NEPAL ENTERS FINAL IN WOMEN CRICKET CHAMPIONSHIP; PLAYS THAILAND FOR TITLE

UPDATE NEPAL ENTERS WOMEN CRICKET FINAL; PLAYS THAILAND FOR CHAMPIONSHIP
Kathmandu, 9 Feb : Nepal defeated Bhutan by three wickets Thursday in Kuwait with two balls remaining to enter the final of the Women ACC U-19 cricket tournament.
Nepal will play Thailand in the final Friday.
Bhutan elected to bat after winning the toss and scored 96 for seven wickets.
Nepal chased a 97 run chase and scored the required runs with two balls to spare.
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INTERVIEW

STATE OF OUR PEACE WAR

Kathmandu, 9 Feb.: For a people struggling to hope for the best, peace in pieces looks better than nothing. Still, you are forced to wonder: what exactly is it that we have been collectively seeking?, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook
For the mainstream parties, the peace process was something to hit back at the monarchy with. The Maoists rebels, after a decade-long spree of murder and mayhem to impose Year Zero, went along because their principal external patron shared that sentiment, all the while hedging its bets.
Today, the international community is still anxious to see the integration of the state and former rebel armies as the most compelling evidence of peace. But their original resolve has fizzled. This comes at a time when fewer and fewer ex-fighters seem to consider that as a prerequisite to peace.
The human rights wings of the international community want to see that part of their agenda on the front-burner, something their cousins in the non-state sector are far more incendiary in asserting. Words like justice and reconciliation would have retained their sonorous ring if the truth of it all had not kept shifting so swiftly.
Over half a decade later, a chastened but still bickering Nepali Congress wants the Maoists to prove their commitment to the democratic process, despite the fact that the voters validated those credentials by electing them the largest party. True, that mandate was not eternal. But then there is little else to go on.
Even then, the Nepali Congress wears a far more substantive aura than the UML, which does not seem to know what it wants from the ex-rebels. Yet it cannot resist proclaiming that it is the only party that can drive the nation.
The Indians wanted the Maoists sidelined because they had envisaged the ex-rebels merely as something that would propel the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) protests beyond Ratna Park. The SPA’s subsequent performance fell far short of New Delhi’s expectations, while the ex-rebels’ geopolitical drift proved intolerable.
The mainstream parties may have succeeded in pulling the Maoists to their own level of ordinariness. But they did little to foil the ex-rebels’ overtures to Chinese pragmatism. Beijing, which once helped the palace and the parties in their effort to crush the rebels, today wants the Great Helmsman’s local offspring to head a broad patriotic front. In response, New Delhi is fanning the factional battles within the Maoists.
The Americans want the ex-rebels to maintain equidistance between the regional behemoths and have been extending a lateral hand in all directions. The Europeans, Russians, Japanese, Pakistanis, Arabs are all staking their claims in the emerging dynamics.
The international left is more interested in peddling such pet issues as homosexuality and abortion – not to mention that perfect watermelon, environmentalism – as the defining characteristics of Nepal’s newness over
everything else.
The global right is not only resisting with full force, but the evangelical variant also wants to spread the Good News in such a way that there is no Second Going.
And still we are at a loss. What do Nepalis want?
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REPENTING IN LEISURE
Kathmandu, 9 Feb.: Society is a product of its past—foibles, follies, fads, ups and downs. Nepal’s existing political sphere is one of desperate times and desperate leaders. Public disenchantment with political parties is at its nadir, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Revies.
Nepal’s political leaders are beaten to within an inch of their credibility. Maoists and their second fiddles rose to power in a republic from the heap of 16,000 lives and hundreds of thousands of other victims.
Other parties were either directly involved in such “people’s war” or endorsed it almost a decade later not out of any conviction but simply out of desperation and expediency.
The existing political sphere witnesses desperate times and desperate leaders. Public disenchantment with political parties is at its nadir in the absence of peace and justice, right to work and other economic rewards.
Maoists have nothing radical or revolutionary to improve the lot of the people. The CPN (UML) has nothing progressive to accelerate development pace. The Nepali Congress offers nothing consistently democratic to put a stop to granting favours to a chosen few rather than meritorious ones.
The republic of “Loktantrik” Nepal is paired with instability, impunity and corruption. Who will right the wrongs and ills? Expecting the existing politicians to rise to the occasion is like a sacrificial goat pleading for the butcher’s mercy.
Seven years ago this day, King Gyanendra had taken over the reins of power when a duly elected government led by NC’s Sher Bahadur Deuba had dissolved the House of Representatives but failed to hold elections at the time promised and was dismissed. He promised to restore peace and was nominated to head an unelected government. He failed, as always, and got the sack. Surya Bahadur Thapa and Lokendra Bahadur Chand also failed.
The King, chairing an interim cabinet, asked for three years to tide over the situation enabling the restoration of normalcy. He declared a state of emergency which was scrapped after three months, unlike “democratic” Deuba who clamped emergency for nine months and would have prolonged it, had the king not advised him otherwise.
NC, UML and other riffraff parties campaigned for restoring a duly, democratically dissolved house. The people did not respond to them. The Maoists, with their leaders like Pushpa Kamal Dahal, in their cozy residence in NOIDA, on the outskirts of New Delhi, got more than a wink from the “friendly country” government.
Street demonstrations in Kathmandu suddenly got aggressive and violent. King Gyanendra was cursed, demonized, degraded and compelled to announce the restoration of the dissolved House. That was the beginning of the series of unconstitutional measures that followed.
Issues that were not raised during the movement found place subsequently. Subas Nemwang and others were keen to do away with the “Hindu State” clause in the interim constitution. Federalism on the basis of ethnicity was an idea floated by the supposedly godless Maoists proxying for Christianity-promoting agencies.
Some of the Maoist leaders serving as pastors were bent on introducing provisions in the interim constitution even if they were not raised during the movement. The NC and UML acted like rubber stamps, endorsing anything brought forth by the Maoists who, they used to term as terrorists when they were in power only a few years earlier.
In early 2006, local elections were held amidst boycott and threats by the “democratic”, “progressive” and “revolutionary” parties. NC’s Girija Prasad Koirala, according to Pushpa Kamal Dahal, was pleading to the Maoist supremo to “bump off” some of the contestants so that voters would keep away from the polling booths. Efforts to this effect were made but the polls went off fairly well and the international poll observers could not find fault with it.
Only 20 percent of the voters turned out to cast their ballots but this was a tremendous record. We have this record on the Indian side of Kashmir where only 13 percent of voters could cast their ballots for the state assembly. In Nepal’s first general elections in 1959, 38 percent voters turned out, although the NC won two-thirds seats with the less than 15 per cent of the total eligible voters.
The difference between the 1958 general elections and the 2006 local polls was that, while the first did not face any boycott, the latter faced not only boycott but an intense climate of threats and intimidation by parties that overbearingly call themselves “democratic”.
Almost six years have elapsed since the “historic” changes have taken place. Since any incident is history once it occurs, the changes witnessed since 2006 are automatically “historic”. But have they really been worthwhile?
Food prices have soared. Drinking water tariff several times over what was demanded previously. Prime Minister Bhattarai’s wife takes the credit for the hardships when she was a minister earlier. Bhattarai himself is talking of raising electricity tariff by 20 percent. He is also pushing for diesel plant to ease the 14-hour daily shedding of electricity supply. Previously, he used to oppose such ideas. But then he has changed many of the ideas he used to hold in public earlier.
Nepalis have been paired with instability, impunity and depravity. At least three secretaries at various ministries have resigned, as they could not bear the unauthorized interference by their ministerial bosses.
It is, therefore, no surprise that corruption is rampant. About 53.5 percent Nepalis, according to Transparency International, feel that corruption has increased since 2008, i.e. in republican Nepal.
According to Berlin-headquartered TI, political parties are the most corrupt institutions in Nepal. More than 53 percent of the respondents surveyed thought that political parties were the most corrupt institutions. The legislators and the police took the infamous second and third spots respectively. This makes us the second most corrupt nation in South Asia, next only to Afghanistan.
Another survey conducted by former Chief Secretary Bimal Koirala and a Harvard teaching faculty member found corruption in the village development committees to be 80 percent. Apparently, TI is making a charitable assessment of Nepal’s status assessment as South Asia’s second most corrupt. The VDCs are being run by the major political parties. So one does not have to overstretch one’s imagination as to where has the money gone to.
Where have the anti-corruption campaigners gone, spearheaded by some broadcast journalists, ex-bureaucrats and the like? One of them, Rameshwar Khanal has been roped in by the Bhattarai team as the premier’s advisor. Perhaps they need another set of white jerseys to revive their zeal for the campaign and curse that “germs” punish them.
As the silver in the dark cloud, however, the Maoists in particular and the rest in general have been exposed to the bone.
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