FIRE CAUSES HAVOC Kathmandu, 28 April: Raging fires have destroyed assets and created havoc. Over two dozen community forests in Surkhet district have been destroyed by wildfires that have been raging with increasing summer heat, RSS reports from the far-West district.. These many forests at Ghoreta, Agrigaon, Bajedi Chaur, Dandakhali, Kaprichaur, Rakam and neighbouring villages in the east of the district have been ravaged by fire. Similarly, more than a dozen community forests in Gadhi, Uttar Ganga, Latikoili, Babiyachaur, Satakhani, Taranga and Gutu, among other Village Development Committees (VDCs) bordering with Surkhet Municipality have been destroyed by fire. Valuable herbs and medicinal plants and the Sal, Sisau and Khayar trees as well as vast flora and fauna have been ruined by these wildfires. The pine resin collected by different companies in these community forests has also been destroyed by fire, causing hundreds of thousands of rupees of loss to them. The fires are still raging and gradually spreading towards settlements despite efforts by locals to extinguish these, said a local from Gadhi VDC. At least 35 houses were destroyed by a fire a Korahariya village in Kapilvastu on Saturday afternoon. The village is 50km away from district headquarter. Firefighters brought the fire under control at five in the afternoon. Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and Nepali Army personnel helped fight the fire. At least 150 houses were destroyed at a fire at Shivanagar village, Bariyarpatti, in Siraha Suturday. The fire started at a house while cooking. The village in 17km away from district headquarter. Complete reports haven’t filtered into the capital yet. An animal shed caught hire at Bhajakhet in Lamjung killing a 65-year-ild woman, Fifty goats and chicken were killed. Nnnn OPINION ENOUGH IS ENOUGH Kathmandu, 28 April: The red carpet welcome the Maoists, the NC and the CPN (UML) unrolled for themselves in the mid-spring of 2006 has shrunk into invisibility. In a functioning democracy, authority is not exercised by merely a few. In situations like those prevailing in Nepal, factors of expediency are condoned in the uncertain days and ways of “transition” that condones no reason of certainty, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review.. Diversity and inclusiveness should not invite adversity; secularism should not be to actively promote a particular religion through the use of money; and federalism should not risk communalism and disintegration. In developing countries, political leaders pledge to abide by probity and austerity, and create conditions for competence and experience to shop in performance or service delivery. A scribe not long ago raised a very valid issue in an English broadsheet daily: “The ‘civil society’ we are talking about now in Nepal was artificially created by the media, after the February 2005 coup by the then king. However, because it was artificial, it was bound to fall…these individuals representing the civil society in a certain period of time have no civic constituency of their own.” Many so-called civil society leaders fall flat before INGOs with money bags and promoting dubious hidden agendas. Some of these agencies are involved in intelligence gathering. There are at least 50 such agencies that are actually doing intelligence work. The situation is so bad that almost nothing can be done against their wishes and objectives. Party workers are recruited to lucrative posts and their ‘gurus’ are commissioned well-paid consultancy work that prevents investigations and action against the illegally operating agencies,” said a highly placed security personnel. Only the privileged can afford to become globe-trotters to see with their own eyes the basic democratic elements in action. Most Nepalis have to be satisfied with incessant assurances from power brokers that “immense achievements” have already been made “as per the aspirations of the people who had made immense sacrifices.” Such self-praise based on entirely false assessments has been exposed for its hollowness, and hence the sense of nervousness among the major political parties that have led the Nepali people through the garden path for six years and have the audacity to continue claiming that “great achievements” have been made. People have begun to see through the game. Prices of basic necessities have gone sky high (petroleum prices have been raised seven times in a year, something that never happened any time previously in the country’s history), unemployment queues are lengthening every day and there is no sign that it will be reduced for at least the next decade; corruption is the worst ever; and impunity makes a mockery of the promises and performances of political party leaders and their sycophants. This is in contrast to the more than 16,000 Nepalis who made the supreme sacrifices of their lives. Hundreds of the thousands of people suffered in other forms and the nation as a whole have had to bear the brunt of the destruction and deaths caused by the so-called “people’s war” which was acknowledged as a “loktantra movement” by the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML). Most of the top Maoist leaders, their family members and their relatives not only survived but have thrived to the extent that has taken their cadres aback by the lifestyle they have been habituated to. That most Maoist activists in the districts languish in poverty and the family members of the dead have to forage for their daily food despite the grinding work they do is an excruciating irony. Under the existing situation, it will take a long, long time for a functioning democracy to finally arrive in Nepal no matter the high-pitch note rendered by politicians that “loktantra” has not only arrived but is experienced everywhere. To deny that there is no democracy in the country would mean attracting criticism from power brokers and goons who warn that only “repressive and rightist forces who do not love their country and welfare of the people” would make such a claim. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has turned out to be the worst among the five premiers who headed the government since the ushering in of the ambiguous and undefined “loktantra.” He even talked of a merger with either China or India if the Nepal did not move with the fast-paced developments in this region. Earlier, he had said he “gambled” with the widely criticized BIPPA with India. On the eve of his Delhi trip, he had promised to the Nepali people that he would not to sign anything controversial. He took office pledging that he would constitute a consensus national government. Today, he is farther from achieving such a team than any time previously. He is a big boast swimming on bubbles that burst in public and has become a burden even to his own party. The Maoist led government is a disaster, unable to satisfy many of its own senior leaders. When Bhattarai’s own colleagues are vehemently critical of his failures and they say so repeatedly at public programs, the logical course would have been for the prime minister to have convinced his party as a united team rather than an unwieldy “front”. Bhattarai ate the humble pie when he abruptly had to withdraw an Extradition Bill on February 17 after his own party faction that it would ensure the “unpatriotic” bill’s defeat. It was an insult he bore to cling on to power. He has lost his pride and dignity because of his sense of “responsibility” to the nation. His party comrade CP Gajurel announced that the government was on a ventilator at an ICU, waiting to be formally declared dead. What are we lesser immortals to make of all this? Are we to believe that someone who cannot succeed in building a consensus in his own party will actually bring about consensus among major rival political parties? A combination of animosity, brutality and incompetence has affected all major political forces. Maoists backslide as soon as they reach an accord with the NC and the UML. This might be unreliability at the steep but then the once domineering groups have only themselves to blame for surrendering their democratic advantages and the principles they had been mouthing for at least 15 years. In short, the game’s up and Nepalis have begun to search for a credible alternative on the basis of what they have been promised so far and delivered by various political groups for more than 60 years. nnnn