidst all this we hear that the US Peace Corps are returning to Nepal after decades. This could be to the Chinese what a red rag is to a bull run amuck. Back in the 1960s and part of the 1970, the Khampa rebels who roamed this country’s northern border with the Chinese region of Tibet were financed and equipped by CIA. In the 1960s, the Swiss were also reported to have been involved in anti-China activities. Even the Red Cross flag was also suspected to have been misused.

Scores of INGOs operating from Kathmandu have not fulfilled the normal procedure of registration here. Corruption has many faces. Transparency International should also introduce another area for checking the level of corruption, i.e. the situations in INGOs regarding transparency and local regulations.

The Danish, the Finns and the Norwegians in Kathmandu could not find a foothold in India except through the grudgingly given registration to Dan Church Aid. "It is very difficult in India,” admitted a member of the diplomatic corps. in Kathmandu, who described the Danish in Kathmandu as “very vocal for the size of country they represent”.

The Asia Foundation is not seen in good light in the whole of South Asia. The National Democratic Institute arrived next to succeed where The Asia Foundation failed but its role too has been a suspect.

The CIAA and Social Welfare Council do not dare to question such matters. Quite a few INGOs are registered at other ministries, Foreign Ministry, for instance. This should change. The actual amount spent in Nepal is to be made transparent. The INGOs are supposed to submit regular reports and brief the institute they are registered with. But most of them are not abiding by the stipulation.

The Scandinavian countries spend a lot of money to promote TI. If the funds they channeled were to be probed with care, their own ranks in the TI index would suffer drastically.
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