PM ASKS PARTIES TO HELP COMPLETE PEACE, CONSTITUTION

PM ASKS PARTIES TO COMPLETE PEACE AND CONSTITUTION

Kathmandu, 7 April Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai urged parties
Saturday in a statement issued through an aide to complete the twin tasks of completing the peace process and constitution drafting.
Bhattarai said he was ‘disappointed with ‘the reluctance’ of the leaders and added there’s no alternative to complete the tasks by the deadline.
April 12 and 27 May are the immediate deadlines.
Parties agreed to complete integration and retirement of 9,900 plus Maoist former combatants by 12 April to complete a peace process.
Bhattarai said a special committee he heads meets Sunday to discuss
integration; Big Three will also meet Sunday to push peace and constitution, he added.

The agenda for the talks is the formation of a truth and reconciliation
commission and commission to investigate disappearances and resolve all disputes on army integration, Bhattarai added..
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OPINION

INTERIM CONSTITUTION IN PERPETUITY

Kathmandu, 7 April: Just as tenacious doubters were beginning to reconcile themselves to the possibility of an abbreviated constitution being promulgated by the May 27 deadline, ethnic activists have fired their salvo. A full-throttled conflict would be inevitable, they say, if the exalted promise of federalism were to be tampered with in any way, Maila Baje writes in Nepali Netbook..
In case you missed it, the lack of consensus on the kind of federalism that would suit us best is at the heart of the realization that a partial constitution would be better than none.
Why not then, you may ask, promulgate a constitution that would encompass the different models of federalism in turn. If the ethnic variety turns out to be as unworkable as its critics say, the geographic variant could be adopted next. There are no limits to the number of amendments you could contemplate once the basic law is enacted. That way, the federalism debate, too, could persist. Maybe someone might think up just the right kind of model.
A trivialization of the task? Look at the broader picture. No matter how the constitution were to look – full or truncated – chances are that it would be greeted by a surfeit of bonfires. Many of the people who were part of the process will find it politically expedient to oppose the constitution in the most inflammatory form possible.
Perhaps, then, the smoldering fragments could provide the basis for further amendments. Take this out, put that in, in, say, six-monthly cycles. The Big Three could take collective leadership of a mechanism overseeing the changes.
Where would such a document draw its legitimacy from, you ask? The interim constitution, of course. That document was born to live until we spawned a formal constitution. With work still in progress, it would be imprudent to invalidate the interim statute, wouldn’t it?
Even by the standards of the general cockamamie going around, Maila Baje acknowledges, this approach sounds crazy. But it would sound less so once you considered the alternative. A full-fledged conflict among the various contenders would make the Maoist conflict look like a walk in the park. At least that was a battle between two clear and identifiable combatants with sharp objectives. (What was the last count of the number of armed groups active in the country, anyone?)
True, there is a bright side to renewed fighting. For one, the country would be able to recognize real grievances from the ones contrived on an industrial scale. Those prepared to fight the hardest and longest for their cause might not be the ones with the deepest convictions.
As we have learned from the Maoist and Nepali Congress insurgencies, external uncontrollable variables have to be factored in heavily. In the given circumstances, however, where the closest of the foreign hands have begun to tremble a bit, the ferocity of the fighting should be a sufficient pointer to who might prevail and how – and what the rest could do.
The obvious downside here is our collective traditional propensity to compromise midway, sometimes even settling on issues that were never part of the original objectives. But if compromise we must, what better way than to
perpetualize the interim constitution?
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JIGME LIVING IN BORROWED TIME

By Trikal Vastavik

Kathmandu, 7 April. Bhutan’s Jigme Singay Wangchuck, who abdicated the throne in favor of his son Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck in the opening decade of the new millennium, used to brief the late King Birendra that his country closely watched the developments in Nepal to learn from her “experiences.” He said this on at least two occasions.
Bhutan’s former absolute monarch, who was the chief guest of India’s Republic Day celebrations twice, is now an active advisor to his newlywed son. Apart from regularly cycling around the capital Thimpu’s streets with security guards some metres behind, he keeps himself well-informed about events in India, Nepal and China. He also takes particular interest in the Gorkhaland movement in
Darjeeling and periphery, Trikal Vastavik writes in People’s Review..
The royal regime has managed to deflect much of the criticism against an outdated political system where the king wields absolute powers, and the extended royal family and its coterie lead the most luxurious lifestyle among South Asian heads of state and government.
It also goes out of the way to put journalists working for the international media in good humor. Little wonder, then, that the New York Times’ Barbara Crossett used to gush over the regime. Politicians and foreign journalists make a beeline to be invited for a study tour in Bhutan. The trips are made quiet affairs by not publicizing them. This is what the potential “cultural ambassadors” like the most to maintain the façade of their “critical credentials” intact.
We also get to read international groups lauding the “gross national happiness index” in that impoverished country that competes with Nepal as one of the world’s poorest nations. The royal regime is far more powerful than the absolute monarchs ever were in Nepal after the ushering in of democracy in 1951. Bhutan came under India’s protection in 1949 for advice on foreign and defense policies.
However, two small bombs set off near the border with India around time of the royal wedding were reminders to the rulers and their foreign patrons about the “Gross National Sufferings” of the vast majority of the Bhutani people.
The international media refer to the royal regime in laudatory terms, turning a Nelson’s eye to human rights violations, suppression and exploitation of the people who find it a grinding task in eking out a living. Describing King Namgyal’s wedding in October last year as an “emotional moment for the adoring” crowds, the French national news agency, a government subsidized entity, wrote about the event, “It has brought joy to the people, who idolize the royal family. Cheerfulness abounds on the streets of the country that invented “Gross national happiness.”
Indian politicians do not disturb the regime in Thimpu with criticisms and demands for democracy. This is in deference to the 1949 treaty that keeps New Delhi busy advising the royal regime on foreign policy and security system. When commenting on other neighboring countries, these very ones make vehemently critical remarks based entirely on what the South Block briefs them. This could be their sense and definition of “national interest and patriotism.”
The European Union and the Americans who make a lot of noises in what are supposed to be “international opinion” on what Nepal should do and what she should not, are shamefully silent over the suppression of Bhutani in general and ethnic Nepalis in particular.
Till the late 1980s the Nepalis in Bhutan were a majority population. Today, they are reduced to a minority, with about a sixth of the country’s total population having been driven out to live as refugees in Nepal and other parts of the world. The European Union and the United States do not exert pressure on the dictators in Thimpu to introduce reforms of an inclusive and democratic system of governance.
The British and Scandinavian nations, which since five years have been working tirelessly in Nepal for a federal system of governance, dare not raise a similar issue for Bhutan. For the US and Britain have agreed to treat Bhutan as an Indian lake, even if of an authoritarian make. New Delhi wants others to stay off, and the latter have decided to appease the “emerging” Asian power.
Bhutani sources claim that a number of Nepali politicians, youth leaders and journalists make it a point to dine and wine with the Bhutani mission staff at Chanakya Puri enclave whenever they travel to New Delhi.
During King Jigme Singay’s time, international non-governmental organizations were screened closely and not allowed to interfere in local policies and politics. His successor has given continuity to the policy with greater zeal. The royal regime is suspicious that international agencies might stir local trouble to raise human rights issues, political democratization and inclusiveness. It has seen how international funding agencies routed their funds through local non-governmental organizations in Nepal and invaded the hitherto peaceful country with agendas that are now passed as “transitory” problems.
Bhutani royals do not want to replicate the “loktantrik successes” in Nepal in order to prevent foreign forces hijack indigenous agendas and substituting them with the latter’s own. They fear that foreign funding agencies, most of whom obtain money from their governments’ blessings, will buy the local elite to front for foreign activities.
During a chat with a well-placed Bhutani official in an Asian capital sometime ago, this author was told that Nepalis (locally called Lhotsampas) were distrusted for a variety of reasons. They recall how Sikkim was gobbled up in 1975 and blame ethnic Nepalis for the Himalayan state’s independent identity.
Bhutani royals are living in borrowed times. Jigme Namgyal is the fifth in the line of the kings so far in the dynasty’s century-old annals. For a generation or two, the self-defined and proclaimed data of the so-called gross happiness index might be received in silence. It will be different as people begin to assert their conscience and fighting spirit to demand their rights, political reforms and justice.
If Bhutan’s definition of gross happiness index were to be accepted, it would imply that absolute monarchy and exclusion fetch greater happiness than democracy. If silence were to be interpreted as an endorsement, most human rights groups and democratic governments would seem to be mulling over the idea of accepting a political system similar to Bhutan’s.
But the ones who laud the Bhutani index of happiness are strangely silent over the issue of championing such a cause among themselves and other parts of the world. Duplicity and conspiracy are behind all this.
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