KIRAT ACTIVIST ESCAPES WITH HANDCUFFS
Kathmandu, 1 Dec.: Khotang district Treasurer of Kirat Janabadi Workers Party Mohan Bahadur Rai escaped from police control along
with handcuff on Thursday, RSS reports from Khotang
Rai, who was arrested from Solma Besitole of Diktel-8 two days ago, absconded from an agriculture farm on Wednesday evening after attacking the policeman accompanying him.
Police said Rai was accused for asking donations with the VDC Secretary and also involved in the Nunthala Police Post attack two years ago.
Meanwhile, police have recovered the handcuff at Diktel
as it was cut and thrown away.
OPINION
CALL ALL YOU WANT BUT THERE’S NO ONE AT HOME
Kathmandu, 1 Dec.: The Nepali Congress seems destined to live with the Koirala-Deuba hostilities. Party president Sushil Koirala has come to the point of publicly complaining that senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba is not responding to his telephone calls. “Let us solve our differences through dialogue,” Koirala urged Deuba through the press the other day, Maila Bake writes in Nepali Netbook.
What began as a confrontation sparked by Koirala’s dissolution of four sister wings of the Nepali Congress – led by Deuba loyalists – remains rooted in the contrived reunification of the party in 2007 ahead of the constituency assembly elections.
While it has always made sense for Deuba to portray his dissidence as opposition to the arbitrariness of the leadership, the fact that the leader today happens to be surnamed Koirala helps him immensely. Nepali Congress members come from such diverse backgrounds that the party simply has too many fault-lines to cover. But who in the country’s largest democratic party could oppose a clarion call to free the organization from the clutches of a clan if it could cover the sundry motives they have?
Deuba himself has often conceded that, despite his bold public criticisms of Girija Prasad Koirala, he could not muster enough courage to put his grievances across directly to the grand old man. With Girijababu’s departure, Deuba no longer feels so constrained.
His crusade has changed in other ways. Prakash Man Singh, party general secretary and onetime loyalist, today warns Deuba of disciplinary action. (With Girijababu’s own departure from this mortal world, Prakash probably no longer sees the anti-Koirala campaign an extension of the travails of his late father, Ganesh Man Singh.)
Even among onetime loyalists in the Nepali Congress-friendly media, the mood has soured. Editors and columnists who once hailed his courage easily dismiss him today as a relic of the old Nepal.
None of this appears to have dissuaded Deuba. The other members of the Koirala clan are quiet. Sujata is laying low lest the controversy surrounding her son-in-law, Rubel, climb up the family ladder. As one of the original promoters of his party’s alliance with the Maoists, Shekhar is still crossing his fingers on where the 12-point experiment would lead.
The once-promising Shashank has been reduced to lamenting how Nepal has forgotten the national-reconciliation policy his father had propounded when there was actually a king to kick around.
Yet just as Deuba felt he had tamed the tribe, Sushil has shown a sudden itch to enter Baluwatar. The seeds of that ambition, sown during his visit to India earlier in the year, have been nurtured by the succeeding political shenanigans. If Girija Prasad Koirala could become prime minister without having ever served in a lower ministerial rung, what should stop Sushil?
As the notion of a national unity government animates the Nepali Congress, Deuba feels he is most qualified man to head it. You can’t blame him. The negatives associated with Deuba’s record have paled in comparison to what is going on today.
The Maoists have proved that the 40-point charter Deuba had rebuffed in 1996 was not the actual propellant of their decade-long insurgency. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has outdone Deuba in terms of bloating the cabinet. The ‘Pajero’ culture has turned viler both as a tool and outcome of political skulduggery.
Agreements far more toxic than the one on the Mahakali River have become commonplace. (At least during those days you could expect the principal opposition party to make a pretense of having split on account of anti-national agreements.)
As to the allegation that Deuba could not save democracy during his last two tenures as premier, isn’t it an article of faith among the current political class that true democracy ever existed in Nepal?
Looking ahead, maybe Deuba wants a new term to demonstrate that he is capable of something different, now that things have come full circle.
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LEADERS LUXURIATE AS NEPALIS SUFFER
Kathmandu, 1 Dec.: Act in haste and repent in leisure. This is applicable to especially politicians and the naïve who in a country like ours where history of the unflattering kind gets repeated again and again, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
In the last 20 years, Nepalis have been flooded with one shocker after another. The list is too long to enumerate in a single write-up like this. One naturally has to be selective and contextual. The latest is the Baburam Bhattarai government's "realization" that the provision for "automatic promotion" of civil servants having served a specific number of years is wrong.
Well, this was a policy adopted by the Girija Prasad Koirala-led government in 2006. It took five years for the leaders to come to their senses in this regard. At the time the preposterous policy was adopted, there were quite a few who commented against it but they were dismissed by the powers that be. Since Nepal's civil servants are probably the most politicized in the whole of South Asia, with the employees openly organized as sister groups of political parties, the Koirala government, with approval from other "major parties" went ahead with the damning act. Even government secretaries are known to have obtained party membership.
This only encouraged deeper politicization of the bureaucracy. The leather-tongued ones never get tired of making long speeches on modern administration and all those jargons. But the "automatic" promotion scheme disdained meritocracy, which is considered an essential quality of modern administration based on reward and punishment.
When the multi-party democracy was restored in 1990 and general elections followed in 1991, the Koirala government gave its nod to the proposal that temporary and contractual staff members at the Tribhuvan University, including faculty members, were to be made automatically permanent. The "intellectuals" of the country's first university that accounts for more than 80 per cent of the student community in the country's entire higher education applauded the decision, which they had instigated in the first place.
The part-timers and others at TU were thus showered with a bonanza they had not imagined previously. In the process, however, other meritorious ones could not compete for the seats made permanent for many who had obtained temporary, contractual or part-time work mainly because of individual decisions of the authorities concerned. Thus many better qualified post-graduates were deprived of joining the academic service and, at the same time, the future pillars of the nation, the students, were deprived of the services of many talented brains.
The government then "realized" the folly and did not repeat the practice. But various corporate sectors continue to employ the practice of conducting "exams" and "interviews" to give permanent status to those already employed as contractual or temporary staff. Mocking at meritocracy and the huge educated unemployment rate in the country, "competition" is held only among these privileged ones only.
In other words, the unfortunate ones who could not land themselves on "previous experiences" on the strength of favoritism to be employed as temporary staff, are deprived the opportunity to compete. Down the drain thus goes the lofty talk and promise of "equality" of opportunity. One does not have to become a member of the Nepal Bar Association and get attired in black coat, to conclude the state of "equal opportunity".
An array of former university top officials not long ago pleaded that the university should not be politicized. The fact is that many of these belatedly righteous ones were themselves among the beneficiaries of the politicization they now condemn. Transfers, assignments and promotions are affected in all universities and this is an open secret. Previously, they used to covertly, now it is covert and explicit.
The Baburam Bhattarai government does not need to make any pretentious announcement in view of the continuation its ministers have given to dubious practices known to exist since long ago. That is why there is a deliberate go-slow in pursuing criminal cases against some of the bigwigs affiliated with "major political" parties.
How long will it take for the government to "realize" that patronage rather than qualifications are the criteria for appointments as general managers and chairmen and executive chairmen to state-owned corporations? And how long would it need to "realize" that all such appointments are offered to males and women taking a back seat. Hisila Yami, who is obsessive in asserting that she is more than the "prime minister's spouse" is neither seen nor heard making any noises in this regard.
The heads of the state-owned institutions are changed with such frequency that politicization makes it own admission. Moreover, the process adopted for the appointment seeks to meet the barest minimum qualifications and technically correct criteria to have the blue-eyed boys without experience and knowledge command over better qualified staffs in a typically authoritarian and rank bad management style. The consequence:
The one-time highly successful institutions that were the sources of coveted positions for job-seekers have been bled dry. Two of the examples are NIDC and RNAC which are now unrecognizable institutions when compared with their status till the 1990s. With the political changes after 2006, the situation has got even worse. The name change of the national flag-carrier by dropping the "Royal" in its first initial has not brought any iota of positive change.
The Electricity Authority and the Nepal Oil Corporation are prey to incessant political interference, overstaffing and mismanagement. Power theft and oil leakage was a concern during the Panchayat decades. Today, electricity theft accounts for a quarter of total supply, aggravating the hardships doubly due to the load-shedding and steep tariff hike beyond the means of an average Nepali of this poverty-stricken country that was promised to be transformed into "Singapore" and "Switzerland".
Thanks to the Maoist Minister Yami, the continuous rise in the service of drinking water supply has gained a spurt in the recent years. We pay exactly 100 times more than what we used to back in the bad old days of the Panchayat.
As of November 2011, two-thirds of MPs, including former premiers, are found not declaring their wealth. Prime Minister Bhattarai, Gachchhedar, Poudel, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Sher Bahadur Deuba are among them.
Bhattarai asked the educated to remain and work in the country, forgetting to plead with his own peers to refrain from making foreign travels, especially at taxpayers' expense. Quite a few leftist leaders have their children educated abroad and some of the wards are staying overseas perhaps promoting "leftist thoughts". Many ministers travel abroad at the first opportunity by creating all sorts of excuses. Bhattarai himself could have stayed home and devoted more time to the elusive peace process instead of going to the UN and becoming an also-participant.
.
In the last 20 years, Nepalis have been flooded with one shocker after another. The list is too long to enumerate in a single write-up like this. One naturally has to be selective and contextual. The latest is the Baburam Bhattarai government's "realization" that the provision for "automatic promotion" of civil servants having served a specific number of years is wrong.
Well, this was a policy adopted by the Girija Prasad Koirala-led government in 2006. It took five years for the leaders to come to their senses in this regard. At the time the preposterous policy was adopted, there were quite a few who commented against it but they were dismissed by the powers that be. Since Nepal's civil servants are probably the most politicized in the whole of South Asia, with the employees openly organized as sister groups of political parties, the Koirala government, with approval from other "major parties" went ahead with the damning act. Even government secretaries are known to have obtained party membership.
This only encouraged deeper politicization of the bureaucracy. The leather-tongued ones never get tired of making long speeches on modern administration and all those jargons. But the "automatic" promotion scheme disdained meritocracy, which is considered an essential quality of modern administration based on reward and punishment.
When the multi-party democracy was restored in 1990 and general elections followed in 1991, the Koirala government gave its nod to the proposal that temporary and contractual staff members at the Tribhuvan University, including faculty members, were to be made automatically permanent. The "intellectuals" of the country's first university that accounts for more than 80 per cent of the student community in the country's entire higher education applauded the decision, which they had instigated in the first place.
The part-timers and others at TU were thus showered with a bonanza they had not imagined previously. In the process, however, other meritorious ones could not compete for the seats made permanent for many who had obtained temporary, contractual or part-time work mainly because of individual decisions of the authorities concerned. Thus many better qualified post-graduates were deprived of joining the academic service and, at the same time, the future pillars of the nation, the students, were deprived of the services of many talented brains.
The government then "realized" the folly and did not repeat the practice. But various corporate sectors continue to employ the practice of conducting "exams" and "interviews" to give permanent status to those already employed as contractual or temporary staff. Mocking at meritocracy and the huge educated unemployment rate in the country, "competition" is held only among these privileged ones only.
In other words, the unfortunate ones who could not land themselves on "previous experiences" on the strength of favoritism to be employed as temporary staff, are deprived the opportunity to compete. Down the drain thus goes the lofty talk and promise of "equality" of opportunity. One does not have to become a member of the Nepal Bar Association and get attired in black coat, to conclude the state of "equal opportunity".
An array of former university top officials not long ago pleaded that the university should not be politicized. The fact is that many of these belatedly righteous ones were themselves among the beneficiaries of the politicization they now condemn. Transfers, assignments and promotions are affected in all universities and this is an open secret. Previously, they used to covertly, now it is covert and explicit.
The Baburam Bhattarai government does not need to make any pretentious announcement in view of the continuation its ministers have given to dubious practices known to exist since long ago. That is why there is a deliberate go-slow in pursuing criminal cases against some of the bigwigs affiliated with "major political" parties.
How long will it take for the government to "realize" that patronage rather than qualifications are the criteria for appointments as general managers and chairmen and executive chairmen to state-owned corporations? And how long would it need to "realize" that all such appointments are offered to males and women taking a back seat. Hisila Yami, who is obsessive in asserting that she is more than the "prime minister's spouse" is neither seen nor heard making any noises in this regard.
The heads of the state-owned institutions are changed with such frequency that politicization makes it own admission. Moreover, the process adopted for the appointment seeks to meet the barest minimum qualifications and technically correct criteria to have the blue-eyed boys without experience and knowledge command over better qualified staffs in a typically authoritarian and rank bad management style. The consequence:
The one-time highly successful institutions that were the sources of coveted positions for job-seekers have been bled dry. Two of the examples are NIDC and RNAC which are now unrecognizable institutions when compared with their status till the 1990s. With the political changes after 2006, the situation has got even worse. The name change of the national flag-carrier by dropping the "Royal" in its first initial has not brought any iota of positive change.
The Electricity Authority and the Nepal Oil Corporation are prey to incessant political interference, overstaffing and mismanagement. Power theft and oil leakage was a concern during the Panchayat decades. Today, electricity theft accounts for a quarter of total supply, aggravating the hardships doubly due to the load-shedding and steep tariff hike beyond the means of an average Nepali of this poverty-stricken country that was promised to be transformed into "Singapore" and "Switzerland".
Thanks to the Maoist Minister Yami, the continuous rise in the service of drinking water supply has gained a spurt in the recent years. We pay exactly 100 times more than what we used to back in the bad old days of the Panchayat.
As of November 2011, two-thirds of MPs, including former premiers, are found not declaring their wealth. Prime Minister Bhattarai, Gachchhedar, Poudel, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Sher Bahadur Deuba are among them.
Bhattarai asked the educated to remain and work in the country, forgetting to plead with his own peers to refrain from making foreign travels, especially at taxpayers' expense. Quite a few leftist leaders have their children educated abroad and some of the wards are staying overseas perhaps promoting "leftist thoughts". Many ministers travel abroad at the first opportunity by creating all sorts of excuses. Bhattarai himself could have stayed home and devoted more time to the elusive peace process instead of going to the UN and becoming an also-participant.
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