13 SCHOOL STUDENTS INJURED IN BUS ACCIDENT

13 SCHOOL STUDFNTS INJURED IN A BUS ACCIDET IN BANKE

Kathmandu, 2 June : Two persons died and 20 were injured along the Mahendra Highway in Sarlahi Thursday.
Thirteen school students were injured when a speeding bus lost control and fell 20 feet off a road along a highway linking Chisapani and Kohalpur in Banke.
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OPINION

THE DIFFERENCE MAOISTS HAVE MADE

Kathmandu, 2 June: You can’t say the Maoists’ arrival in the political mainstream has not changed anything. When needed, the hardest-line political force has been flexible enough to ensure repeated extensions of an assembly long beyond the life its progenitors – the sovereign people – intended, Maile Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
Contrast that with the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, who during Nepal’s second age of democracy (1990-2002), were congenitally disposed to dissolving parliament, to the point of self-annihilation, midway through its five-year term.
If the intention of the 2005 12-point agreement between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists was to push the former rebels into the democratic process – as Maila Baje felt from the outset – then it has proved a succeeded. Not because democracy per se has prospered in Nepal by their arrival. But because of the Maoists’ progressive emaciation.
The signal lesson, however, pertains to the evolution and growth of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. There are still those who romanticize the former Nepalese rebels, mostly ensconced in the West and South. Guilt-ridden faculty-lounge discussants that refuse to believe that communism as that great balancing force in world affairs collapsed of its own dead weight. Ideological kooks who insist that communism collapsed only because it lacked the right kind of leaders. Those involved in the magnification and outright manufacture of all manner of grievances to secure funding for a career in newly proliferating disciplines.
Yet Nepalis increasingly recognize how the Maoists grew through the direct patronage of domestic – from the right to the left – and international forces that had their own agendas in shaping the post-1990 change.
Those who thought the Tarai – that supposed cauldron of ethnic resentment and alienation – would be the first to erupt discounted how the open border would dissuade a key patron. Lighting the spark on the northern border in the guise of an ideology with specific connotations to the Great Helmsman there would give a degree of plausible deniability to the rebels’ real sponsors.
This, of course, is not to denigrate or deny the real grievances that simmered beneath the surface. But how many societies in our times with deeply ingrained political, economic, social and cultural grievances have descended into outright armed insurgency? And grievance is no static sentiment, as the Brahmins and Chhetris have demonstrated in recent weeks.
The leadership must be credited for our Maoists’ success. But the paradoxes here too abound. Supreme commander Prachanda’s ferocity and flexibility are lauded for the building of a ragtag band of malcontents into a formidable fighting force. Yet, according to reports now trickling out of Maoist quarters, Prachanda would start wailing at the first hail of gunfire on either side on the few fronts that he was actually involved in.
The hefty prose Dr. Baburam Bhattarai composed in defense of the insurgency has surely enriched the world of Nepali letters. But, then, a brief perusal of Mao’s own collected works would suffice to indicate how much more his forte lay in art of translation than conception.
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Narayanhity Carnage, the Maoists’ chief ideologue stands by his original story that the surviving members of the royal family had a hand in the massacre against a vast geopolitical conspiracy. That’s laudable, considering the swiftness with which politicians are generally known to change their stories. But when the best Dr. Bhattarai, five years after claiming to have dragged the mainstream parties on the path to New Nepal, can do is emphasize the urgency of forming an inquiry commission, then you have got to think. Are the rest of us really that stupid?
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MORE TURMOIL AHEAD

Kathmandu, 2 June: In the long-term the manner in which the Interim Constitution has been extended could prove to be a momentous miscalculation, with horrendous implications. The existing smug attitude among the leaders of three major political parties (Maoists, Nepali Congress and UML) could prove costly, if alternative prospects and permutations were to be completely ignored, incalculable consequences could be triggered, Trikaal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..

Lawyers, civil society members, academics and politicians have led the country astray. The letter and spirit of the Interim Constitution and public opinion have been blatantly flouted. Power is what the leaders and their lackeys among academics and civil society leaders are after.

The atrociously bloated 601-member Constituent Assembly was supposed to complete its work within two years. Those wielding power thought it otherwise and extended its term by another year and now yet another spell. The Interim Constitution unambiguously stipulated a deadline for Constitution making but the leaders of major political parties, on the strength of their combined majority, chose to flout it.

Having to formulate a Constitution, the parties should have taken the most natural course of action by calling for fresh elections and a new mandate. As for election costs, there is not much to worry about. Ours is a political culture whereby a prime minister can call for snap polls at his sweet will. Recall how Girija Prasad Koirala went for snap polls in 1994 at a time when he already had a comfortable majority but argued that his Nepali Congress should obtain a two-thirds majority.

Although they talk a lot about people’s mandate and democracy, political leaders are extremely worried about facing their voters, unless they happen to have lost the last elections. The extension of the Constituent Assembly emphasizes this.

Today, Nepal suffers not because people have failed but because their leaders have failed miserably. We would be allowing ourselves to fail if the failed leaders are not shown the exit. History will not rate high what some fanatics today find fashionable to hate. Pro-monarchists are dubbed downright dangerous, dubious and hence demons. There is this engineer of a “political analyst” who, shortly after the 2006 movement, said that no one should be allowed to plead for monarchy.

Such are individuals who get propped up through dubious channels but are certain to be unmasked and fittingly dealt with. Anyone questioning the wisdom of adopting a federal structure for Nepal, especially on community lines, is called a regressive force. No one dare call for a referendum on whether the country should be declared secular or a Hindu state. For a few stacks of kroner, sterling pound or green dollar, the so-called civil society leaders would not risk their benefactors tightening the strings of their purse.

The authors of 2005-06 were mere puppets chained to the orders of a remote control wielded by foreign forces that wanted to impose their religious and political agendas irrespective of Nepali values, conditions and sentiments. It is as clear as daylight that the Gordon knot needs to be untangled.

Nepalis have been taken for a ride for two decades. Many politicians used to point out that South Korea, whose economy was supposed to be more or less to that of Nepal’s in the 1950s, had made tremendous economic progress within 20 years. In the last two decades, these very leaders failed to drive us to a state matching that of an Indonesia, Bhutan or even the Maldives.
In 2005-6, they promised “loktantra” and cast away institutions and names that were part of Nepali tradition and culture. What have we today? Instability, confusion and chaos. Never in the last 60 years have Nepalis been subjected to such anarchy with the State not being able to do anything. All this when there is supposed to be no civil war or an armed rebellion.
In their existing frame, Nepali youth have nothing in store for them to raise the level of aspirations. Nepotism, parochialism and corruption are at their peak. No one disputes this.
As the intellectual caliber of Dipak Gyawali wrote for a magazine not long ago, "Nepal's problem lies in democrats not really being democrats, socialists (and communists) not really believing in socialism, and politicians being in politics not for public service but as unprincipled careerists out to make money."

Leaders bury themselves in trading abuses and making claims not even their own lackeys believe in. There is nothing to cheer Jhala Nath Khanal, perhaps the worst premier 50 years. He failed to announce that his cabinet formation wad complete during his entire honeymoon period of 100 days. Bombastic and overly ambitious, he showed how unprincipled he could be, to the extent that he could not even carry with him the majority of his own party.

History will condemn the CA’s undue extension. Duplicity and perfidy might carry the day now but not for ever. It was Sher Bahadur Deuba who dissolved a duly elected House of Representatives and yet Nepalis people were misled and made to suffer great hardships before the House was revived. The rest of the gory story is too fresh to recall in all its detail here.

Although the Maoists had not handed over their arms to the state, they were hastily allowed to name the number of their troops’ strength that was several times higher than the most liberal estimate. And the State has been paying for their expenses all the way till now. Girija Prasad Koirala, known for brute force than for brains, harbored a deep desire to become the country’s first president. In that he was served right and was given a snub from which he could never recover.

The outgoing House strangely ordered an incoming House that was yet to be elected to declare the country secular, federal and republic. In other words, the policy was: coerce and force your way through. Tens of thousands of bighas of land have been seized by the Maoists and not handed over to the lawful owners. Some of those whose land has been seized thus are senior Nepali Congress leaders. UML leaders lamented that their cadres and journalists were grievously attacked by Maoists and yet the latter are being treated as law-abiding, democrats of a revolutionary type.

With leaders like these, how are Nepalis to even hope that something positively refreshing is round the corner?
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