DIG RANJAN KOIRALA CHARGED FOR WIFE'S MURDER

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DIG RANJAN KOIRALA CHARGED FOR WIFE’S MURDER

Kathmandu, 16 Feb. AFP DIG Ranjan Koirala was charged by police Thursday
For murdering his wife Gita Dhakal.last month in the capital’s outskirt.
The senior police officer’s woman companion Tara Regmi was also charged at the Kathmandu district court.
Police demanded a life sentence along with confiscation of Koirala’s
property.
Hearings will begin Friday.
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OPINION

CRAFTING A CONSTITUTION WITH A BILLOF WRONGS

Kathmandu, 16 Feb.: We can’t turn back from a federal Nepal but can’t seem to agree on the kind of states to create. So one of our brilliant political minds came up with a dazzling idea. Let’s promulgate the new constitution, setting aside that contention issue, and any other ones, for that matter, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook..
The Nepali Congress has an established tradition of taking half steps and then claiming to be the only party with the fortitude to go the full mile. Yet, Maila Baje thinks Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat’s proposal may not be as half-baked as it sounds. Nepal can’t put off indefinitely the culmination of that hopey-changey moment six springs ago.
To be honest, the political shenanigans have become too delicious to miss. The systematic mockery of constitutionalism is being supported by the paragons of democracy in the south and west, as the supposedly reactionary right finds itself the lone voice pleading for a semblance of legality on our march toward newness.
What makes things urgent for us, however, is the fact that our giant neighbors aren’t really smiling anymore. A modicum of political stability is required for the three political successions in our midst.
Up north, Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to hand over leadership to the next generation of communists at the party Congress later this year. However, Xi Jinping’s accession will only mark the beginning of the transition to the fifth generation of New China.
In India, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is searching for that propitious moment to pass the torch to Rahul Gandhi. As the party traditionally most accommodative to the Chinese, the Indian National Congress cannot afford events in Nepal to provoke any Chinese reaction that might help to spoil things.
The crucial leadership transition intersecting the two relates to the 14th Dalai Lama. His Holiness has begun the Great Withdrawal in the full knowledge that his eventual demise is likely to set off rival claimants to Great Fifteenth. To preempt Beijing, the current Dalai Lama is toying with the idea of naming a successor, perhaps even one not born inside Tibet.
The succession struggle is likely to be waged not only from Dharmasala and Beijing but also from other traditionally assertive Tibetan sects who have been overshadowed all these decades only by Tenzin Gyatso’s larger-than-life persona.
A formal if incomplete Nepali constitution, an elected government and other indicators of domestic life can give sufficient stability for the next stage of the geopolitical maneuverings.
Of course, the risks inherent in jumping the gun are obvious. Members who adopt such a constitution will have done so with their reservations. That will make it easier for some of these same people to be among the first to burn copies of the document. At least there will be a document to set ablaze.
What’s more, not all will have been lost. We can attach a bill of rights – or, more appropriately, wrongs – as and when we deem necessary. It’s not for nothing that some alien quarters have prepared themselves for at least two years of ethnic conflagration before Nepalis can decide which group’s victimhood tends to run the deepest.
Should we then agree on the model of federalism – or any other form of the state – we can keep adding them to the main document. Finding that unworkable, we would have the option of changing that. That way, hopes of everything between a people’s democratic republic and Swiss-style confederation will have been kept alive.
Sound outlandish? We’ve made enough amendments to the interim constitution to breeze through the job.
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MONEY CATAPULTED TO SWISS VAULTS

Kathmandu, 16 Feb.: Which country holds the record of collecting corrupt money from all over the world? Switzerland is the obvious answer, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.
World’s dictators, drug dealers, mafia leaders and the corrupt find the Swiss banks safe havens for their ill-gotten money. The vaults in Swiss banks are considered fail-safe protection for the money, antiques and other high value possessions.
The corrupt, tax evaders and members of criminal gangs are known to have triggered flight of capital from Nepal. Foreign bank vaults are the crux of the problem.
In the name of business secrecy, the banking sector in many “democratic” countries, rated positively much higher than the country of origin of the ill-gotten money, willingly thrive on the scheme.
The corrupt and the criminal also invest in various ventures in the economically developed world known as the “financial capitals,” although they refrain from naming Beijing in the club, notwithstanding China having been ranked as the world’s second richest country.
Had the developing countries or nations with autocratic regimes been the beneficiary of such money flowing from the industrially rich lands, their wisdom smiths would have pounded the doors for transparency and cooperation in refusing the flow of money and other forms of wealth amassed through illegal means.
Any independent and sane mind would call for returning to the rightful owners the money thus stockpiled in the infamous vaults of Switzerland, Singapore, London, Melbourne, New York, New Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore or Mumbai.
A well-connected banking talent from Europe disclosed that some Maoist leaders had “billions” stacked in different banks in the continent that sparked off the two World Wars in the first of the last century.

Brussels, Vienna, Oslo and Copenhagen are some of the “non-traditional” capitals for Nepalis depositing such capital acquired through swindling peoples of countries where corruption is very high, millions of people are impoverished and unemployment staggering.
To have such despicable transactions, particularly in countries admired by institutions like Transparency International, it should have been most unbecoming to be a conduit for money stolen from the poor citizens from countries where regular employment is a great privilege.
Most European countries since the early centuries in the first millennium were persecuted. From the 15th century onwards, “anti-Semite” was the term used for such bestiality, when insults and cruel restrictions were inflicted upon an industrious, hardworking community. The cruelty was justified in the name of religion and race superiority.
As late as the last quarter of the 19th century, a ban was put in place against Jews from putting up residence in Switzerland. Jews were no allowed to reside in Switzerland. As atonement for the sins committed then, some European nations are pursuing aggressively the profession of proselytizing.
The outflow of capital is the result of rank corruption by loud-mouthed, boastful politicians and corrupt entities in civil service and elsewhere. People have witnessed how political activists and their patrons have achieved great transformation in their lifestyles without any known means of any credible earning.
Those bulldozing their way through gun powder and muscle power have made it big at a time when securing a regular paid job has proved to be an unprecedented privilege. Recruitment policy and selection process in public institutions and the corporate sector have become a farce in the country whose bureaucracy is estimated to be infested with more than 20,000 fake academic certificate holders.
Some 15 years ago when a government secretary asserted that as many as 40,000 fake certificate holders were drawing salaries from the government, a stir was created. Casual investigations were made but it was not allowed to take a logical course.
Issuing licenses for medical colleges, nursing homes, hospitals and academic institutions have since long been a harvesting ground for bribe-seekers. Approving public tenders is the most potent source for such under-the-table deals expanded and institutionalized since the 1990s but taken to new heights of shame since 2006.
Any protest began to be described as an effort at “derailing full-fledged democracy”. At least 80 per cent of the tender quotations government institutions called for were monopolized by the muscle power brandished by political activists.
Competitors were prevented from submitting their quotations. Often, they were not allowed to procure the quotation forms. INGOs which descended upon Nepal in their many guises to advise us in every aspect of life did not speak against the practices.
Quite a few of the funding agencies patronized the sister organizations of these hooligans. While calling for “inclusiveness,” priority is given to the apostate. However, such favored recruits are to “donate” at least one-fifth of their salaries for the “welfare” cause of other sectarian issues.
A couple of such donors confided to this author that they had no option but to oblige in order to avoid the risk of being given the sack order. Transparency International does not see such malpractice; if it did, its funding would dry up and claim its very dissolution.
A number of “human rights” organizations and “civil society” groups, affiliated to political parties, receive regular grants as reliable partners that unquestioningly take up the issues and agendas conceived by those distributing the largesse.
In return, the local puppets are most prompt in promoting and defending the funding agency agendas without any qualms. Ciphers have no ethics and those funding them do not mind the violent activity unleashed by “civil society” groups and “leading” political parties.
Arson, beatings and forced closures are a norm rather than an exception in notorious “bandh” activity. Neither the police nor the human rights activists see such violence taking place during the “peaceful” closure across the country.
The prevailing conditions are ideal for the corrupt and hoodlum. Or is it that public response to their limelight-seeking effort is too lukewarm in these times of chilly weather for gathering any hope of momentum a la India’s Anna Hazare who has a huge following? Individual credibility is what counts most; claim alone is of little meaning.
Any hope for novelty in political leaders in the new scheme of things has died down. Those in power have lost its luster, having betrayed their postures too early for any benefit of the doubt.
Five governments in five years have only worsened the situation. At first they said it would take time and they warned of “reactionaries” trying to fish in troubled waters. Now their empty excuses have exhausted and the nation is ready for a new, positive swing.
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