WRIT REGISTERED SEEKING RELEASE OF 23 ARRESTED TIBETANS

WRIT REGISTERED DEMANDING RELEASE OF 23 ARRESTED TIBETANS

Kathmandu, 22 Sept.: A writ registered was registered at supreme court Wednesday demanding release of 23 arrested Tibetans for illegal entry.
The writ was registered by lawyer Tndra Prasad Aryal.
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OPINION

THE RELEVENCE OF BEING DEUBA

Kathmandu, 22 Sept.: They took four years to hand over the keys of the containers with their weapons; how long will, they take to hand over the actual weapons,” Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba mused the other day, Maila Baje writes.in Nepali Netbook
Some took that as an intelligent inquiry from a former prime minister widely dismissed as dreary.
The three-time premier has had much calumny heaped on him primarily because of his purported lack of acumen. Shortly after he took the oath for the first time in 1995, someone happened to mention casually that he was Nepal’s first western-trained head of government. The howls of derision erupted all at once.
Sure, Deuba had a brief stint at the London School of Economics, once critic conceded, but he spent most of his time out of academic circles. Others recounted the number of unskilled and tedious jobs he had held in and around the British capital all the while presuming to be a student. Still others claimed that the Nepali Congress had merely exiled him away to prevent him from joining the Panchayat system and that London – with or without the School of Economics – simply happened to be the first opportunity available.
Deuba managed to keep his coalition afloat through a variety of underhand means. Today, he can count some of the key beneficiaries of his patronage among those who continue rail the loudest against the vileness of his politics. Yet it has become easy to forget that his government was brought down through the foulest of means. Deuba was egged on by his party leader Girija Prasad Koirala to hold a vote of confidence he was not constitutionally obliged to seek, only to have Koirala prevent two ruling party MPs from voting, thereby depriving him of the crucial votes.
Deuba’s second stint, as the head of a majority government, proved more tumultuous. He held peace talks with the Maoists and, once they failed, mobilized the military against the rebels. He met the sitting U.S. president in the Oval Office and became the first Nepalese head of government to organize a regional summit. Besieged, he split the party and pressed ahead with his plan to hold elections, all the while reviled as a tool of the palace. The fact that he ultimately fell victim to the palace did little to rehabilitate his image. He tried to shame the leaders who pushed him to postpone the elections and resist resigning, but it proved futile.
Shunned by the fraternity, he became a palace-appointed prime minister of a multiparty coalition. At this point, he began losing some of his steadfast supporters. But Deuba knew they were with him primarily because they either opposed or had been shunned by Koirala. Again, Deuba sought elections above everything else, while his deputy prime minister, Bharat Mohan Adhikary, pressed for peace.
When the palace sacked Deuba a second time, he didn’t say much because it wasn’t too hard for him to accept that he had been a royal appointee serving at the pleasure of the monarch. He did end up on the receiving end of a high-profile corruption case. Buried in the recent dump of Wikileaks cables Maila Baje found an interesting nugget.
Shortly after his release from detention in the twilight of the royal regime, Deuba was quoted as telling US Ambassador James F. Moriarty that five years down the road, people would stop blaming the king for the affairs of state, regardless of how things unfolded. Amid the general jubilation over the sidelining and eventual ousting of the monarchy, Deuba rued the absence of proper mechanisms to contend with the Maoist steamroller. In their comments, embassy diplomats seemed to discount his sentiments as the grandeur of someone struggling to retain his relevance.
Deuba never exuded exclusivity. When party colleagues cited his poor command of the English language as host of the SAARC summit, he conceded that he had a hard time with Nepali as such. Deflected by his self-deprecation, critics continue to cite his elite matrimonial relations, his general geopolitical orientation and a host of far less pertinent tidbits to denigrate his relevance. But to little effect.
Deuba may have lost his bid to become a consensus prime minister, but not without forcing his principal rival, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, to step down from his self-constructed pedestal and become a mere mortal majority premier.
In the larger scheme of things, Deuba may have dismissed Dr. Bhattarai’s 40-point charter because of the exigencies of the Mahakali Treaty. Yet unlike most in his fraternity, Deuba is still is willing give the Maoist leader a chance to implement the vision that document championed. That may not necessarily be smart politics, but it is by no means irrelevant.
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CHRONIC CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Kathmandu, 22 Sept.: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This has been proved over and over again in Nepal without any letup. Predictably, the opposition of the day never fails to bring the issue to the fore. The government of the day, also predictably, vows to address the issue right away. As parties and their members change the baton of power, the problem remains aggravated. The problems that the press, the public and the opposition today raise are more or less than same that used to be raised during the panchayat decades and after, Trikal Vastavik writes in People;s Review.
Obeying the law is itself a difficult proposition for the powerful and their loyal followers. The more one’s influence, the greater is the tendency to disobey the law. The manner in which government after government withdrew hundreds of cases against criminals in the past 20 years is an ample indication of the state of impunity in this country. Criminalization of politics is a matter of concern. This was the case in some of the other South Asian countries. Now Nepal faces a similar experience.
According to Association of Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch—both New Delhi-based advocacy groups—some 30 per cent of the 545 lawmakers in India’s lower house of parliament have criminal cases pending against them, ranging from theft to rape and murder. Under existing law, politicians on trial or who have appealed their convictions are allowed to stand in elections in India. Since the average criminal case lasts for 15 years in the “world’s second-largest democracy,” impunity rules the roost.
The situation in Nepal has come to such a pass that any official who manages to maintain any semblance of law in some quarter, he is hailed as efficient. Gokarna Bista, the Water Resources Minister in Jhala Nath Khanal’s government, received lots of praise for applying the screws on electricity thieves. Power theft has always been a problem; it grew worse in the past 20 years in a country where load shedding has affected up to 16 hours a day. The districts, where power theft is the highest, are represented by prominent politicians in parliament but very little is done by these lawmakers about the problem in their own constituencies.
Bista scratched the surface, yet he drew kudos because his predecessors did not dare or bother to take such initiatives. Households that fail to pay their electricity bills worth a few thousand rupees on time are made to pay heavy fines but large firms and institutions can bargain their way for reduced payment after a long period of default. Bista thought enough was enough and he simply ordered power cutoff to those government offices and other organizations that failed to respond to their outstanding dues.
But in the 21st century when a national hero is made out of a minister who manages to just about start taking actions against payment defaulters and power theft, what plight Nepal and Nepalis face can easily be imagined. Bista tried something but it hardly got off—and good for him. For, he was most likely to fail. For some “senior” politicians are known to have expressed their anger against measures to check power theft in their respective constituencies.
Power theft had been going on since decades. During the panchayat years, those indulging in the crime tried to shield themselves behind the argument that it was their way of protesting against “the fascist partyless panchayat that sucked the blood of the poor and suppressed the country a whole”. After the restoration of multiparty system, many people seem to have felt that they are free to steal electricity at the expense of law-abiding hapless citizens who not only pay their dues on time but have to bear the additional costs arising from the power theft the unscrupulous and a government that has neither the desire nor the will to check the crime.
Baburam Bhattarai, when in the opposition, commended Bista’s efforts and suggested that he should be in the “next” cabinet too. Bista’s UML party choosing to stay in the opposition benches now that Bhattarai is donning the premier’s mantle, it is up to the new government to draw lessons from whatever little positive points the previous governments might have had.
The new information and communications minister, Jaya Prakash Gupta, who in the past, too, held the same portfolio at least twice, could ensure that telephone bills are paid on time and phone companies do not flout the law and engage themselves in paying their dues to the government in full and without delay. Pressure from the foreign mission at Lazimpat should be spurned in no unmistaken terms.
Likewise, Bista’s unfinished task—which is much more than what he actually achieved—should also be followed up with more efficient measures. Prime Minister Bhattarai, who is racing against time, having to achieve substantially many things within less than a month from now to meet his own deadline, should give directives to his teammates accordingly.
Deputy Prime Minister Bijaya Kumar Gachchhedar, who has been making his prime ministerial ambitions no secret, wants to begin to “a clean slate” and create a corruption-free police force apart from ensuring law and order. No one can dispute the significance of such measures. However, skepticism rests on the question as to whether Gachchhedar will prove to be what he and all his peers did in the past: saying one thing and doing something diametrically the opposite.
Impunity has wracked society so much that any remote sign of positive action from any quarter is hailed as a stunning success. The lifestyles of most senior leaders are beyond their known means of income. Nepotism is the order of the day in virtually every sector. Primary school teachers are filled with the relatives and family members of local leaders. The quota set for women teachers is also filled on similar lines rather than merit within the quota system. The result: quality of education imparted itself is poor.
The SLC Board results are no proper indicator of the quality, whatever the pass percentage, failure, distinctions and so on. Dr. Bhattarai’s SLC “topper” status is mentioned to the point of boredom as if that alone makes an individual great and “intellectual”. The fact is that tens of thousands of students score dictions these days whereas barely one or two would barely manage to do so during Bhattarai’s in the early1970s or earlier times. Yet the quality of education is said to have deteriorated.
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