NEPAL BEATS INDIA'S KIC IN CRICKET TOURNAMENT

NEPAL BEATS INDIA’S UPDATE

Kathmandu, Nov.: Nepal Thursday beat India’s Karnataka Institute of Cricket (KIC) by six wickets in its second outing in the SAARC U-25 Twenty20 Cricket Tournament in Maldives.
s.
Nepal lost to Sri Lanka in its opening match of the tournament.
India batted first and scored 218 runs for four wickets.
Nepal scored 222 runs for the loss of four wickets in the last ball of the innings.
Man of the Match Paras Khadka scored 63 runs.
Nepal will play Pakistan Saturday in Group B match.
Nnnn

OPINION

ALL FIRED UP AND READY FOR WHAT?
Kathmandu, 3 Nov.: Who knew CPN-UML Chairman Jhal Nath Khanal had all this in him? He’s up in arms, stomping his feet and lashing out his tongue – all at his successor as prime minister. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has no right to continue in office, Khanal declared the other day, describing the incumbent government as packed with criminals and the corrupt, Maile Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
In fact, he was being charitable. Earlier in the month, Khanal virtually called Dr. Bhattarai a liar. “What has the government done so far to bring peace and the constitutional process to its positive end?” he asked. Before anyone could answer, Khanal growled: “Bhattarai has begun deceiving people in broad daylight.”
The sailing was never going to be smooth for our first Ph.D. prime minister. He may be the most educated head of government Nepal has had, but Dr. Bhattarai had to amend state regulations to appoint several members of his advisory and personal staff because they did not have the requisite academic qualifications.
While the people at large seem sympathetic to Dr. Bhattarai’s public gestures ever since he hopped onto that moving thing called the Mustang, they are growing restless about his ability – even willingness – to deliver. Dr. Bhattarai had begun by saying he would conclude the peace process within 45 days of taking office, only to clarify upon his return from New York that all he meant was the clock would start ticking after the parties reached consensus on key issues.
Fed up with Dr. Bhattarai’s trademark linguistic legerdemain, Khanal began accusing the premier of something more sinister: personal involvement in the murder case engulfing a member of his cabinet, Prabhu Sah. It is unclear whether Sah’s resignation was in any way linked to Khanal’s grand allegation, but Maila Baje is still compelled to think. Just a day or two earlier, Local Development Minister Top Bahadur Rayamahi, a key Bhattarai confidant, vowed that controversial ministers would not resign because that would distract from the peace process.
Khanal has vowed to obstruct parliamentary proceeding until Dr. Bhattarai sacks Defense Minister Sharad Singh Bhandari for his recent secessionist remarks. After Sah’s exit, pressure is mounting on the prime minister to show Bhandari the door, too.
It’s not just Khanal’s tone that’s gaining traction by the day. Consider some of the content. “Those hardest hit by the Tanakpur, Koshi and Gandaki [water agreements with India] and the [Indian] land invasion in Susta are the Madhesi population,” Khanal pointedly said at a recent session of the legislature. “What are the Madhes-centric parties … doing while the defense minister is making secessionist remarks?”
“The Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and Maoists hold a greater stake in the Madhes than the Madhesi parties,” he went on. “Do we want separate military battalions for Himal, Pahad and Tarai or do we want a National Army?” You can’t really quibble with his questions just because he never raised them while he was premier, can you?
Khanal’s defiance was hardly dull. “Look here, I am criticizing [the four-point deal underpinning the Bhattarai coalition], can you cut my fingers?” That came in response to Health Minister Rajendra Mahato’s pronouncement a few days earlier that anyone who raised a finger against the four- point deal should be prepared to have it chopped off.
Even if Bhandari is recalled, Khanal is unlikely to cease his tirades against Dr. Bhattarai. The former prime minister may not blame Dr. Bhattarai personally for having brought down his government. But he’s the man who now has his job.
Nnnn

WHICH LHENDUP DOES OUR PM SEE?

Kathmandu, 3 Oct. It seems the specter of Kazi Lhendup Dorji is going to haunt us ever more haughtily after Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s visit to India. When people ordinarily as far apart as Ram Chandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress and Ram Bahadur Thapa of the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist join in revulsion at the centerpiece of the bilateral agreements signed during the visit, the departed Sikkimese leader has a ghost of a chance at salvation, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
Since Lhendup Dorji has become much more than a metaphor in our national consciousness, Maila Baje feels we need to look at the apparition squarely in the visage – or whatever we can find of it. As he performed stylishly during different acts of Sikkim’s national stage, did Lhendup Dorji ever recognize how all that would culminate in the phenomenon that would live on as his singular legacy? Or was Sikkim’s merger into the Indian union in 1975 an amalgam of decisions, traits and attitudes whose denouement the leading protagonist could scarcely have been aware of at each step?
To be sure, Lhendup did not have boisterous detractors warning of the impending degeneration of his name into the kind of infamy it has sunk to in Nepal. (And, yes, Nepal, we must emphasize, until we learn of an outbreak of any serious independence movement in Sikkim itself). How much of the kazi’s animus towards the monarchy was personal? Even if it were significant enough, could it by itself have so blinded Lhendup to the possibility of the loss of his country’s independence? In the grand geopolitical scheme of things, how much were the wives at fault, the queen being an American and the kazini a European?
Or was Lhendup mindful of his moves all along? Perhaps, like the chogyal, he saw Sikkim’s status as an Indian protectorate an anomaly that needed to be rectified. Full independence – the Chogyal’s choice – was perhaps impractical in the prime minister’s view. If so, Sikkim’s full merger into the Indian union would have been the only road left.
Yet, in his later years, after serving as Sikkim’s first chief minister, Lhendup left his state as if for good. Decades later, warning Nepal’s leaders of the perils of a prolonged democracy-monarchy fight, Lhendup cited his own statelessness as the ultimate eventuality. When the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan – the second highest civilian award – euphemistically for ‘public service’ in 2003, it listed him as a resident of West Bengal.
For all his ostensible penitence aimed at audiences in Nepal, Lhendup did not reject Indian honors flowing in his direction. When he died in Kalimpong in 2007, the Indian government paid fulsome tributes to Lhendup as the father Sikkim’s democracy. Indians unconstrained by official propriety were even more effusive in recalling how without Lhendup, Sikkim would never have become a part of India.
In Nepal, over the years, there have been numerous contenders for the Lhendup epithet. The current prime minister, who labeled several predecessors as such, has now come under the most rigorous suspicion. Rarely has the Indian media gushed over the arrival, presence and departure of a Nepali prime minister. Yet Nepalis feel they have little to feel good about.
When Dr. Bhattarai said he would not have become who he is without Jawaharlal Nehru University, it may have been a sincere expression of his appreciation. For a man with a definite way with words, he must have recognized the connotations the remark would acquire back home.
If the opposition parties and the Maoists are to be believed, Dr. Bhattarai signed the bilateral investment promotion and protect agreement against the explicit wishes of fellow politicians. If so, he took a risk and will have to live with it politically. The Indian media will no doubt continue praising his contributions to the development of bilateral relations.
Coming back to Lhendup Dorji, since our prime minister had the opportunity to study the man in detail in his quest to project the epithet on his rivals, maybe he understands Sikkim’s first chief minister better than most of us will ever. As someone who long rued Nepal’s post-Sugauli Treaty status as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal entity, which Lhendup does he recognize today? More specifically, does the prime minister even consider Lhendup a pejorative now that he is in the driver’s seat?
nnnn

COMPARE, CONTRAST, CONFIRM

Kathmandu, 3 Nov.: Gone with the tradition—that is how one evaluates the non-governance that the Baburam Bhattarai government has recorded.
People who do not learn from history regret to being taken for a ride again and again—and again. Has there been any difference in the practice of governance now as compared to the same during the times of the Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal governments since 2008? Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
All roads have led to impunity, cronyism and continued corruption. Unemployment is where it was. In fact, some serious economists say it has worsened. Quality of service has deteriorated in every sector. There is this strange vocabulary employed in Nepali politics. Whenever someone faces criticism and cannot weather the same, he accuses the critic of being "always negative".
Jhala Nath Khanal spoke of a consensus government when he actively contributed to engineering the ouster of his own UML party-led government of Madhav Kumar Nepal. He pledged to form a consensus team which he never did; for he simply could not. Baburam Bhattarai emerged as yet another politician claiming to work for consensus cabinet. He has not come anywhere close to achieving what perhaps he himself did not believe he really could.
Bhattarai made a plethora of promises. Had any of the same been fulfilled, Nepalis would have felt it and appreciated it. For Nepalis have a great yearning for appreciating someone who fulfils what is promised them.
Bhattarai bungled right from the beginning. He had promised to form a small cabinet that has ballooned to a ridiculous size and is yet to be declared "complete". He had given the impression that his would be a team with a clean image. With the crutches he held for his coalition cabinet, he had to rope in Bijaya Gachchhedar as a deputy premier and Jaya Prakash Gupta as the information and communication minister despite they two facing corruption cases since long.
Land Reforms Minister Prabhu Sah, who faced serious charges and we all know how things were maneuvered to create roadblocks against the due process of law taking its course. Defence Minister Sarat Singh Bhandari made a highly objectionable outburst in a highly misplaced sense of loyalty to his Terai-based party. His party leader Bijaya Gachchhadar said, “It was a minor mistake,” and he apologized for the same. Bhandari himself denied having made such remark and claimed being quoted out of context. Most of the mainstream media only reported the incident but steered clear from making editorial comment. Under intense opposition and public pressure, the two were dropped reluctantly.
The Maoist premier said the Constituent Assembly's term would be extended by six months. A few days later, the CA's tenure was once again extended but for only three months.
Had the latest prime minister been proved to be no promise-breaker, the thousands of Nepalis whose lands continue to be occupied and appropriated by Bhattarai's party members in various parts of the secular republic of Nepal would have showered him with commendations.
But then return of the seized lands is no Maoist priority. Maoist leaders, this author is told, want the state to pay the occupants compensation to vacate the property that does not belong to them. Having "joined the political mainstream," they are compelled to say that the occupied lands would be returned to their rightful owners after completing "due process" that is never defined and never takes place even five years after the new political changes and four years after the Maoists surfaced to public view.
A few deluding themselves in rating the Bhattarai leadership high should note that there has been nothing done substantively even nine weeks after the new premier was sworn in amidst promise that everything would be settled within "six weeks"! It is now nine weeks!!
Bhattarai's own party is split vertically. The dissident group led by Mohan Vaidya opposes the four-point agreement concluded with the Madhesi Front that brought about the present coalition government with its "king-maker" role. It is against handing over of the keys of the Maoist weapons containers to appropriate authority. It calls for "dignified and due treatment" of the Maoist troops that brought about "such an historical revolution" in the country at a time when the Dahal-Bhattarai group is pining for the adjustment of up to 5,000 of its troop in the Nepal Army. As for the lands occupied by Maoist cadres, the Vaidya faction is bent on "protecting" the occupants.
Shedding the pretences of living up to his words and becoming different from his predecessors, Bhattarai has resorted to interpreting things his own way in a familiar manner that the Nepalis are so acquainted with. Whereas he had promised to quit office if there was no substantive change under his government, Bhattarai weeks ago reinterpreted the statement saying that the promised changes would be fulfilled within the deadline starting as soon as "a consensus" was formed. His party leader Dahal has a reputation of changing his words as per his convenience. Bhattarai shows that he, too, is a past master at making U-turns employing his "educated" talents.
As if grapes were sour, Bhattarai earlier this year ridiculed those who hankered for the prime minister's chair and having their portraits hung on the walls of the Singha Durbar. A few months later, he donned the same mantle and qualified for similar portraits to decorate the wall that lines up the portraits of all former premiers of the country.
He was the one who contributed a mighty lot in drafting the 42-point demand at the time the violent Maoist movement was launched in 1996, many of which were concerned with India and the its interference in Nepal. He, like all his party comrades, does not make a sound about the points now. It is not for nothing that he, an architect all his life, was able to find the finance to abruptly enroll himself for Ph.D. in a topic related to "political economy". Jawaharlal Nehru University at times functions like the Lumumba University during the Soviet Union decades. It was a political enrolment for a political worker for a political purpose. There are many JNU Ph.Ds. in Nepal. The test of a degree is in the performance of the recipient's publications, research or theories.
The changes after the 2005-6 movement have brought for the Nepalis only instability, stagnation and impunity. Undoubtedly, a few have prospered and the vast of ocean of Nepalis have suffered without certainty as to when this all will end.
nnnn