MORE MINISTERS BEING INSTALLED IN SECOND CABINET EXPANSION

MORE MINISTERS BEING INSTALLED LATER THURSDAY UPDATE

Kathmandu,15 Sept.: More ministers are being installed
Sharat Singh Bhandari, a Pahadi from MJFL,is being installed defence minister.
Bhandari is founding member of the party along with Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Bijaya Kumar Gachedhar.
They formed the party after defection from NC.
Mohottari has been Bhandari’s political base from the panchayar-erawhenhewas member of Rashtriya Pnachayat.
A section of the terai party objected to his swearing-in as defence minister in the first expansion.
The temporary opposition of Madeshis was fruitless but the move highlighted the communal divide in the party which is also pushing group integration in Nepal Army with the creation of an ethnic unit.
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OPINION

UNHOLY OR NOT,IT SURELY IS FULL OF POTHOLES

Kathmandu, 15 Sept.: Barely two weeks in office, is Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai already so firmly entrenched on the defensive side of the field? No one has the power to bring down his government, Bhattarai is said to retort every time someone of any consequence broaches the oddity of the alliance he sits atop.
Bhattarai’s defiance, to be sure, contains a stronger tinge of displeasure than determination. After all, no less a personage than Communications Minister Jaya Prakash Prasad Gupta of the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) insists that the government is already heading down the path to failure.
In the midst of this brouhaha, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Bhattarai’s staunchest ally – at least in public – goes ‘missing’ for almost 48 hours. Gupta, the most outspoken critic of the government from within, may be embittered by Bhattarai’s failure to grant him one of the deputy premierships. But let’s not forget that Gupta has become quite close to Dahal in recent weeks.
Critics of all colors are finding enough dirt to tar the ruling alliance. And the muck seems likely to stick the hardest on the man on the top. Most of the UDMF ministers bring a distinct reputation, for better or worse, to their latest jobs. The Maoist ministers, too, have become sort of known quantities. The cleanest slate belongs to Bhattarai. Unfortunately for him, it’s also the easiest to blemish.
The legislative numbers game apart, what make the motions of this alliance interesting is its interlocking antagonisms. If the Dahal-Bhattarai decision to hand over the keys to the Maoists’ arms containers has made Mohan Baidya livid, Gupta blames the Maoist squabbling for non-compliance with the four-point pact that sealed the coalition.
Baidya, however, sees the commitments as reflected on paper as an unmitigated threat to the nation. Specifically, he has disdain for the manner in which his party rivals agreed to establish a separate group for Madhesis in the national army while virtually surrendering away the right of wholesale entry of former Maoist soldiers into the state force. (You can quibble with the way Baidya seeks to establish equivalence between rebels and regular folks, but one point cannot be missed: the Maoist fighters have already proved their mettle).
Asked by a reporter for a leading daily whether the peculiarity of the ruling alliance would ultimately help him to revive his party’s nationalist plank, Baidya dodged. Yet his chuckles (which the interviewer made a point of inserting in the published piece) said it all. Anticipating irreparable rifts within the Maoists, some Nepali Congress and CPN-UML leaders have spoken of their readiness to prop up the Bhattarai government. At the same time, rival factions in each of the two principal opposition parties are becoming more candid in calling the Maoist-UDMF pact unholy.
The Gaur massacre brought out our north-south divide in gory vividness. A coalition that could have stood as a symbol of a much-needed healing process has brought back spasms of that pain – with the complicity of those who complain about it.
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DOUBLE-TONGUED, DOUBLE STANDARD

Kathmandu, 15 Sept.: A catalogue of events and rhetoric employed by Nepali political parties makes it crystal clear that they say one thing, think of doing another and eventually end up doing something entirely different, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
The former panchas, who for three decades lauded the “unique” characteristics of the partyless panchayat system that sprang from “the soil of Nepal” and met the “true aspirations” of the people, were “practical” enough to step into a new role as champions of “multiparty system” and had at least three premiers of the panchayat days also become premiers during the multiparty era reintroduced in 1990. Lokendra Bahadur Chand, Surya Bahadur Thapa and Dr. Tulsi Giri. These three had spoken fervently for the “able and active leadership” of the king.
Come 2006 and drastic political changes, Chand and Thapa went for “a federal, secular republic”. As a member of the constituent assembly, Chand cast his vote for the new dispensation. This is not perfidy; it is only inconsistency, as it was done openly. People, however, judge politicians by the sort of character they are. Thapa creates events by wining and dining groups of journalists and bluff his way to make them believe that he is still a somebody, thus managing to keep himself afloat in the media coverage. The Nepali masses simply do not care for these fossilized politicians who made the best of regimes that are condemned by today’s powers that be as vile.
Today, it is only Dr. Giri whose silence after the 2006 changes that also declared the country a republic loudly proclaims his belief in an effective role for monarchy. Chand and Thapa are in two different parties consisting exclusively of former panchas. They are neither here nor there. They have no distinct agenda, except for claims that they are “liberal democrats”, which is a big joke that attracts only scorn.
The result is that people show their respect for someone who is consistent and does not speak a language that is opportunistic. Kamal Thapa, another former pancha and home minister during the direct rule of King Gyanendra, is more respected by even his arch-opponents in the political circuit and partisan media for his rejection that the constituent assembly should be extended on and on even after its mandate expired long ago. He has also been pressing for a national referendum on constitutional monarchy, federal structure of the country and secularism in the basically Hindu state. On the issue of federalism, he is in the wavelength of the veteran communist leader Chitra Bahadur K.C. and, to some extent, Narayan Man Bjukchhe, both communist leaders since several decades.
A section of pseudo democrats and progressive scribes try to dismiss Thapa as “regressive” in outlook for asking a national referendum in a country that has basically had over three millennia of monarchy. Although there are attempts at doctoring religious and other breakdowns via the national census, more than 80 per cent of the Nepali population is Hindu. So who is afraid of popular verdict? Those with double standards and who carry foreign agendas.
The Nepali Congress claims to pursue non-violence but its history tells otherwise, right from the 1950s through the 1960s to the 1970s when Girija Prasad Koirala proudly claimed to be the mastermind behind the hijacking of RNAC aircraft at gun point and looting of Rs. 3 million in the early 1970s, a few years before B.P. Koirala returned home from self-exile with his “reconciliation” message. But his successors forgot the last call by their leader, the first elected premier in 1959-60. His younger brother, who in the 1990s and after became prime minister half a dozen times, proved so greedy for power and position that he abandoned his more illustrations brother’s policy that used to be chanted regularly by Nepali Congress rank and file.
The double-speak is that if NC advocates constitutional monarchy, it becomes “democratic” and if others do the same when NC is not doing so, they become “regressive” elements. That is why the oldest party boasting of having “led” three political movements is paying the price and will be heavier in future.
The democratic façade of the NC is dismantled. For example, in June 2001, Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of the Nepali-language daily “Kantipur”, Kailash Shirohiya, managing director of “Kantipur” and “The Kathmandu Post”, and Binod Raj Gyawali, director of these publications, were arrested when the present parliamentary party leader of the NC, Ram Chandra Poudel, was the home minister and Girija Prasad Koirala the premier. In an article carried in “Kantipur”, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai said that the deaths of King Birendra and nine other members of the royal family were the product of a political conspiracy engineered by Indian intelligence agencies. Bhattarai criticised the military for failing to protect the King and other royal family members and called on Nepalis to reject the new King Gyanendra as a “puppet of Indian expansionist forces.” In April 1999, Krishna Sen, editor of the “Janadesh”, and two other staff members were arrested after the newspaper interviewed Bhattarai. The authorities also confiscated over 20,000 copies of the newspaper. Sen was finally released in March 2001. The International Press Institute noted that the authorities used the Press and Publications Act to suppress the media.
As for the communists, they are no better. For decades, they used to accuse the NC of having “sold out” national interests through the Gandak and Koshi agreements signed during NC rule (Matrika Prasad Koirala’s and B.P.Koirala’s). They were even called Lendhup Dorje and Quisling and called for revising the “unequal” treaty of 1950 with India. These days, they seem to have withdrawn the charges.
During the CPN (UML)’s minority government led by Man Mohan Adhikary (1994-95), the issue of revision of the 1950 Treaty with India was raised but later, especially after Madhav Kumar Nepal’s daughter managed to secure Indian government scholarship for medicine at the prestigious All India Medical Institute, with but average academic marks, the issue has been buried so deeply that even his bitter rivals within the party like Bam Dev Gautam and Jhala Nath Khanal do not dare to raise it.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal is perhaps the most inconsistent leader today. Likewise, the “intellectual” Dr. Baburam Bhattarai was the one who wrote the Maoist list of 42 demands, two-thirds of which were against India. He has remained mum since 2005. He has chosen to forget about it these past six years.
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