MAOIST STANDING COMMITTEE MEET DELAYED

NO MAOIST STANDING COMMITTEE UNTIL THREE PM

Kathmandu, 23 June: A scheduled meeting of Maoist standing committee hasn’t started until three in the afternoon. Thursday
Meetings have been repeatedly put of because of deep ideological differences in the party with a section openly and publicly challenging what has been called a ‘personal’ decision of Chairman Prachanda to disarm and return PLA fighters deployed for security of top leaders to camps.
Thursday meeting was called to set an agenda for Friday’ central committee which can’t meet without preparatory consultations at the standing committee.
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PM KHANAL SAYS HE’LL RESIGN ANY MINUTE ANY SECOND

Kathmandu, 23 June: Prime Minister Jhakanath Khanal said Thursday in the capital he’ll resign ‘any minute, any second’ and asked other parties to create an environment for ‘national understanding’.
But he said he won’t resign creating a void
‘I want to move responsibly,” Khanal said.
The premier has been charged for not resigning immediately after a tripartite five-point agreement between parties to form a national government.
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OPINION


POLITCS IN AGE OF ELITISM

Kathmandu, 23 June: A conspicuous sense of elitism has been creeping into the body politic for a while, culminating in the recent utterances of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. No, the Maoist vice-chairman insists, he doesn’t want to become prime minister just to add one more portrait on that wall at Singha Darbar, Maila Baje writesinNepali Netbook.
But he doesn’t restrain his minions from claiming that India, China, the United States and the European Union would all like to have him in the top job. (Thank goodness, he is popular with Nepalis, too. Imagine what it would be like to be in his party if he were less so.)
Dr. Bhattarai concedes that the Maoists, too, have been consumed by the factionalism and rivalries that have been the bane of other Nepalese parties. But that is only because of the former rebels’ increasing contacts with those same other parties.
Granted, without Dr. Bhattarai’s specialness, the Maoists would not have been the success story among the international revolutionary left despite their lack of a complete victory. You can go beyond that. Many a person who has topped his or her batch’s SLC list has soon lost the rush to excellence.
If Dr. Bhattarai had been cowered by the heavy police batons in the vicinity of Nepal Electricity Corporation during his relatively obscure days in the early nineties, he probably wouldn’t have become a serious contender for the premiership. Today his persona is such that his wife can become a minister just because of whom she is married to. (Although one must acknowledge the suffering she endured while joining her husband in that reform camp in the months preceding the 12-Point Agreement.)
But you can’t help notice the ludicrous levels the I-know-better-than-you air has taken. Dr. Bhattarai recently claimed that Nepal could fall victim to overt foreign interference within the next decade if we are not collectively careful. Aren’t we already there yet?
At another place, he decried the King Mahendra-style of foreign policy of playing one neighbor off against the other as thoroughly unworkable. But didn’t Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi visit the airport transit lounge for talks with King Mahendra whenever he was en route to a third country?
And didn’t Mao Zedong pay the much-maligned monarch that rare return visit to his residence in Beijing? If it was a game King Mahendra was playing, then New Delhi and Beijing were willful participants, weren’t they?
A senior Chinese leader not too long ago described Dr. Bhattarai as being Nepal’s Deng Xiaoping. (The more diehard Chinese communists and their Nepali cousins would probably see him more in Khrushchev’s mold.) Maila Baje feels the honorific may have also resulted from the Chinese belief that they could help Dr. Bhattarai save himself from becoming someone else.
In the aftermath of the Narayanity Carnage, Dr. Bhattarai had labeled King Gyanendra as Nepal’s equivalent of Lhendup Dorje – the Sikkimese quisling – an assertion he virtually said he stood by a decade later. That Dr. Bhattarai today should be battling to ward off the same epithet from within his own party – not to speak from a section of the country – says less about the country’s political craziness than about the corrosiveness of the careless talk by people certifiably smarter than the rest of us.
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UNMASKED AT LAST

Kathmandu, 23 June: ATo ignorant people like this author, the real meaning of “loktantra” is as confusing as ever, even five years after politicians of many stripes launched a joint movement for it in 2005-6. A functioning democracy is another story, something highly desirable but so far a promise that has so crushingly eluded Nepalis, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
Lack of political integrity is what ails our political parties and their leaders. It is only with politicians’ moral integrity that their public credibility can be expected to rise. Just as the hung parliament created by the 1994 general elections gave an inkling of how politics could be used for horse trading, personal benefits and money power at its worst, the “loktantra” years since 2006 have made it loud and clear that power at any cost is what politicians are after.
A Nepali Congress of considerable clout told this author that a good section of his party did not want the Constituent Assembly’s tenure to be extended for a second time but “it happened, and its long-term consequences can be serious”. He thinks that for the first time the NC had slowly begun to win the confidence of the people by either making the Maoists comply with the peace process in all sincerity or insist on fresh elections to assess the public mood and secure a new popular mandate. “But we missed this golden opportunity to retrieve the public trust.”
At backroom talks, NC leaders like Sher Bahadur Deuba, Arjun Narsingh K.C. and Ram, Sharan Mahat do not believe that the new Constitution would be formulated within the next seven weeks. One of them said at a gathering, “To say that at least a draft of some kind should be made by the new extended date is trying to hoodwink people. First of all, talking of a ‘draft’ is itself insincere. Interpreting the spirit of Jana-andolan this way is totally wrong.”
A former minister and UML leader added, “We knew long ago that the Constitution would not be ready within the deadline stipulated by the Interim Constitution. But our leaders could not say so to the people. You know the crux of the problem, I also know the problem. But it is difficult to tell so to the people. They will misunderstand us.”
A study team from the US, in the course of its recent visit to Kathmandu, told some CA members that federalism “will not work in Nepal. You have a different situation.” The statement came from such a team hailing from a country that has the longest record of constitutional federalism without interruption for more than 225 years and is going strong.
Even sections of the British have been raising doubts over a federal structure in Nepal. But then there are people like Krishna Khanal, supposedly an “expert” on constitution-making and federalism. Just because the Western-funded CCD has hired him, and he publicly “dissociated” himself from Nepali Congress does not automatically give him the so-called “expertise”. Khanal wrote a pedestrian piece for an outlet known for its pro-NC bias, claiming that federal units should be structured on the basis of ethnicity.
At a time when even the Interim Constitution, once vaunted as “truly loktantrik”, has been subjected to amendments with casual frequency, those associated with its draft scurry for shelter to hide their embarrassment whenever they come within earshot of criticism made against its contents. The late Girija Prasad Koirala rued deeply during his last days that he relied on people like Laxman Aryal completely for which the nation was suffering. Therefore, what would a group of INGO-blessed “experts” know much about such serious issues except the fat salaries paid for a job done in keeping with the paymaster’s agenda?
The sort of agenda foreign agencies push for was tellingly underscored when they tried to put a stop to nationwide strike called for a group representing indigenous communities. DFID and others publicly warned that they would stop their funds to the organizers if the latter did not withdraw their planned program. For once there emerged a group that said enough was enough when it came to donors dictating terms at every twist and turn.
The strike was a big success, despite a few rallies that tried to persuade people not to respond to the strike-callers. The foreign agencies argued that strikes create hardships to people. It is indeed true that an enforced strike does create many problems, but then this has always been the mode of demonstrating protests in Nepal. The so-called civil society leaders, their political bosses and the parties they are affiliated with have a long history of resorting to such practices.
Most Nepalis have never been for enforced closures, but schools get closed down; campuses get closed down; and industries get closed down. Districtwise, regionwise and nationwide strikes are also regularly held. It is fear that has prevailed all along when shops and industries get closed down at the mention of strike to protest a “loktantrik” cause promoted any group. In fact, at times, “dharnas” are sponsored by INGOs that pay for “snacks and transport” to their chosen organizers.
When the Maoists called for an indefinite strike in 2009, the strikers’ transport expenses and meals were widely reported to have been paid for by funds funneled by some EU members.
The on-going faction-fighting in the once seemingly unassailable Maoists, the ever “champion” of democratic movement Nepali Congress, the “progressive” UML and the “king-makers” Tarai-based parties has begun to unmask the anomalies and hypocrisy that some groups within the Nepali political spectrum had been harboring in the name of “loktantra”.
Prachanda is no more than beyond criticism. His own senior party members attack him for “unreliability”, “lack of financial transparency in the organization” and “practicing one-man show”. Not only Dr. Baburam Bhattarai and Mohan Vaidya but also Ram Karki and Pampha Bhushal have shown their “revolutionary” selves at a time when people like Ram Bahadur Thapa are yet to find any footing as far as making public what their stand on the issues affecting the party are.
Who are worried? Not the NC, not the UML majority, not New Delhi, not Beijing, not Washington—no one, except perhaps Upendra Yadav’s group that has drastically shrunk in size and strength.
Let the principled and competent rise and shine.
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