NO EXTENSION OF OHCHR-N TENURE PM TELLS UN CHIEF BREAKING STORY

NO OHCHR-N TENURE PM TELLS UN CHIEF BREAKING NEWS
Kathmandu, 8 Dec.:Prime Minister Babura Bhattarai told UN Chief Ban Ki-moon over telephone Thursday night his Nepal government won’t extend the tenure of OHCHR-N radio reports said at nine at night.
Their telephonic was the second in two days.
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OPINION
DAHAL’S FAITH IN TRIPARTITE BARGAINNG MODEL
Kathmandu, 8 Dec.: United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal wants Nepal to engage in some still nebulous mode of trilateral cooperation with India and China in the interest of boosting regional stability. Interestingly, his latest reiteration of this comes at a time when relations between the Asian giants, by both sides’ reckoning, have grown frosty, Maila Bajewrites in Nepali Netbook.
Then almost in the same breath, Dahal says his party has not given up on the idea of a full-blown revolt to capture the state. In fact, he believes the Maoists may be closer than ever to achieving that underlying goal. These two assertions, Maila Baje feels, might not be as contradictory as they sound.
Dahal’s leadership of the drive to develop Lumbini into a Buddhist mecca has not impressed our local Buddhists. A large chunk of the otherwise placid community is in a confrontational mood. You can’t blame them. To have the world’s major officially atheist state patronize what ranks among the five largest religions is bad enough. Now the man associated with the worst killing spree in Nepal’s history is trying to reinvent himself as an advocate – if not exactly an acolyte – of the Light of Asia.
For the best part of a year, the Indians have been as candid as they could be as far as the geopolitical dimensions of the Dahal-China dalliance are concerned. Almost conceding their apparent failure to disprove that Siddhartha Gautam was born in what is modern-day Nepal, New Delhi is intent on building a rival movement of international Buddhism.
Having stripped Dr. Baburam Bhattarai of his self-righteous claim to singularity at this juncture of Nepali history, Dahal is now eager to return to the premiership on his terms. No, he doesn’t want to do so to complete the peace process and produce the constitution – processes that seem superficially to have progressed remarkably under Bhattarai. The Maoist chief wants to be able to lead the country to new elections to a body that could craft the constitution to the Maoists’ liking.
In this aspiration, Dahal is closer to Baidya. The duo believes – and many think Dr. Bhattarai, too, agrees – that the Maoists have at least three factors going for them: their ability to claim leadership of the Nepal’s splintered communist movement, the disarray in the Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties, and the sheer financial resources at the disposal of the former rebels.
With some 65 percent of the vote having gone to the communists in the last test of popular popularity, the Maoists believe they can unite the fraternity in terms of influence. The C.P. Mainali wannabes can stay out and conduct home-based politics in the absence of organization and people.
The mess in the Nepali Congress is too obvious, while the disarray in the Madhesi parties provides an opportunity to the Maoists – in their view – to return to their pre-Gaur Massacre glory. As for financial heft, let’s not forget that, according to one Asian newsmagazine, the Maoists, while in the jungles, were the richest rebels in the continent.
Having demonstrated their flexibility on the democratic path, the Maoists believe they can blame their rivals to show the utter hopelessness of that quest. On the face of it, a violent capture of state power may lack international legitimacy. But what alternative would the rest of the world have? Dahal is said to have been particularly elated by the views expressed by some members of the Chinese media delegation that recently visited Nepal, who praised him as the man of the future.
We can’t be sure the delegates were speaking for their government – as much as we can’t be that they weren’t. The speculator in Dahal probably feels that by roping in the Indians in a tripartite partnership, he could force the West and the rest to fall in line. Certainly nothing to squander time on what constitute the principal and non-principal contradictions.
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WHAT WE LOST IN SIX YEARS

Kathmandu, 8 Dec.: When wheelers-dealers and power-grabbers promote their ambitions without any qualms regarding the means and mechanism applied, dreams and hopes meet deep disappointments, the mediocre get the best and the brightest are sidelined or relegated to the status of humiliation. The rough and the crooked get the going to their tune, thanks to utter impunity that favors the unlawful and intimidates the law-abiding.
Is the scribe talking about Nepal? You bet, he is, loud and clear as the events in the past six full years bear testimony to this all. When a “revolution” is scripted elsewhere and its authors pay a constant call on to make sure that the “agreement” is implemented and interpreted rightly, whose interests are served the most?, Trikal Vastavik writes in People's Review.
The November 2005 agreement, signed by seven political parties in New Delhi under the banyan tree that Indian capital was, promised many things to many people. In reality, it paved way for conditions that the sponsors of the agreement and the foreign backers of the signatories would not apply in their own countries.
What then is that we have lost the most? Six years of instability, six governments, the most bloated cabinet ever, blatant move to spare killers convicted by the Supreme Court, extortion through various guises endorsed and blessed actively by political patronage, the worst case of impunity in the entire history of united Nepal, politicization of the bureaucracy, academic institutions, labor unions, sports bodies, artistes’ groups, university, college and school teachers, and communalism in the guise of inclusiveness.
Raising such issues attracts the attention of the culprits who are quick to label the conscientious as “regressive” and “reactionaries” as if such epithets would bother anyone any longer. Even those who used to get uncomfortable with such tags forced upon by their opponents, it has become a badge of honor now.
Politicians of different hues might be swearing by history but they give two hoots for the same. They care is about the current history, which is what they and their lackeys say it is. Herodotus and Toynbee can sink in their own interpretations as to why only history, written objectively after a reasonable gap between an event and the study, has the chance of becoming more analytical and accurate.
Picking up the pieces from the chaos that has set in since the past six years in order to build the nation as a harmonious, prosperous and peaceful country is a Utopia that exacts relentless drive and great sacrifices. The rot has been too deep and extensive for cleaning up the mess.
The task is even more difficult because of the various interest groups instigated by foreign interests. Free Tibet movement is an issue that the United States has placed great emphasis on. Economic rivalry is the name of the game. Earlier, it was ideological; today it is more economic than ideological. The tyranny, superstitions and backwardness that marked Tibetan life in general is never raised and discussed in the literature and the media of the Western monopoly.
Britain, France, Germany and Scandinavian countries in the earlier centuries sent missionaries to different continents, especially Asia, for spreading Christianity. They are not idle even today. Nor is the Vatican inactive in the mission to liberate the “tormented” souls all over the world. The European Union has taken up the mission with great commitment and large purse.
Hence, Tibet could be a fertile ground for their work. It could also serve to become a vitally significant listening post for the events and activity in many strategically important regions of communist China.
Then there are druggists and weapons merchants that want the market secured for experiments and tests. Remember the Swedish weapons company Bofors, which is known to have paid $640 million commissions in 1986 as what it termed as “winding up charge” to the bigwigs in India? The Swedish company or its government never cooperated with the Indian government that was not headed by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party. The Congress, for obvious reasons, is not keen in spending time in investigating the scam.
The Swiss banks have vaults stacked with corruption money from all over the world. Their government preaches through various agencies about governance, inclusiveness and corruption control. But it does not cooperate with the very countries whose political leaders have stashed the cash stolen from state coffers that belonged to their people.
Foreign men and women, married to Nepalis, are also keen to define and get implemented what they interpret as “inclusive”, the scope of which is not applicable to their own countries.
Big Brother India has its fingers in all the pies. It has never been so good for it since the country with the world’s largest population of poverty-stricken people gained independence from the British imperialists in 1947. Earlier, there was the monarchy and assertive groups in Nepal, which were willing to stick their neck out for the cause of national interests.
The Nepali Congress might like to forget the fact that their founder leaders had called for letting India handle this country’s foreign and defense policies. This was met with a barrage of protests in the streets. Be it the 1950 Treaty or the Koshi and Gandak accords, India benefited at the cost of Nepal and Nepalis.
The Nepali Congress has never commented against the treaties and has remained non-committal. Its “intellectual” and “senior” leaders keep themselves miles away from commenting on the agreements. If forced, they are on defensive or they simply hem and haw. The Madhes-based parties defend the same to the hilt even as the prime minister of the day makes a show of seeming to get talks going for “revising” the 1950 treaty that was condemned so persistently and vehemently by him and his communist peers.
Today, nationalism is treated like a dirty word by the ones who are forcing their one-sided views or foreign agendas upon the hapless Nepali people. This has been going on for too many years and people are desperate to vent their feelings.
Such being the situation, it is no longer rare that people are heard commenting, “In a country like Nepal, we need someone who rules with a rod.” Even if such recommendation is inappropriate for the 21st century democracy, it is true that Nepalis are desperate for someone who leads and serves the country, holding the nation’s interests uppermost in the list of priorities and leaving no stone unturned to punish the corrupt and the criminal, political or otherwise
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