ARMY WILL BE WEAKENED WITH MASS ENTRY

ARMY WILL BE WEAKENED WITH MASS ENTRY
Kathmandu, 22 Dec.: Leaders of opposition parties have alleged that conspiracy is being hatched to undermine the sensitive State organs with the policy of allowing bulk entry in the Nepal Army, RSS reports..

Speaking at a face to face programme organized by the Reporters´ Club Thursday, the leaders of the opposition parties said the planned bulk entry of the Madhesis in the Nepal Army was not going to make the army organization any stronger.

They said that none of the battalions of the Nepal Army has been named after the ethnic community of the country and decried the government´s decision to take in 3,000 youths of the Madhesi community in the Nepal Army in bulk as being indicative of authoritarianism.

The speakers alleged that the Madhesi parties that talked tall on the rights of the Madhesis have neglected the cause of the dalits and the indigenous nationalities living in the Madhes, the southern plains region of the country.

The leaders of different parties speaking at the face to face commented that decisions as bulk entry in the army would not contribute to the democracy and boost the policy of inclusion in any way, rather such rash decisions would put the country into a quandary.

Nepali Congress leader Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat accused the Unified CPN (Maoist) of taking irresponsible decisions as allowing bulk entry into the Nepal Army. He said the Maoist party was putting the country into difficulty.

He said the latest activities of the UCPN (Maoist) gave support to the suspicions that the peace process itself would be jeopardized.

CPN (UML) leader Bhim Rawal alleged that the peace and constitution itself has been hampered by the latest activities of the UCPN (Maoist). He suggested the government to take back its decision of allowing bulk entry of Madhesis in the national army, saying that it would threaten the national sovereignty and integrity.

UCPN (Maoist) leader Haribol Gajurel said the party is taking a decisive initiatives for concluding the peace process and that the people were evaluating the works of the party. He said there is no need for a change of government at this juncture as the government is pushing ahead the peace and constitution writing.

Chairman of the Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party and Irrigation Minister Mahendra Yadav urged the opposition parties not to make an issue out of the government´s decision for bulk entry of Madhesis in the Nepal Army as this had already been agreed upon by the parties when the late Girija Prasad Koirala was the prime minister.

He argued that the bulk entry of the Madhesis in the Nepal Army would rather make the Nepal Army more inclusive and strengthen the nationality.
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OPINION
Kicking can (of worms) down road
Kathmandu, 22 Dec.: Seeking to paper over its chronic internal woes, the CPN-UML wants to bring Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, together with Bam Dev Gautam and Amrit Kumar Bohara, into the constituent assembly, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook..
The precedent certainly exists. The party brought in Madhav Kumar Nepal, someone who lost in both constituencies from which he had contested the 2008 elections, who rose to the premiership. Admittedly, that move was engineered more by the Maoists, whose chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal would subsequently come to rue. Yet, Maila Baje feels, we must not forget that Madhav Nepal’s ‘undemocratic’ entry came at a time when the assembly had a clear degree of legitimacy and embodied much hope and expectation.
Oli, like Gautam, was defeated in the election. Bohara, nominated by CPN-UML under the proportional representation system, refused to take a seat, citing his party’s poor performance in the polls. Today, all of the members are staying on beyond the two years the people had hired them for. It should be less of a blow to democracy should Oli and Co. eventually enter the assembly.
Yet a section of the party is opting for a go-slow approach. These members are more keen on giving Oli greater respectability in the party before sending him to the assembly. Members want Oli – who currently ranks 10th in the party hierarchy – to get the third position after Khanal and Madhav Kumar Nepal, with the title ‘senior leader’.
It might be useful to consider Nepal’s own contribution in the aftermath of Dahal’s resignation in 2009. What could have been a truly catastrophic succession struggle came to an easy denoument because of Madhav Nepal’s easy availability.
Now that the one the nation was waiting for – Dr. Baburam Bhattarai – has proved no different from his predecessors, Oli might be emboldened to seek the office that Madhav Nepal so assiduously denied him (and Gautam, for that matter) during the first phase of royal rule in 2002-2004.
Make no mistake. Jhal Nath Khanal is not acting out of any sense of altruism. And it’s not as if Oli allowed Khanal an easy time as premier. The UML chief needs to restore control in the party and rejuvenate the base. He sees an opening in the reality the CPN-UML has become more disciplined than either the Maoists or the Nepali Congress. Moreover, the UML chairman must have learned something from the dividends Dahal has reaped from his ‘magnanimity’ in allowing Dr. Bhattarai to take the top job.
Oli, too, has the benefit of wisdom. Instead of flaunting his external support – which we understand is considerable – he can hope to rely on either the Sher Bahadur Deuba or Ram Chandra Poudel faction, depending on the case. By pushing Dr. Bhattarai back into the swamp of the party, he could hope to benefit from the process of another realignment within the Maoists. The fact that the former rebels would be able to evade the full spotlight on their responsibility for the sordid state of affairs should give Oli some breathing space.
The smaller parties inside the assembly and those outside could still rail against the monopoly of the ‘big-party syndicate’. Our venerable civil society notables could continue pretending they have nothing to do to with the mess. (They were the ones, weren’t they, who believed they could lead the leaders before and after the April 2006 Uprising?)
The peace process will remain in good shape as long as we can kick the can down the road.
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THEY LET US DOWN

Kathmandu, 22 Dec.: Predictably but disappointingly, the tenure of the constituent assembly has been extended by six months. Last time, they asked for three months amidst protests. This time they have been emboldened to demand and obtain six more months. This was only to be expected from those who have repeatedly taken the Nepali people for a ride without any qualms, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
Even if they are finally able to draft a scrap within the latest extended deadline, it would mean double the time they had originally asked for. That we are not able to speak out in chorus against such leaders may be understandable by now. In the same light, that we get the leaders we deserve is equally understandable. Like voters, like leaders.
Political leaders in Nepal promise the heavens when in the opposition, only to turn out incompetent, double-tongued and bent on amassing personal wealth and misusing state funds and public offices to cronies and hangars-on.
Down the last six decades, beginning from the Rana-Nepali Congress cabinet headed by Mohan Shumsher J.B. Rana when B.P. Koirala looked after the home ministry, one prime minister after another followed a familiar pattern of incompetence and deception. There were a few exceptions compared to the rest.
Marich Man Singh Shrestha, more or less the last “effective” premier during the partyless panchayat period, and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai who was the interim premier after King Birendra restored multiparty political order in 1990, proved to be by far the least corrupt and most efficient among all governments since democracy was ushered in half a century ago.
A former school headmaster, Shrestha was the first and so far the only prime minister from the Newar community that otherwise enjoys a highly enviable status in various other sectors and living standards if the national average were the criterion.
He was able to put his case forcefully and tried to live up to his conviction. His nationalist credentials have come under sharper focus today than at any other time previously. This is especially so because of the dearth of leaders of nationalist bent with appreciable credentials.
Many individuals, known for their pro-India, anti-China or pro-West stands, and making careers and profits out of the same, try in vain to dismiss Shrestha as “anti-Indian”. This author has not met the former premier for a long, long time but he is reported to be keeping himself abreast of the political developments in the country and maintaining close tabs on political activists, particularly of the leftist orientation. “He reads books and newspapers, and also serfs the internet regularly. He is perhaps the most informed former prime minister,” said a visibly impressed lobbyist who paid a call on Shrestha at his residence in Kathmandu last summer.
Shrestha’s association with the panchayat regime does not deprive him of the credentials he has established as a prime minister. Among the former premiers, he is also with the most “modest” financial means and lifestyle. Had he cared more about his prime ministerial seat, he would not have taken so strong a stand against New Delhi when India clamped an economic blockade on Nepal for some 15 months in 1989-90.
The non-paper the Indian government handed over to the Shrestha government, at the height of the 1990 movement for restoration of multiparty system, laid down terms whose acceptance would have made this a protectorate like Bhutan and guaranteed the sort of “gross happiness index” and “stability” that the hereditary rule of the Wangchucks is supposed to have provided to the Bhutanese.
The rulers and the ruled in that tiny area do not have to be bogged down in the business of complex issues like defense and foreign policy, thanks to a 1949 treaty with the Indian government concluded when a “great democrat” like Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India.
Shrestha stood his ground well during his consultations with King Birendra who was until then was an active monarch, later described by most of our mainstream political parties, including the “revolutionary” Maoists as “a patriot”. Now, patriot has become an extremely rare commodity for political leaders in this land where activists and their gurus have turned “nationalism” a dirty word.
Born and basically brought up in Benaras, Bhattarai resisted New Delhi’s pressure to sign a new treaty aimed at “mutual benefit”. He pleaded that it would not be appropriate to conclude such an accord since his government was only a caretaker team whose main task was to conduct free and fair elections after a new constitution was formulated.
The greed and incompetence shown by his successors made Bhattarai’s performance far more appreciable than it initially was when Girija Prasad Koirala led his party most of the time and became the prime minister some half a record half a dozen times but functioned in a very authoritarian style applied with questionable methods.
The innumerable communist groups and factions used to shout hoarse during the 1950s through the succeeding decades that the Nepali Congress had handed over national interests in many respects to Indian hands. Once they came to power, the CPN (UML) lost its voice. Then came the Maoists to power and followed the UML footsteps ditto.
In fact Baburam Bhattarai, who was the one that drafted his organization’s demands on the eve of the 1996 “People’s War” when an array of anti-India statements were includes, was among the ones living comfortably in the outskirts of the Indian capital, NOIDA, for most part of the fighting that caused the deaths of 15,000 Nepalis and destruction of trillions of rupees worth of property in this impoverished country whose living standards he and his groups vowed to improve.
Once he began camping at Baloowatar, which he earlier pretended to disdain, he has actually begun to defend the very argument he previously appeared to despise. On Nepal-India relations, he not long ago said, “The Mahendra-period foreign policy [with India] is no longer valid.”
An architect who could never produce anything of substance but interestingly managed to obtain an opportunity to enroll himself at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Department of Political Science for a Ph. D., the fifth communist (and second Maoist) prime minister decided to present his true self by forgetting the issues he so vociferously used to raise earlier.
Hence it is little surprising that Bhattarai took great pains to ensure that some of the activity he undertook went unreported in the Nepali media. Various “Maoist” groups met him. Some of those who called on him were actually Nepali Congress proponents who informed their bosses in Kathmandu about it. His visit to a church is also kept a closely guarded secret. A number of representatives from Christian sects are also believed to have met him. Intriguing is that he likes to keep such rendezvous unanswered.
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