LADY COMPANION OF DIG KOIRALA FLEES TO MALAYSIA

LADY COMPANION TARA REGMI OF DIG KOIRALA FLEES TO MALAYSIA

Kathmandu, 26Jan. Tara Regmi, has fled the country to Malaysia,
Rajdhani reports.
Police are searching for the lady companion of DIG Ranjan Koirala.
who confessed killing his wife Gita
They have two sons and were living separately following differences.
Koirala is under custody.
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OPINION

PM BHATTARAI AND OUR STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL

Kathmandu, 26 Jan.: Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai is getting grief from across the spectrum for having suggested that Nepal risked being merged into either China or India if it failed to redefine its geo-strategic self-interest, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
Some have attributed pure diplomatic immaturity to the premier’s assertion. Others see a pronounced albeit misguided boldness in his attempt to contend with both powerful neighbors at the same time. Others still see a sense of insecurity transformed into a ploy to prolong his tenure in power.
Regardless of the motive(s), Maila Baje feels Dr. Bhattarai has made a positive and much-needed contribution to the national discourse. If such forthrightness had not come from the man on the top, it might not have left us scratching our heads with the intensity we are today.
Ever since Nepal – in the eminent historian Father Ludwig Stiller’s words – “passed definitely from the status of an insignificant state to that of a power in the Indian subcontinent”, stopping the juggernaut entailed utmost urgency for Qing China and British India. And this consisted of more than military means. As Nepal festered in domestic turmoil after its military defeats by China and British India, the two empires perpetuated their respective narratives in which Nepal was part of their historical inheritance. Manchu emperors, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong all claimed Nepal as part of territories China lost to western imperialism.
To be sure, Nepal’s treaties with the People’s Republic of China have abrogated all past claims of Nepali vassalage to the Middle Kingdom and precluded the possibility of any resurrection of irredentist claims. But the historical and cultural legacies that feed the narrative are still very much alive among the Chinese, whose memory is legendary for its length in time.
Indians with a penchant for history have similarly been puzzled by the fact that Nepal managed to remain out of the formal British empire despite the East India Company’s decisive victory in the war. Indeed, if the Chinese shadow had not loomed so large on Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings’ considerations before and after the Sugauli Treaty, the notion of a “limited war” would not have not existed. But for the Indians dominating the political security establishment in New Delhi, it is nonetheless intriguing that states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka – so distant from their version of Indianness – should be part of India but not Nepal.
As Nepalis continued to bicker, irrespective of the political system in place, this contested realm of overlapping orbits deepened among the Chinese and Indians. During times of peace, the fallout for us seems to have been calmer. During periods of tensions, greater convulsions have occurred. Sometimes, events have moved so fast that their impact on us has become quite inexplicable. The July 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship New Delhi signed with the Rana regime, for instance, was made utterly redundant merely by October that year, when Chinese communist troops moved into Tibet. A little over six months after Mohan Shamsher Rana thought his regime had attained some security vis-à-vis independent India, the Rana regime receded firmly in the dustbin of history. Not without the incongruity of the same Mohan Shamsher having become the first prime minister of democratic Nepal.
At other times, regional events have proceeded with greater placidity. With the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India in March 1959, Nepali democracy had virtually run its course – even before Nepal’s staggered first national elections had been completed.
For thirty years, the opacity and closed nature of the partyless system provided our two neighbors the kind of equilibrium they needed to calibrate their relationship. Whether Nepalis themselves would have volunteered to choose between full-fledged democracy and a sense of nationhood in the international community is debatable. That King Mahendra pushed us toward the latter course out of any consideration other than reinforcing his rule continues to be hotly debated. So is King Birendra’s Zone of Peace Proposal, which was prefaced by his 1973 interview with Newsweek that Nepal, consisting of three districts appertaining beyond the Himalayas, was not technically a subcontinental nation. King Gyanendra’s emphasis on developing Nepal into a transit hub between the two Asian giants continues to stir jeers of derision. Yet the Zone of Peace proposal has been gaining new interest, while the post-monarchy leadership has been touting the transit-hub model. If you really look for it, there is even a grudging admiration for King Mahendra’s notion of nationhood among his fiercest critics.
Put differently, Nepalis seem to like the way the country has survived in the international community with a distinct identity. Would the same have been achieved through the path of unshackled democracy and development? Probably. But the Cold War history of Asia, Africa and Latin America leaves us less sanguine. Other developing countries may have been liberated following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Cold War that really matters to us has never really receded.
Our unrelenting march towards national newness has been marred by a lack of clarity on things that really matter. Manifestations of this contested realm of overlapping orbits, Maila Baje, feels will become more apparent in the period ahead from both our neighbors. By illuminating our geo-strategic vulnerability in so stark terms, Dr. Bhattarai has permitted Nepalis of all ideological persuasions to ponder a new – to borrow a worn but still worthy phrase – strategy for survival. It is only with life, after all, that liberty and the pursuit of happiness can follow.
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IN THEIR OWN WORDS AND DEEDS

Kathmandu, 26 Jan.: Being critical of others is easier than turning the cutting comments on one’s own peers. Rarely do political leaders decide to activate their critical faculties in public. If the critic continues to flock together with the long-time comrades-in-arm, the analysis-cum-conclusion becomes a confession, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
The acute discrepancy in the principles proclaimed and the practices actually demonstrated in Nepal’s major political parties is the bane of democracy. Democratic principles have been dispensed with for all practical purposes and the practice of impunity in one of the most corrupt places on earth.
A senior member of the Maoist, Ram Bahadur Thapa calls for a “patriotic” government, which he says the Bhattarai team does not reflect. Why has the former minister come out so critically against his party chairman and government? Mohan Baidhya accuses his party boss Pushpa Kamal dahal of being incompetent and, therefore, irrelevant for party leadership.
The loud vows by political parties and their leaders of varied political strands to work for the “welfare of people”, “full-fledged democracy” and “rule of law” without discrimination that previously resounded the country now makes for a black joke.
What those in power presently are doing is nothing different from the script written by their predecessors? In fact, the existing crop excels the previous governments and regimes in utter failure to maintain rule of law, check corruption and give any kind of stability while the economy is the worst in the whole of South Asia.
If Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai and his party chairman cannot convince their own party colleagues like Mohan Baidhya and Ram Bahadur Thapa about the quality of their endeavours, how can they expect Nepalis in particular and the rest of the world in general to take them, seriously for what they claim to stand for and deliver?
Hundreds of thousands of Nepalis need no convincing as they are already convinced that these “revolutionary” leaders care more for power and their pockets than the priorities they laid out for public consumption. People had suffered heavily from the “revolutionary” cadres for a decade of “people’s war” that claimed a16,000 lives and many more as injured and tortured, traumatized, intimidated, looted and deprived of livelihoods.
Many had to leave their home and hearth for food, shelter and work in these hard times of industrial sluggishness, steep unemployment and bad governance that fostered a culture of each- for- his-own-skin-and-survival. A few European governments and their front organizations, carrying religion as the main agenda, made merry then and are doing so with great éclat now, no matter what the Nepalis in general have undergone and continue to suffer precarious situations, the like of these “Good Samaritans” would never face in the own countries without an outright war.
What about the Nepali Congress? Party Chairman Sushil Koirala, who has never demonstrated any leadership quality, confirms that he does not have any to prove, which explains the rudderless manner in which the oldest existing party is drifting aimlessly. The ultra-conservative party’s record in office in the 1950s and since the 1990s does not have anything to inspire the people. Corruption incompetence marked much of its rule.
Ask Sher Bahadur Deuba about’s Koirala’s leadership? But then, one can also put the same question to Koirala himself about Deuba’s qualities. Deuba’s assessment of Koirala will match word for word Koirala’s assessment of the three-time former premier whose appetite for the chair is insatiable. And parliamentary party leader Ram Chandra Poudel is calculating all of NC decisions solely with his prime ministerial ambitions at the center-stage.
The Republic of Nepal, meanwhile, remains destitute of law and order. NC, served right, is now desperate but mute and keen to wriggle out of the morass of crisis it helped to create during and after 2006.
Many Maoist Party members, who used bamboo sticks to thrash their opponents, now lead a life of luxury through extortion and dubious trade. Having learnt of the practices that are supposed to have resulted in the “achievements” of the so-called people’s war, the cadres continue to “capture” land distributed to landless and refuse to vacate they forcibly occupied since up to 15 years.
Both NC and CPN (UML), who at one time termed the Maoists “terrorists” during the latter’s insurgency, have impotently compromised to the hilt. In November 2005, they embraced those who looted, tortured, maimed or killed their own cadres, teachers, journalists, civil society leaders and sympathizers. They brought aboard the vehicle of power and legitimacy the very ones who continue to act against the law of the land. They saluted and hailed two Maoist prime ministers even as the latter’s cadres continue to create havoc.
If the NC and the UML cannot protect their own party members and meekly accept or remain mute over atrocities against their party members and innocent voters not affiliated to any political group, does any sane mind expect of import from them?
The Tarai-based parties, which ironically like to call themselves “king-makers” in a republic, crave for cabinet berths and sources of money, have not come up with any concrete program for improving the living standards of the millions of Madheshi community, the anomalies existing in the community, the economic disparities, social ills, dalits, women, marginalized groups, superstitions, underemployment, need for reservations and preferences to the deprived groups, and such other issues that are also to be found aplenty in other communities as well.
Every few months, there is shortage of petroleum products and liquefied gas. Hoarders, black marketers and profiteers have a field day. Many of them are members of political parties. Those accused of serious crimes are defended vociferously by party leaders. If a court convicts an accused, leaders want the “rest of the sentence” to be commuted
Kidnappings, gang fighting, corruption, impunity, favoritism, nepotism and such other ills have afflicted the country so much that such wanton situation had never been witnessed since democracy was first ushered in 1951. Electricity interruptions are enforced routine, putting one part of the nation or the other under the blanket of darkness for nearly half of the time day in and day out.
After all, we live in the secular, republic of Nepal aspiring to have the kind of federal structure the like of which the rest of the world has not succeeded with, not even the countries funding such absurd and debilitating agenda.
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