SUSHIL KOIRALA BUSY WITH POLITICAL PARLEYS IN NEW DELHI

CHINESE AMBASSADOR, SPEAKER DIALOGUE

Kathmandu, 14 July: New Chinese Ambassador Yang Houlan held discussions with Speaker Subash Nemwag Thursday.
Ambassador assured Nenwang of continued Chinese assistance to Nepal.
The meeting was described as a courtesy call.
Yang is a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
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SUSHIL KOIRALA BUSY WITH POLITICAL PARLEYS IN NEW DELHI

Kathmandu, 14 July: NC President Sushil Koirala is busy with political parleys after arriving in New Delhi en route home from USA where he underwent an annual medical check-up.
The chief of the main opposition held separate discussions Wednesday with main opposition President Nitin Godkarni and Indian National Congress general Secretary Janardah Dwivedi.
He also held discussions with leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley and Chairman of Nepal democratic Solidarity Committee DP Tripathi.
Koirala also held discussions with JD(U) Chair Sharad Yadav and socialist leaders Vijaya Pratap and Sudhindra Bhadauriya.
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OPINION

WHY DEUBA THROWS CAUTION TO THE STARS

Kathmandu, 14 July: Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba says he sees no reason why he cannot be the next prime minister. For a man who allegedly failed to defend democracy twice during two previous terms as prime minister, Maila Baje would have expected Deuba to be more circumspect in his public comments regardless of the comfort level,, Maila Baje wrotes in Nepali Netbook. .
Yet things have turned around too fast for someone so addicted to the job to stay still. The Nepali Congress is no longer in the grip of the people who had pushed the alliance with the Maoists, insisting they could make it work. The external quarters that nodded with them are now left perusing their palms in remorse.
With Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Sujata Koirala struggling to wash off any stains from the Sudan scam, all Deuba needed was to push aside Ram Chandra Poudel. (Yes, the same man who once upon a time egged him on to split the party, promising to accept the chairmanship before coming out in a full embrace of Girija Prasad Koirala.)
During those interminable rounds of legislative voting to find a successor to caretaker premier Madhav Kumar Nepal, Poudel may have considered himself the only thing standing between democracy and a full Maoist takeover. For Deuba, Poudel’s endurance was an illustration of his aching for power without purpose – or was at least a perception that could be advanced some way.
It turns out that Sushil Koirala, someone who never has had to take decisions and live with them, entered into a secret deal with Deuba as a last-ditch attempt to reorganize the post-Girija party. If Deuba is today intent on cashing the check, it is because circumstances have turned favorable in more directions than he can behold. (As that Turkish psychic said a couple of years ago about Deuba, the stars can get better only in a rare few other Nepali polls.)
Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal may relish the prospect of Deuba’s return to center stage at a time when his rival Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is using his ostensible international acceptability to become prime minister. Even if he would want to forget the precise circumstances, Dahal probably remembers that Deuba remains the only Nepalese prime minister to have a full Oval Office meeting with the U.S. president.
Yet the prospect of a Deuba candidacy has engendered a flicker of hope within the Maoist chairman. Eyeing their opportunity, Poudel and key CPN-UML leaders have asked Dahal to reenter the race for the simple reason that he heads the largest party in the legislature, without whose leadership the peace process cannot progress. Whether this is a belated recognition of reality or a shrewd move to shift responsibility to the Maoists for the inevitable failure to draw up the new constitution within the current extension period, it has certainly left Dahal searching deep within.
New Delhi is likely to seek a full-fledged public gesture from Dahal – something the wily Maoist cannot wiggle out of easily – before granting any imprimatur on his candidacy. If Dahal does a K.I. Singh anytime soon, the surprise will lay less in his return to the premiership than in the swiftness of his consolidation of authority inside the party. (Faster in case the current crisis is all a ruse). By temperament and trait, Dahal is in a better position to deal with the aftermath should there occur a full and formal affirmation of the failure of the latest experimentation in reinventing a nation. If Dahal were to deem the price too high for his personal peace and security, then Deuba may be the one to watch for. Or maybe Deuba, who was prime minister when Dahal first marched out leading that ragtag band of marauders, knows something crucial the rest of us don’t.
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GOOD GOVERNANCE NOT A REALITY

Kathmandu, 14 July: Good governance in Nepal has become something far from a working reality. Civil servants are openly organized into union affiliated with political parties. Government corporation employees, journalists, artistes, “intellectuals”, school and university teachers, civil society leaders, human rights activists and indeed journalists are also functioning under similar lines, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
Law has also proved to be only for the weak and the deprived, especially those without any political affiliation. Nepal is a country where every government since the restoration of multiparty political system has issued State reprieve to individuals serving long sentences in jail. Money is considered to play a big role in such pardons. At times, political support to a government in exchange for the release of certain jail-serving individuals also works.
The last local elections, not counting the one conducted during the royal rule when the major parties had intimidated voters to abstain, were held a decade years ago. Three to four political parties monopolize the distribution of local resources channeled through the nearly 6,000 local units where the nominees of the major parties have their writ imposed. Reports are that 20-25 percent of the local development budget is creamed off first before deciding on which projects should be undertaken.
The “funds” thus collected are sent as “contributions” to the party headquarters but in the pipeline gets leaked and part of the sum goes into the pockets of the local leaders. Even when selecting development projects, the priority is for those that benefit the local leaders and their relatives. “This is how parties are being run,” a senior leader of a major political party told this author. On this issue, most journalists also seem to agree to this conclusion without any hesitation.
Local dons, under protection from political leaders, gang up to prevent competitors from submitting sealed tender proposals. This began especially after the advent of “lokatantra”. At first, mostly the revolutionaries monopolized such opportunities. Later, other parties have also begun to learn the ropes.
Recruitment exams at various public institutions are a farce. Only a very few make it on their own merits; the rest are the results of patronage and nepotism. Some people tried to make a big fuss when a score or so women were recruited as officers at one stroke at the Minister of Foreign Affairs more than a year ago. Subsequently, there were criticisms that the newly recruited officers happened to belong to a particular class and group, raising more questions than answers.
In government corporations, people are hired on contract basis. The new recruits obtain membership of one employees’ union or the other. In course of time, they manage to “pass” the regular service exams and become “permanent” staff.
One just have to go through the personal files of the individual employees and things will be crystal clear regarding the murky business that has been going on with such impunity in a mockery of the lofty democratic ideals that politicians ramble about in a demon-quoting-the scriptures fashion. The files will show 75 per cent of the “permanent” staff in government organizations having a history of “temporary” or “contractual” service at the same institution before smoothly sailing into the “permanent” status.
In government offices and public corporations, procurement often becomes a racket. Commissions paid under the table and inflated prices are nothing new. “Quotation” respondents, with a minimum of “three” quotations are usually submitted by a single company that routinely has “pocket” companies (actually bogus ones for all practical purposes) to meet the criteria and is awarded the business.
A government ministry this year called for a tender and a company won the bid. But the go-ahead was not given for weeks because the crucial people at the ministry wanted a “higher” percentage of commission than the company boss was initially prepared to offer. The tender winner disclosed it to this author at a gathering participated mostly by senior police officers. What happened after that, this author has no idea, although his guess is that the businessman must have obliged the commission sharks a few percentage points more.
The Tribhuvan University, the Higher Education Service Board and the SLC Exams Board management bosses come under a lot of pressure from different quarters to assign particular individuals as supervisors for inspection work at the exams canters in different districts and regions. Rumor is that “one such trip can fetch a six-figure bonus”.
There used to be quite a big racket in naming “SLC Board Toppers” when the top ten examinees’ names used to be published. It came to be known that someone who had at first obtained less than 40 marks in a particular subject was later given more than 95 marks to enable him to be declared “Board First.” Public outcry over the list of toppers became too much for the concerned people not to institute an investigation commission.
The mushrooming of NGOs, many of whose office-bearers have made piles of money as borne by their newly acquired affluence and lifestyles not through any business transactions but through NGO activism, are also a suspect. The Social Welfare Council should be doing the monitoring but complaints are that some of its officials are after their “share” before issuing renewals to NGOs.
An agency like the Commission for Investigating Abuse of Authority CIAA) would normally be expected to promptly probe scandals but the corruption-checking body itself is embroiled into controversy. Its Secretary Bhagwati Kafle had ignored four orders for a special court's request for specific files. The miffed court then issued a fifth one with stern tone. The case involved discrepancy in a foreign trip made by 12 civil servants of Remote Area Development Committee.

Is it, therefore, no surprise that Maoist leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, who looks after the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works, said, “There is no mechanism to check whether a work has been done or not. The nation as a whole has not been able to move according to any proper system.” This came from a man who was supposed to have “duly perused” and approved -- hold your breath -- 20,000 petitions in less than three months!
Unless political leaders and their minions put their acts together for improved governance where fair deal is a commitment in practice, “loktantra” is destined to a mega collapse. (The writer can be reached at: trikalvastavik@yahoo.com
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