PRAKASH MAN SINGH RULES OUT CHANGE IN PARLIAMENTARY PARTY LEADERSHIP

NC WON’T JOIN A MAOIST-LED GOVT.; PRAKASH MAN SINGH

Kathmandu, 3 Aug.: NC General Secretary Prakash Man Singh said Wednesday the main opposition party won’t accept a Maoist-led government and join it until integration and management of former rebel soldiers.
He said this is Biratnagar Wednesday.
Singh asked Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal to resign for reshuffling the six-month-old government by including nine new Maoist ministers and one from MJFN to obstruct a five-point agreement implementation.
He ruled out a change in NC parliamentary party leadership replacing Ram Chandra Paudel with Sher Bahadur Deuba amid reports President Sushil Koirala was positive to the idea.
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STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN DEFENCE MINISTRY

Kathmandu, 3 Aug.: In a major restructuring initiative, the government has started the process of overhauling the Defence Ministry to streamline the line of communication and exercise greater civilian overseeing of Nepal Army (NA), The Kathmandu Post reports.
The restructuring plan endorsed by Cabinet last month aims to replace the two-decade organizational set up of the defence ministry introduced as per the report of the Administration Reform Commission 1992. The Defence Ministry, with only 38 civilian staff, is lampooned by critics as a “post office” responsible for merely implementing decisions made by Army Headquarters.
The restructuring action plan envisages an increase in the existing human resource at the Defence Ministry by more than 270 percent and establishment of four divisions and 11 specialised sections to take a call on policy issues related to the Army. Altogether 98 civilian staff will now be working in different structures under the ministry of defence.
A new division will be established in the Defence Ministry to promote human rights in Nepal Army and listen to complaints against military personnel. Separate sections led by under secretaries of the Nepal government will be established to regulate procurement of military hardware and logistics, oversee peacekeeping operations and maintain an up-to-date database of military personnel, among others.
Other new features include sections responsible for analysing information, coordination of security agencies as well as disaster management and sections responsible for policy, research and welfare operations of the Army. “The restructuring of Nepal Army was required for strengthening civil administration and increasing coordination between the civilian authority and the military,” said Defence Secretary Nabin Kumar Ghimire. “The new administrative set up upholds the concept of democratisation of Nepal Army and expands the ministry's role in human rights, international relations and peacekeeping operations.”
The ongoing set up of the Defence Ministry was proposed ahead of the decade long Maoist insurgency when the size of the Army was 52,000. Its strength was increased to 93,000 during the conflict when the military secretariat inside the royal palace influenced key policy decisions related to the then Royal Nepal Army.
Defence Ministry officials argue that the revision of the organisational set up will help address work pressures resulting from the increase in number of military personnel during the Maoist insurgency.
The Defence Ministry had carried out organisation and management survey before formulating its administrative reshuffling plan. The assessment, according to the action plan, concluded that constraints of human resource in the ministry in proportion to the increase in size of Nepal Army had increased workload at the ministry.
The limitation of manpower, according to the study, affected attempts to increase expertise by providing training to defence officials. The ministry, according to the report, was forced to implement the recommendations made by Army Headquarters related to transfer, promotions and tenure extension without overseeing due to the absence of military personnel's data base. “The ministry was nothing but a rubber stamp in the absence of data base related to human resource in the Army,” states the report.
The attempt to promote human rights in Nepal Army has also been limited, due to the absence of a monitoring body to supervise the conducts of soldiers. Nominal policy decisions have been made so far for training and indoctrinating soldiers and officers as per international human rights conventions signed by Nepal, adds the report.
Other problems identified during the survey include absence of specialised unit and policy to look after procurement of logistics required for NA, lack of network system to utilise information grid maintained by NA and the absence of a competent mechanism to provide concrete suggestions related to technical issues overseen by NA.
The Defence Ministry was unable to formulate a national defence policy, plan for the mobilisation of NA, assess the physical, humanitarian and economic aspects of NA and review existing practices of peacekeeping, transfers and promotions effectively in the absence of adequate manpower, adds the report.
The plan forwarded last year for approval to the Ministry of General Administration proposed the establishment of a liaison office with 20 soldiers led by a brigadier general inside the Defence Ministry. The Cabinet nixed incorporation of military concept arguing that it could overshadow the role of the bureaucracy.
“We feared that the Army general at the liaison office could bypass the defence secretary by developing close ties with the defence minister,” said a Cabinet source explaining the reason for nixing the military component.
Western governments including the US and the UK, whose defence ministries incorporate both civil and military personnel, have been expressing their willingness to support the restructuring of Nepal's Ministry of Defence.
Meanwhile, a former Neal Army general said that the decision to restructure the Defence Ministry was “premature.” “Restructuring of the Defence Ministry has no relevance without deciding on the restructuring, rightsizing, roles and responsibilities of Nepal Army,” said retired Gen. Gopal Singh Bohara, who is also a lawmaker from the ruling CPN-UML party.
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