VIOLENT PROTESTS AGAINST ARREST OF UML YOUTH LEADER SPREADS

FURTHER DETAILS OF PROHIBITORY ORDER DEFINACE


Kathmandu, 16 June: Activists of Youth Force- a youth wing of UML leading the government, defied prohibitory order in Biratnagar and came out of the streets protesting the arrest of Central Chairman of the body Mahesh Basnet Thursday morning.
Basnet was arrested in Itahari from a hotel amid clashes with UML youth activists.
Local administration extended the 10-hour hour prohibitory order for three hours until nine at night.
Ten vehicles were vandalized in the town and neighbouring town of Ithari in Sunsari district to protest the arrest.
Movement of vehicles on highways in the eastern region were obstructed.
Protests spread to other urban centers, including Kathmandu where two government vehicles were torched.
Police entered the Shanke Dev Campus in the capital and clashed with students.
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OPINION


HELP US SEE BETTER, DOCTOR

Kathmandu, 16 June: Having extended the:tenure of the constituent assembly for a second time, our political parties seemed to be moving in the right direction. But that does not seem to have impressed many within the fraternity, Maile Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
One skeptic is Nepali Congress central committee member Sashank Koirala. Speaking in Okhaldhunga last week, Dr. Koirala claimed that even a preliminary draft of the constitution would not be ready by the August 28 deadline. Then he added with a tinge of morbid resignation, “Nepalis even do not have the pen and a paper to draft their own charter.” In his estimation, our fluid political situation would continue.
Before you jump to accuse Dr. Koirala of the gleeful indifference that has characterized some in his increasingly fractious party, check what he said at another speech in Chitwan. “Political complexity will result in the country if the peace process does not get full shape within three months.”
Even if the constitution is not drafted in time, Dr. Koirala seemed to suggest, a modicum of progress in the peace process would be required to save the nation. Now, just what might that entail? (Who better than a trained ophthalmologist to see the writing on the wall? Just because President Bashar Assad in Syria seems to have lost some of that vision doesn’t mean all hope is lost in eternity.)
Dr. Koirala may or may not volunteer a solution in the days ahead. As for the complexity he predicted, we might have already reached that point. Mohan Baidya has inherited from Dr. Baburam Bhattarai the dissenter-in-chief title within the Maoists. A Maoist minister has been able to muster over 150 lawyers on his side in a case brought by human rights activists. Youths allied with the CPN-UML have reached deep into their legacy radicalism to go after the fourth estate – life and limb.
Madhesi parties outside of power have been consulting with representatives of the ancient regime we were led to believe had discriminated against them for nearly three centuries. Christian and gay groups are concerned that the freedoms that seemed to emanate from Nepal’s once heady march into a nebulous newness are under threat from the criminal statutes. And lest we be accused of distraction from real bread-and-butter issues, female actors are complaining their male counterparts are being paid much more.
Much as he admires Dr. Koirala’s candor, Maila Baje has a quibble with the man. Shortly after being elected to the constituent assembly, Dr. Koirala, in a conversation with his constituents in Nawalparasi, claimed that the interim constitution was based largely on a document that had arrived from the Indian capital. But he didn’t stop there. He said he had reliable information from political friends in New Delhi that Maoist leaders, including Dr. Bhattarai, were involved in preparing a tentative draft of the new constitution in New Delhi.
Of course, that assertion was viewed within the context of growing Indian interference in the immediate aftermath of the 12-point agreement. Has Nepal ventured too far since those days for that draft to be foisted on the country as a consensus document? If so, how then is Dr. Bhattarai’s stock as a consensus prime minister soaring at this precise moment?
C’mon, Doctor, we’re seeing so many things in our collective peripheral vision that are so hard to explain.
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DARE TO BECOME DEMOCRATS IN PRACTICE

Kathmandu, 16 June: Even as the nation continues to be engulfed in utter confusion and uncertainty for the sixth consecutive year, political groups are yet to show deference to the people and rise above the petty politics and personal prejudices they have harbored to the chagrin of all Nepalis. Politicians, even if incompetent, should not lack in honesty, writes Trikal Vastavik in People’s review.
President Ram Baran Yadav in March had begun to stress that the new Constitution should be formulated within the June 28 deadline. “People will be disappointed if the new Constitution is not completed by Jeshtha 14 [June 28].” One suspects that he had already sensed that no such document would be completed within the constitutionally stipulated deadline.
Quite a few prominent members of the Constituent Assembly had told this author privately that the CA would not be able to complete its assigned task even after the extended period of one year. As it turned out, they proved right. Bafflingly, these prominent lawmakers never took the general public into confidence. They chose to remain silent publicly and accept whatever direction their leaders gave them. They had their own axes to grind one guesses in the sense that they did not wish to rub their political bosses the wrong way by speaking candidly in public.
What has the CA been doing all these years? For the CA members and their parties, power assertion was the priority from No. 1 to No.9, with the tenth slot allocated for the making of the new Constitution. After the unflattering drama that saw the CA sitting through the June 28 midnight hours stretching to the wee hours of the next day, an extension was given for three months, with the provision that at least a draft of the new Constitution be ready by then.
Public reactions were, and are, that the CA members are keen to serve their own interests by prolonging their CA membership for as long as they can and extract the related benefits without having to face voters.
The catalogue of misdeeds in which quite a few CA members were involved has been chronicled by some media and broadcast channels. No strong call has been made from any “prominent” quarter for a thorough investigation into scandals such as misuse of diplomatic passport, misdemeanor and swindling. A number of newspapers took the last day to demand extension of the CA tenure, which was a useless call made at the dying hours of the stipulated deadline. The media exhortation had nothing to do with the actual extension eventually took place.
International political analysts, assessing societies where politicians take the wrong track, say that funds and posts are allocated on the basis of political favoritism, instead of relying on competition and competence. A prominent scholars says that under such circumstances, what happens is “that 'pork-barrel' politics—the process which politicians distribute money to major government projects not based on important or being a high priority but because they bring money to the business and supporters in a politician's home district— [gets] spread,” putting pressure on concerned sectors to court favor with influential politicians.

The manner in which Nepal’s government ministries and agencies have been spending this poverty-stricken country’s scarce resources and taxpayers’ money makes a mockery of what that great economist John Maynard Keynes said after WW II, "We are a poor nation, and we must learn to live accordingly."
The seven-party alliance that claimed to have exclusively authored and executed the 2005-6 movement is a fractured stump today. In the promises they so lavishly made, the alliance members quickly found that they had a hard hoe to row. Likewise, the tens of thousands of people that had supported the 2005-6 movement have got disappointed and begun referring to the pages of history of their own country and also those of others’. Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany using constitutional means; so did Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. They did not serve the people but were guided by their own personal whims.
Ambitious, vain and self-centered leaders have the making of a dictator. They are to be on the watch list. They rely on the spoils of victory, spoils of power and spoils of expediency. Change in government spoils the dream of those dreaming of continuation in privileged positions.
Our politicians should note that the strengths of the mind more than anything else works for the consolidation of democratic gains. Lacking this, the society they pledge to serve suffers. This is what has affected the Nepali society so relentlessly.
Time has busy wings. In a repeat of the chaotic years of the 1951-1960 decade, the last five years have planted confusion upon confusion, hardships over hardships. There have been at least four governments in five years with a new one to be tossed up any time soon. If this has been the recent case, we can easily imagine how political parties functioned in the 1950s.
The Maoist party, the Nepali Congress and the UML, apart from other fringe groups, have tried to shield themselves from public criticism against their operations, regularly recall that they had wanted a Constituent Assembly to formulate the new Constitution for the country and blame the monarchy for having scuttled their plans.
If some people had given these parties the benefit of doubt as to their commitment and competence to what they had wanted, their antics in the recent years can help one glean as to what might have been the situation on the question of CA being elected to formulate a Constitution back in the 1950s when infrastructure was extremely poor, roads and transport systems pathetic and literacy less than 5 per cent.
On May 29, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal proposed and the rest accepted. At times, he sheds tears before an audience when recalling certain incidents or building scenarios. Whether such incidents changed the mood of the general public in the parched homes of Kathmandu Valley and other parts of the country is yet to be made a subject of research. Machiavelli said that the art of governing is in knowing how to extract the honey without disturbing the bees.
Pro-monarchists are dubbed downright dangerous, dubious and hence demons. This coming from parties that claim to be working for maximum democratic practices but rejecting the principle that “assent to dissent is democracy and pluralism”. (The writer can be reached at: trikalvastavik@yahoo.com