PM HOLDS CONSULTATIONS WITH RIVAL AND CRITIC BAIDHYA

PM HOLDS CONSULTATIONS WITH PARTY RIVAL BAIDHYA AT SINGHA DURBAR
Kathmandu, 5 Jan.: Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai and UCPN-Maoist Vice Chairman Mohan Baidya 'Kiran' held talks at Singha Durbar on Thursday, RSS reports.

Sources confirmed that the discussion was focused on the party unity, peace process and issues of constitution making.

According to the Chief Personnel Secretary of the Prime Minister, Ganga Narayan Shrestha, Prime Minister Bhattarai, also the vice chairman of the party, urged Baidya to work together for party unity, peace process and constitution making processes.

The PM during the meeting had also requested those keeping difference of opinions to join the government.
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FORMER LOAN OFFICER OF NEPAL SHARE MARKET AND FINANCE EXECUTIVE NABBED
Kathmandu, 5 Jan.: Bita Tuladhar, a former loan officer of Nepal Share Market and Finance, was arrested in the capital by Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police on Thursday
He was picked up from Naya Baneshwor
Tuladhar, in collusion with Chairman Yogendra Prasad Shrestha, misappropriated nearly Rs.2.54 billion of Nepal Share Market and Finance.
Shrestha was delivered to Nepal by India where he had gone into hiding last year following Nepal’s biggest banking fraud.
Shrestha’s family are absconding.
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THAI WOMAN ARRESTED WITH 1 KG COCAINE WORTH $ 200,000

Kathmandu, 5 Jan.: A Thai woman identified as Suparerat McIntosh was arrested Thursday with one kg of cocaine worth around $200,000 cocaine as she was boarding a Nepal Airline flight to Kuala Lumpur from the capital
She was arrested by a dugs enforcement agency from TAI.
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SEVEN MORE DAYS FOR WEATHER TO IMPROVE

A WEEK BEFORE WEATHER IMPROVES

Kathmandu, 5 Jan. : The hazy weather of the Kathmandu valley witnessed for the past few days was the result of the sudden dip in the mercury, said meteorologists, RSS reeports.

Rajendra Shrestha, senior meteorologist at the Weather Forecasting Divison of the Department of Hydrology, said the vapor produced from the earth during the time of excessive cold could not generate rainfall and the sky was seen as hazy and foggy. This has caused sunny day for few times only after the midday, Shrestha said.

He said it will take at least a week to improve the weather condition of the Kathmandu valley. The weather condition of eastern part of the country is fine while the slight rainfall is occurring in the west.
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OPINION

HOLDING ON TO OUR FRAGMENTED QUEST FOR PEACE

Kathmandu, 5 Jan. : Here we are welcoming the new year once again arguing over whose sense of injustice among us is more legitimate and why, Maila Mabe writes in Nepali Netbook.
The Supreme Court order staying the proposed recruitment of Madhesi youths in the Nepal Army has fueled a familiar but infinite debate. The president (who is also the supreme commander of the national army), vice-president, deputy prime minister (who is also defense minister) are madhesis, yet some in that community still can’t quit complaining of how they are the victims of internal colonization. The other side is left wondering who quantifies how much must they must cede to prove their bona fides.
In this emotive atmosphere, it’s perhaps useless to keep harping on what really constitutes being a madhesi or a pahadi. The larger issue is looming ominously. The ever-expanding space available for articulating our grievances has unleashed ceaseless cries of marginalization. We did not need bahuns and chhettris rallying for their rights to recognize that we have always been a nation of minorities. As such, we cannot escape consensual existence.
Since the unity-in-diversity credo has been discredited as a legacy of an oppressive past, the search is on for an alternative model that fosters a genuine sense of commonality. Unfortunately, none seems available – at least one that can satisfy all aspects of our continually fragmenting selves. An alliance of several groups can project a majority for a while but the fault lines have been running too deep to make it sustainable. It becomes easier for everyone instead to define and decry that as a brazen display of political opportunism.
In our quest to remake the future as far removed from the past, our sense of victimhood is also becoming pernicious. Class, religion, ethnicity, caste, region and sexual orientation – not to speak of political ideology – have provided fertile ground not only for the magnification of gripes but also for their outright manufacture.
This intensifying sense of injury tends to rationalize every move. In global terms, we have a legislature that is far too bloated relative to our population, but we put up with it because we wanted to be inclusive.
As long as the money keeps pouring in from abroad, we have no problem subjecting ourselves to all manner of experimentation. But that has not stopped creating new contexts of perceived marginalization. When every death in the public square acquires a political content and is deemed worthy of declaration of martyrdom, politicians cannot resist pandering to the people.
Maybe this whole business of endlessly extending the constituent assembly is what keeps alive the myth called the peace process. The political establishment was mystified by the Supreme Court’s refusal to register its petition seeking a review of the justices’ verdict on the tenure of the constituent assembly. It was easy for us to dismiss the temerity of the politicians. Yet what we may really have to fear is the day the assembly actually has to produce a constitution that some of the drafters will likely find unacceptable right away.
It’s hardly a thought relishing for a year already known for its dire predictions, but maybe Nepalis haven’t fought our internal battles honestly enough to energize any genuine quest for peace.
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POLITICAL CHARADE ON PARADE

Kathmandu, 5 Jan.: For two years, Speaker Subhash Nemwang had hogged the media space claiming that the new constitution would be formulated on time. It is history now that the fundamental law of the land was not completed within the specified deadline and the members of the 601-member Constituent Assembly arrogated to themselves the power to extend their term again and again, in the name of the “Nepali people.”, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
Apologies are not in the dictionary of Nepali politicians of any stripe. They find excuses to defend themselves or they simply blame the “transition” phase in the country to justify the anarchy and impunity going on so horrendously since six successive years of suffering set off by the seven-party alliance cobbled together and directed by a “friendly” neighbor who “never interferes” in the domestic affairs of any country and is always preoccupied in the “welfare” of Nepal and its other neighbors.
If anyone doubts India’s intentions, ask Lok Raj Baral, who is supposed to be an “expert” on Nepal-India ties or S.D. Muni, an even greater “expert” on India-Nepal ties. Both share many things in common, including political outlook and general orientation.
By now, it is predictable that whatever they do, politicians claim to be doing so on the basis of “popular mandate” they have. Former ministers and premiers had accordingly enjoyed whopping privileges and perks that now are formally declared as against the prevailing law of the land. The December 2011 Supreme Court verdict sealed the case thus.
The discriminatory nature of such practices was transparently prejudiced. While some “former” ministers and premiers were allowed expenses and facilities at the expense of the taxpayers of South Asia’s poorest and second-most corrupt nation, others were denied the same. And they are the ones who talk big on democracy, fair deal and all such rhetoric that define their duplicity in practice and boastful preaching in public.
The uncommon greed these progressive-minded and democratic politicians exhibit at every turn of opportunity generated or contrived puts to shame the corrupt in any democracy worth the universally accepted principles.
It is disputably clear that the Maoists had pocketed Rs. 1.5 billion in the names of non-existent “troops” in the cantonment in the past five years. This is a country where one has to produce many documents, put thumb-prints on a stack of papers and place signatures below them before drawing anything scenting of money. If an assigned agent were to draw the money on behalf of someone, the vetting process would be more rigorous.
Yet the Maoist leaders were allowed to draw the salaries of all visible and invisible troops at the cantonments as if the latter were mere cattle. Ram Sharan Mahat, of the Nepali Congress, did complain now and then. But he lost his voice when someone pointed out that he had done nothing to stop it when he was the finance minister. He failed to amend for the failure by raising the issue at the “legislature-parliament.” Others, too, did not raise the issue strongly for investigations. Hence Congress chief Sushil Koirala can drown himself in his own anger when he charges the Maoists of “cheating” the nation.
The issue was more than an open secret. Only the now-packed off UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal) pretended not to know about the 3000 Maoists troops. Is it any wonder, then, that the Maoists were the most vociferous in advocating the case for UNMIN’s extension?
Strangely, Ban Kyi Moon, the UN General Secretary, UNMIN officials and European governments that funded the project were highly keen for an extension. Yet Nepal had to go through the charade of “requesting” the UN for an extension. UNMIN’s Langren enjoyed the access, perks and limelight in Kathmandu and was almost in tears when she had to bid adieu after her last-ditch efforts failed.
The usually voluble UN (i.e. when it comes to Nepal) is totally silent on the missing 3000 troops. Or have they been “disappeared”? In which case, the politicized International Criminal Court and its host country should have launched investigations. Libya had a Qaddafi or two; we have many roaming about in the company of the encouraging silence of the “international community.” Yellowed be their names. Give them their daily dread of despise by the underdog. Amen.
In this regard, the moral of the lessons learnt in Nepal the “loktantra”, i.e. “people’s democracy”, is that politicians with relatively large organizations or those obtaining patronage from known but undisclosed sources can get away with anything. Individuals, who the Supreme Court found to have committed crimes, are creating a stir as their leaders in power try to scrap the court verdict for all practical purpose. The Baburam Bhattarai cabinet tried such a move but was stalled following a court order.
Those who had deluded themselves into thinking that Bhattarai was made of a different stuff than his predecessors in the prime minister’s chair were shocked; not those who had logically followed the posture and pattern of the Maoist leaders from top to bottom. Bhattarai was supposed to be the ideologue, the brain behind all major strategies and the bold who prompted the cadres to “overwhelm the enemy by any means.” How could he be different from othersin a party whose violent past is still fresh and, at times, comes out in the open?
A veteran journalist of more than 40 years’ experience and sympathies for the Nepali Congress the other week returned from Delhi where he was briefed by representatives of the Nepali community on the “conspiratorial mind” of Baburam Bhattarai, “an introvert but calculating, cunning and even mean.”
Intellectually far below the projections made in a section of the Nepali media by the ignorant and sycophants, he lives on usurious interests extracted from his “SLC Board first” tag earned 42 years ago. In fact, such tags are no longer awarded by the SLC Exams Board and Bhattarai himself has done nothing to revive the practice. Yet he does not dare to even say that the “Board first” tag should not be overestimated or overdramatized, especially by a party that at one time rejected bourgeois education that advocated status quo of the class system and continued exploitation of the vast majority of the working poor.
Sooner a later, the “mighty” are exposed for their true worth. The Maoists (including Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Baburam Bhattarai and Kiran Baidya et al) are the republic of Nepal’s emperors without clothes. You live the truth you construct. Once the truth surfaces you suffer the consequences.
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