BIG THREE LEADERS DISCUSS PEACE PROCESS, CONSTITUTION DRAFTING
Kathmandu, 5 Aug.: Leaders of the Big Three Friday discussed completing the peace process and constitution drafting amid threat Thursday from Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal he’ll resign in nine days if two tasks aren’t fulfilled.
Khanal , who is also UML chairman, Thursday presented a solution package to two other sign in nine day of the two tasks aren’t completed.
Besides Khanal, General Secretary is representing UML at Friday’s talks’ Chairman Prachanda is being assisted by Barsha Man Pun.
Parliamentary Party Leader Ram Chandra Paudel of NC is assisted by DR. Raam Sharan Mahat and Dr. Minendra Rijal.
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GOVT. GAFFE; MISING OFFICIAL TRANSFERRED
Kathmandu, 5 Aug.: Nepal’s bureaucracy has earned enough notoriety for its red tape, but its decisions at times are so irrational that it invites all and sundry to pick holes in them, Shivaraj Bhatta reports in The Himalayan Times from Dhanghadi.
In a decision that is far from logical, it has transferred one of the government employees who has been missing for more than last six months. Interestingly, the missing official belongs to Public Service Commission, the government watchdog of country’s civil service. PSC’s regional director in Dipayal Nawaraj Choulagain went missing on November 5 from the office premises and his whereabouts is still unknown. But PSC with the permission from the Ministry of General Administration has transferred him to its Janakpur-based zonal office, reminding the follies of entire civil service. It has been found that Choulagain was transferred in April, five months after he went missing.
PSC’s incumbent regional director here in Dipayal Devi Prasad Bagale admitted that missing Choulagain was transferred. As a matter of fact, Bagale’s deputation in Dipayal was confirmed in April only after Choulagain was transferred. “I was first deputed here for three months, but later the head office transferred missing Choulagain to Janakpur and confirmed my transfer here,” said Bagale, who refused to give details why a missing person was transferred. “I’m not authorised to speak more than this,” said Bagale. “You can ask the concerned authorities in the head office.”
Choulagain’s wife Bimala, who has been living in Kalopul of Kathmandu, however, said she was unaware of her missing husband’s transfer but added that it was injustice to her and her family. “The government must clarify its act.” Bimala, who has been pressing the government for long to find her missing husband’s whereabouts, accused the state of being insincere and unkind to its employees.
Choulagain’s brother Gobinda, who has visited the far-western region several times in search of his brother, also said he was ignorant about the transfer. “This is height of insincerity on the part of the government; it does not have any idea where its employees are and what is happening to them,” said Gobinda.
Despite a widespread search campaign carried out across the far-western region and the country by three different government teams, no one has a clue to Choulagain’s whereabouts. But his official address now is Janakpur-based PSC office, courtesy the government!
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LONDON-BASED FOREIGN SUPPLIER MISSES DEADLINE TO RESPOND TO CIAA CHARGE IN SUDAN SCAM
Kathmandu, 5 Aug.: The Special Court today [Thirsday] decided not to wait further for the London-based Assured Risk Limited and its managing director Michael Rider against whom the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has filed a case, accusing them of involvement in the Darfur scam involving the purchase and supply of sub-standard Armoured Personnel Carriers to Nepali security personnel deployed in Darfur in a UN peacekeeping mission, The Himalayan Times reports.
Stating that ARL and its managing director Rider had responded to a July 15 email to appear in the court by July 17 in connection with the charges against the two, a three-member bench of Judges Gauri Bahadur Karki, Om Prakash Mishra and Kedar Prasad Chalise decided not to wait for the two.
“We will neither wait for their response nor publish a notice summoning them as they responded to the court’s email on the same day and demanded a full text of the chargesheet,” Dhir Bahadur Chand, registrar, Special Court, said.
According to Chand, Section 10 (3) of the Special Court Act-2002 has it that the court can summon any foreigner facing charges in court through email. “After receiving the notice, every defendant must attend the court within 30 days. If anyone fails to come to the court, we will not wait for them,” Chand added.
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OPINION
UNCIVIL THOUGHTS UNINTENTIONAL OUTCOMES
Kathmandu, 5 Aug.: Our squabbling political class has had its hands full protecting itself from the people’s indignation. Now a leading Indian minister has the temerity to accuse them of imperiling the security of his country – well sort of.
Speaking to editors of some Nepali newspapers and magazines in New Delhi last week, Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the lack of a stable elected government in Nepal has increased the security vulnerability of India.
Bewailing that the governments in Nepal have been of caretaker nature for long time, Chidambaram said a strong and stable administration that cannot focus on day-to-day tasks creates a lot of collateral damage. In the minister’s estimation, it allows Pakistani extremists to use Nepal as a transit point, enables the flow of fake Indian currency notes and perpetuates weak security mechanisms at the Tribhuvan International Airport, Maila Baje writes in Nepli Netbook. .
As for a growing concern for his government, Chidambaram suggested he had no information of Chinese involvement in anti-Indian activities in Nepal. (Leave that to the flourishing industry in his midst peddling the line that Beijing is fanning India’s Maoist insurgency through their Nepali cousins.)
Lest Nepalis rise up against Chidambaram’s insinuations, Indian ambassador-designate Jayant Prasad Srivastav stepped in to proffer his governing philosophy. India never intended to interfere in Nepal’s political matters, suggested the man who is expected to begin mending the fences his predecessor, Rakesh Sood, breached. His implication was that if anything did happen to hurt Nepali sentiments, it was all unintentional.
Men like Maoist leader Netra Bikram Chand ‘Biplav’ are simply not impressed. India is plotting to derail the current left government, dissolve the Constituent Assembly and install a rightist government in Nepal by shunning the Maoists, he believes.
India has played the good cop-bad cop routine with great élan. By enduring an acceptable level of criticism from an assortment of Nepali constituencies, New Delhi has been able to reap far greater benefits. Of late, the cost-benefit analysis has skewed the other way. Accordingly, the Indians have been turning up the heat on those who were most energetic in promoting the 2006 realignment – within and outside – on the plea that it would work to New Delhi’s advantage.
Our political class remains too worn out to betray any further signs of discomfort. Their abettors in the garb of civil society are the ones that are cracking up inside. Some do not want Pushpa Kamal Dahal to cede control of the party in any way. (This comes from the same direction that described former king Gyanendra’s decision to sack prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in October 2002 as constitutional but his appointment of Lokendra Bahadur Chand a few days later as illegitimate.)
Others are doing their best to persuade the Chinese that the Maoists and the monarchists are both Indian minions. (This, again, from quarters that were the first to count Nepalis fortunate to have had Prince Gyanendra Shah’s safe pair of hands intact after the palace carnage before they mocked him as Asia’s most humiliated man. This same constituency lauded the Maoists for having raised arms in defense of the people, unlike the king’s plundering and pillaging soldiers.)
Imagine the pain of these hitherto unaccountable men and women at not being able to vent their sentiments against their handlers. Special consideration for tax arrears have helped to muffle the more affluent, free medical treatment has helped to frighten the infirm of mind and soul, and old-fashioned financial prodding has enticed the worldly wise. For the rest, outright intimidation has worked well. Not a bad record for unintentional outcomes.
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THIS HAPPENS ONLY IN NEPAL
Kathmandu, 5 Aug.: It has been more than a year now since some educationists called for declaring schools a zone of peace, free from the frequent wildcat strikes resorted to by political parties and their sister organizations in Nepal. The call was doomed to fail. And it has, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
It has been a fashion to call particular sectors free from strikes. In response to a call made by the tourism sector last year, all major political party leaders publicly pledged to abide by the request in deference to the fact that 2011 was earmarked for celebration as the Year of Tourism.
Those who indulged in illusion believed in the loud pledges. Others, recalling the pattern formed by the ritual rhetoric these leaders previously made and shamelessly breached the same, dismissed the whole show as hogwash. Some people simply cannot resist being hopeful. “You have to be positive,” is the response when promises are broken and the hopeful nearing the point of deep disappointment.
Several businessmen are members of the Constituent Assembly, paving their way to the august body through the nominations by political parties that have been the recipient of munificence of these men with money. These prominent captains of trade and industry have not been able to persuade the sources of their nominations to refrain from organizing or instigating closures of industries, transport, roads and so on whenever the latter considered it their “political duty to serve people’s interests”. Perhaps they never made any effort, which would be ironic in view of their proximity to party leaders.
In other words, the whole scene is complex, aggravated at times by puzzling silences and equally puzzling hemming and hawing spun by one quarter or the other. The education sector unfortunately is not different. Schools are frequently affected by closures called by political groups. They are the first to be affected. Higher education is a hotbed of politics.
Employees are unionized. Teachers are unionized. Students are unionized. Elections are contested on party lines. Issues are raised, defended and compromised or rejected on party lines. But then the worst case scenario is in Nepal as far as civil servants are concerned. Senior officers are unionized, and on party lines.
Had the unions functioned as professional organizations, there would be no problem. In fact, such development would be helpful for maintaining and promoting the genuine cause of interests and welfare of their members. In a travesty of discipline, Singha Durbar, the central secretariat of the Nepal government, became the scene of civil servants demonstrating in the vaunted premises. This does not happen anywhere else in South Asia, not even in Bangladesh which competes with Nepal for the number of strikes political parties sponsor.
When the politicization has affected to such scale, “pen-down” strikes and other forms of protests that reek of politics laugh at the face of the common citizen of one of the world’s most poverty stricken nations riding the rhetoric of loktantric federal, republic of a secular make.
The Nepal Journalists’ Federation, which we simple folks had been calling it the “Fourth Estate” on par with the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches of the Government, attracted public attention a few months ago when the body’s general elections were held. Most candidates contested on party lines.
Trade unions operate like party activists, raising and sustaining an issue on the basis of who wields power. During strikes and other forms of protests, trade union members endorse the same along their party line.
Back to the academic circuit: Not long ago the Vice-Chancellor Madhav Sharma (now retired) and rector (Dr. Surya Lal Amatya) of the Tribhuvan University were attacked by students who smeared the faces of the two officials with soot. University teachers were divided over the incident on party lines.
The vice-chancellors of Tribhuvan University, Pokhara University and Purbanchal University together with quite a few others could not be appointed for months this year because, as the minister of education publicly admitted, of failure to reach an agreement over the spoils.
There were demonstrations by university employees recently against TU’s Service Commission. They complained of invitees to the panel of interviewers were from “only one” political group for interviewing candidates who had passed their written tests and were short-listed for the interview.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) was locked out for more than two months because some of the academics belonging to certain political parties did not get their “share” in its appointments.
That is how low things have sunk. Who is to cane whom to bring about academic discipline and reign of meritocracy? The chaos is too deep and wide for prospects of correction in the near future.
Former vice-chancellors, like former senior bureaucrats in the civil service sector, express dismay over the spoils system practiced by the mainstream parties, forgetting that they, too, were recipients of similar political patronage. Many openly flaunted their association with political parties. In their reactions, the former university officials are trying to find a dry spot in a river.
At least in the academic sector, things were better prior to 1990. B.C. Malla headed of the Department of Political Science, notwithstanding his sympathisies with the then banned Nepali Congress. Lok Raj Baral was not prevented from becoming a professor at the Political Science Department. Mangal Siddhi Manandhar, later UML parliamentarian, was given due respect and does not seem to have any complaints as such. These are but stray examples.
Those who took up senior posts in the university administrations in the post-1990 period did not have to face the sort of political persecution that the academic sector witnessed in the last 20 years. One of the stone-throwing teachers who wanted a UML-appointed vice-chancellor of TU to step down in 1995 is supposed to be a human rights champion of the Nepali Congress mould.
Undoubtedly, things were not of the ideal kind during the panchayat but they now prove to have been better than what the later decades, particularly the last five years, dished out.
School teachers are fiercely locked in political ideologies. They seem not keen in persuading their leaders to commit themselves to respecting schools as a zone of peace so that strikes did not affect these institutions of the future pillars of the nation.
The solution rests with political parties. If they have the will to let the education sector run without being political pawns in the game of politics, the zone of peace concept can translate into practice. Anything else is empty talk.
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