MAOIST, MADESHSBADI FRONT TALKS UPDATE

UCPN-Maoist‚ UDMF Leaders Hold Talks on 4-pt Deal

Kathmandu, 8 March: A meeting on contemporary issues has been held between leaders of the UCPN-Maoist and Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) at the prime minister’s official residence at Baluwatar, on Thursday, RSS reports.
According to Acting Chairman of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Republican Raj Kishor Yadav, the meeting held discussions on implementing four-point agreement made between Madhesi Morcha and the UCPN-Maoist in the past.
During the meeting, Chairman of the UCPN-Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai said that they are ready to implement the previous four-point agreement, according to Yadav.
Yadav added that consensus was forged among UCPN-Maoist and Morcha to move ahead for resolving problems of citizenship by amending laws.
Quoting the prime minister, he said that the prime minister would appoint Minister for Information and Communications as soon as possible after his party recommends name for the vacant ministerial post.
Post of the Minister for Information and Communications is vacant after Chairman of MJF-Republican and Minister for Information and Communications Jay Prakash Prasad Gupta was sent to jail on corruption charges.
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OPINION
TAKEOVER TALKS—HERE AND THERE

Kathmandu, 8 March: Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai sees a vast right-wing conspiracy to reverse the Nepali people’s hard-won gains and is exhibiting ever greater anxiety by the day. Yet, some people in the Philippines, acknowledging our Maoists as out-and-out victors, are warning of a Nepal-like communist takeover in their archipelago nation, Maila Baje writes in reports. Nepali Netbook.
Pastor Alcover, a legislator representing the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy, has urged his country’s military to “wake up because what happened in Nepal might happen in this country.”
That fear centers on the intentions of Jose Mari Sison, the exiled founder of the Philippines’ Maoists. President Benigno Aquino III confirmed the other day that Sison would be returning home, but only after a formal and comprehensive peace agreement is signed between the government and the National Democratic Front (NDF), a coalition of far-left groups including the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Both the government and the NDF are playing down the prospects of an imminent breakthrough. Still, there has been persistent speculation that Sison, who has been in a self-imposed exile in Utrecht, Netherlands, since 1988, may have already entered the country. Sison and the Philippine military both have denied the report, describing it as part of a disinformation campaign.
Alcover, however, believes that not only is Sison already in the country but that he and his allies in the legislative branches and key positions in government are already consolidating power.
In April 2008, congratulating our Maoists on their electoral victory, Sison expressed hope that the CPN (Maoist) and the people of Nepal “would play a crucial role in promoting the advance of movements for national liberation, democracy, social justice, development and peace against imperialism and reaction.”
Following the inauguration of President Aquino in June 2010, Sison’s NDF made an optimistic start to peace talks. Mercifully, our Maoists did not take credit for having nudged their cousins along the peace path. (Nor could they. The Nepali Maoists were already being denounced by their more radical brethren for having betrayed the cause.)
The Philippine talks soon hit a roadblock and remain stalled over demands by the NDF that the government reinstate certain peace negotiators representing the rebel panel and grant them immunity from arrest.
President Aquino is said to have offered Sison a senior position in the cabinet in an effort to end the country’s long-running communist insurgency. According to Alcover, however, a Nepal-style takeover is already being plotted, which could lead to the ouster of President Aquino.
“Nepal’s parliament has been taken over by Maoist communists that ordered the integration of the rebels into that country’s armed forces and the army chief was kicked out,” Alcover said. “So, [in our case] the military should wake up, wake up, wake up.”
Some sources suggest the Philippine armed forces are split between supporters of Aquino and those of his predecessor Gloria Arroyo, advocates and opponents respectively of peace talks with the communists. Adding to the confusion are reports that Sison himself may have lost control of the NDF and the communists’ armed wing, the New People’s Army.
Our Maoists probably aren’t too eager to point out the holes in Alcover’s narration of events. But a Nepal-style takeover in the Philippines? Just take one measure of the integration mess our ex-rebels are in.
Comrade C.P. Gajurel, who seems to be quite familiar with Sison from the picture above, intimated to us just the other day that had Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal still retained his military position, he would have merited little more than a major’s post in the national army.
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Kathmandu, 8 March: Police held at least 24 Holi revelers from different parts of Morang district for their alleged involvement in hooliganism, RSS reports from Biratnagar.
District Police Office, Morang, said traffic rules violators, drunkards and people challenging social harmony in the name of Holi celebrations have been booked.
Police said, however, cases of misbehavior with women and girls are rarely reported, thanks to rising police surveillance.
Similarly, Holi, the colour of festival, is being marked from early this morning by smearing colours to each other and offering delicious dishes.
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MARKETING FOR RELIGION AND RICHES
y Trikaal Vastavik
Kathmandu, 8 March:Religious conversion in Nepal is an issue that seems to be taboo for the so-called civil society leaders who basically pitch their camps in the capital and hog the media limelight mouthing slogans fostered by foreign funding agencies with their own agendas, Trikaal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
Those who promote talk of “secularism” are the ones behind funding Nepali NGOs in upholding their agendas that make religious conversion an easy process through allurements. This author is no chaste man of religion, even if not totally a rationalist. But he is bothered by the scheming of the so-called do-gooders with pots of money to throw around for their agenda of a fast track to religion conversion, i.e. from Hinduism to Christianity.
Quite a few INGOs and their local NGOs who have turned themselves to upholding such cause are bolstered by a recent report shared and discussed by the like-minded in their community networking to push forth measures in Nepal that make things smoother for their missionary work. The zeal is endorsed by the fact that the number of churches has increased seven times in the last five years especially in the hills districts.
Since the Tarai is found to be a tough nut to crack for proselytizing, the strategy is to encourage indigenous people to opt for Buddhism. This way the missionary zealots hope for their long-term goal to be “gradually easier.” The confidence in the religion-focused organizations is echoed by public announcements we now and then get to read in newspapers when vacancies for relatively well-paid jobs are declared, project proposals invited and tender bids called for.
More often than not, those who pray for their daily bread land in such jobs in this country where educated unemployment is high and is destined to grow to crisis proportions inviting nationwide repercussions within the next ten years that will produce some five additional million job-seekers having passed 12 years of formal education at schools and yearning to join the job market. Two million of them will be carrying Bachelor’s degrees in various disciplines.
A woman working at an international agency complained to this author last month that she had to “donate” a quarter of her salary to a fund that went for the benefit of other liberated souls not fortunate to have regular incomes or proper education. The emphasis on “inclusiveness” is tailored to serve the religion-based agenda instead of purely social and economic intentions. This sort of practices elsewhere would have been condemned by these very organizations in the name of fair deal. The end apparently justifies the duplicity!
It is easy to understand why federalism and secularism are the issues Western countries cherish and promote. They were able to inspire the insertion of the “secular” clause in the Interim Constitution in the same vein. They were not against monarchy in Nepal as such but against Hindu monarchy.
A senior member of RPP-Nepal had a point when he said, “If our party joined the INGO agenda on secularism, resources would be no problem. Scholarships, funds, recognitions and awards would land at our doorsteps. But that means selling one’s soul for a wrong cause.” The motive is not good governance but ways and means of “liberating” Nepali souls to the “truly enlightening religious path.” Families of Nepalis serving or having served in foreign troops are also targeted.
The inquisition promises liberation, better job prospects and other rewards. To begin with, the policy is to ensure that at least one member in a family having joined the “true faith” is given regular employment with good pay, the children are admitted to schools that provide good education, or those with good education are given scholarships to study abroad. Expatriates of the same religion also help out relentlessly. The posts of watchmen, help maids, cooks and vehicle drivers in and outside Kathmandu Valley are favored to the birds of the same faith.
Sponsorships for studies abroad seem to be easy to get hold of when it comes to the mission in question. Recommendations are nothing more than nepotism that affects foreign embassies, INGOs and agencies and academic institutions in the Christian-dominated lands.
Some of these INGOs collect money through illegal trade. Trophies of rare and extinct animals and birds change hands through some INGO members. It is said that, in the course of repair works at Swayambhunath, 90 million rupees worth of dust was exported to followers of Buddhism by foreign nationals who had set up front organizations in Nepal.
This also brings to notice Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal heading Lumbini development committee. Is the communist leader taking the venture as a commercial enterprise to promote tourism or to promote Lumbini as the birth place of the Light of the World? Maoists are also very keen to lord over the Pashupati area development committee.
Nepal had always been a place of great religious tolerance with the best of record in the whole of South Asia. This may change in the days to come. Fundamentalists in the guise of “secularism” are contributing to cracks in the harmonious culture so novel and glorious. Voting along the line of religion was covertly registered in the 2008 elections. We should seek the services of people like Ek Raj Dhakal for ways of promoting global peace and avoiding religious bias. Block votes for proportional representation is likely to gain ground the next time even more.
India has two seats reserved for Christians in Lok Sabha since the promulgation of its 1950 Constitution. Coming from the world’s “largest secular country,” this may sound strange but it is perfectly right for the “secularists” in the Western world. There are many other religious minorities in India but they do not have the privilege of being offered two seats from among their communities. Thanks to Lady Edwina with whom independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru had close ties, the reservations of seats for the Christian community got adopted. Egypt under the now-disgraced Hosni Mubarak was more secular than it is likely to be in the aftermath of what is described by the Western press as the Arab Spring that saw a revolt against tyranny in Tunisia and other North African and Middle-East states in 2011. Similar was the condition in Libya under Col. Moammer Kadhafi. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was also more secular than it is under the present foreign-backed regime in Baghdad.
But the business contracts the Western forces have obtained from Libya and Iraq more than compensate those upholding the 21st century inquisition.
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