SMOOTH ARMY HANDOVER OF ARMY CONTROL THIS TIME AROUND Kathmandu, 9 ,Aug.: Lt. Gen Gaurav Shumshere Rana takes charge as Acting Army Chief Thursday from Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Chhatra Man Singh Gurung. Repeating tradition, Gen. Gurung Wednesday introduced his successor to President Ram Baran Yadav, the Supreme Commander of the Nepali Army. he force. Gen. Gurung goes on leave Thursday prior to retirement one month later. The handover will be smooth this time around. Top Indian diplomat Shyam Sharan revealed recently India intervened on behalf of Gen Rukmangud Katwal when Prime Minister Prachanda and also Maoist Chief sacked Katawal. President and parties that lobbied on behalf of Katawal and even Maoists have maintained a stoic silence on the claim. UML them opposed presidential intervention but later remained silent. Retired Army Chief Katawal hasn’t also commented on the embarrassing Sharan claim. nnnn NEPAL SLIPS IN FIFA RANKING Kathmandu, 9 Aug.: Nepal is ranked 162nd in latest FIFA monthly ranking issued Wednesday losing seven spots. Nepal is ranked second in south Asia after Maldives. Spain again tops the list even after a loss in the London Olympics. nnnn PM's GOOD GOVERNANCE PROGRAMME A FIASCO Kathmandu, 9 Aug.: The much-hyped good governance plan of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has been a fiasco, with most of the time-bound schemes failing to see the light of the day even after six months of their announcement on January 27, Kiran Chapagain writes in Republica. . In his bid to implement one of his four priorities announced shortly after appointment to the top executive post on August 28 last year, the prime minister had unveiled a comprehensive good governance plan comprising 23 time-bound main programs. But, as of Wednesday, only four programs have been implemented. While some of the programs are supposed to be implemented immediately, the rests were to be implemented either within three months or six months. According to a report prepared by the Prime Minister´s Office, works have not even been started on 13 programs though preliminary works have been begun on six. One of the good governance plans of the prime minister was establishing 75 integrated service centers across the country within six months (July 27). But only four such centers have been set up. Similarly, another plan was to brining the regional administration offices under the Prime Minister´s office. Though the offices have been brought under the PMO, the details of the arrangements have yet to be worked out, according to an informed source at the Prime Minister´s Office. The third plan was monitoring of the implementation of the code of conduct of ministers and civil servants but such monitoring is yet to start, according to the monitoring report. Likewise, the prime minister´s plan had promised to develop citizen charters within three months specifying compensation to people if they were not provided service on time. Though the PMO and all the ministries were supposed to implement it, there has been no progress on it, according to the source. Another plan related to filling vacant posts in local bodies has also been limited only to the papers. In addition, the government was supposed to finalize a political mechanism to run the local bodies until another election of local bodies. But not a single stone has been turned in these regards, according to PMO source. "We have done some administrative works in this regard but organization and management survey have not been carried out. The new posts cannot be created and filled in the absence of such a survey," said Secretary at the Local Development Ministry Shital Babu Regmi. Another good government program was to reduce the existing public holidays so that the government offices would have more time to deliver service to people. "We had recommended the government to slash the public holiday by fifty percent. We are surprised to learn that cabinet increased the public holiday, adding one more in the existing 52 days of public holiday," said a source at the Ministry of Home Affairs privy to the development. Likewise, the plan had promised to introduce result-oriented work performance system in public service, but the PMO source told Republica that only preliminary work has been done in this regard. The list of the unimplemented plans goes on. The PMO and the Ministry of Finance Ministry were supposed to develop result-oriented indicators of all annual programs and regular service delivery by all the ministries within three months. But the plan is far from implementation. Another good governance scheme that missed the six-month deadline is introduction of performance-based punishment and reward system in bureaucracy. The PMO and the Ministry of General Administration were supposed to implement the plan but they are yet to begin works, according to sources at the Ministry of General Administration and PMO. In his bid to make government secretaries more accountable, the prime minister had announced to introduce performance contract system at the secretary level. The secretaries of each ministry were supposed to sign a contract with their respective minister by July 26 but not a single secretary has done so, according to PMO officials. Another major good governance plan that is yet to see even preliminary works is strengthening of the National Vigilance Center. The prime minister had announced to being works immediately after the plan became effective on January 27. But the plan has turned into just a lip service. According to the PMO source, the PMO, under the plan, was supposed to immediately begin works to reconstitute the National Security Council. But the plan has been gathering dusts in PMO´s cupboard. Interestingly, most of the unimplemented programs were supposed to be carried out by the PMO itself. The plan had proposed a high-level committee led by the prime minister himself to monitor the implementation of the plans. But the committee has not convened even a single meeting for the past six months, according to PMO officials. However Chief Secretary Leela Mani Paudyal said, "The plans are partly successulf, partily in the process of implementation and partly unimplemented." Nnnn ________________________________________ KINSHIP NOT CAPABALITY NOW COUNTS IN UCPN (MAOIST) Kathmandu, 9 Aug.: Here´s a saga of how a party that waged a decade-long bloody insurgency for revolutionary change in society and the uprooting of nepotism and favoritism, among other things, has now become victim of its own prey, Kiran Pun writes in Republica.. In 2005, the Chunbang meeting demoted all the party leaders, except Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, by one level as per a campaign lunched to purify the party. But interestingly, the same meeting promoted Prakash Dahal, the son of the chairman, to regional bureau member, now the state committee. Here is one more. When the UCPN (Maoist) shared the cabinet with the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML following the ceasefire agreement of 2006, influential party leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai was asked to recommend a list from his faction for inclusion in the new cabinet. Many were expecting that Bhattarai´s closest confident Top Bahadur Rayamajhi would top the recommended list, but he didn´t. Hishila Yami, Bhattarai´s wife, bagged the coveted recommendation and was inducted into the cabinet not once but three times in successive Maoist-led governments, despite strong criticism within his camp. These are just the tip of the iceberg. As the ethos of capturing state power through the barrel of the gun fades among the hardcore cadres, the culture of nepotism and favoritism, according to insiders, has expanded at such a pace that the Maoists have overtaken the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML in this respect. The culture of nepotism and favoritism popped up alarmingly once more during the recent formation of a 231-member General Convention Organizing Committee (GCOC), reminding many of the popular Nepali saying "Ki poi ko ki kohiko," meaning that you need either to be the wife of some top leader or have blood kinship with such a figure to land positions or opportunities in the party. Mani Thapa, a former leader of the Maoists, gave a deep sigh when the issue was raised with him, and said, "The Maoists have become utter victims of nepotism and favoritism." Thapa, who was one of policy makers during the people´s war, recalls the glory days during the revolution when capability, contribution and commitment used to be major determinants of who moved into the higher positions in the party rather than the kinship ties he or she had with those in the top leadership. Unfortunately, things are totally different now and you need to be a close relative of some top gun, not capacity and commitment, to bag a position in the party, he says. Maoist cadres have a long list of those making a fortunate just because of their close kinship with influential leaders. The most classic example is Sita Dahal, wife of Chairman Dahal. She used to be one of the advisors to the powerful central committee, but hardly anyone in the central committee ever remembers a single instance of her advising the committee on anything. "This is a new tradition that the Maoists have developed after opting for parliamentary democracy, and as per this tradition, if the husband is a party politburo member the chances of the wife being appointed a member of the central committee would be very high," he said. The tradition of holding positions under the aegis of powerful relatves has now seeped right down to the bottom of the party organization, the cell committees. These are dominated by relatives of the influential leaders, ranging from spouses and sisters and brothers to in-laws and nephews, among others. Nnnn ________________________________________ GOVT. COMTEMPLATES ANOTHER ORDINANCE Kathmandu, 9 Aug.:The government is planning to enforce an ordinance in a bid to make appointments of Supreme Court justices, chiefs and members at various constitutional bodies and ambassadors without parliamentary hearing, Ananta Raj Luitel writes in The Himalayan Times. . A highly placed source at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers told this daily that a draft of the ordinance has been prepared so that appointments could be made without parliamentary hearing as required by Article 155 of the Interim Constitution. With no Parliament in place since May 27 after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the constitutional provision of parliamentary hearing is now out of question, and with this court and constitutional bodies are sure to face unprecedented crisis. “The draft has been forwarded to Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, as he is also holding the law portfolio,” said the source. “We will initiate the required process after his (PM’s) response.” Article 155 calls for a separate Act to manage parliamentary hearing but Parliament was dissolved without promulgating the Act. The provision states that ‘prior to appointment to constitutional posts on the recommendation of the Constitutional Council, and of the judges of the Supreme Court and ambassadors, there shall be a parliamentary hearing in accordance with the provisions of the law’. PM’s press adviser Ram Rijhan Yadav confirmed the development and said, “The government is serious about the imminent crisis. So it is making efforts to avert the crisis. It, however, is yet to think about a structure of the Constitutional Council which has the Speaker and opposition leader as ex-officio members. So appointments are still not easy.” Various constitutional bodies — Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority, Election Commission, the Public Service Commission and the Office of Auditor General — are without heads and SC is going to face a dearth of justices after January. The source added that after the prime minister’s nod, the draft of the ordinance would be forwarded to the Ministry of Law and Justice to look into the technicalities before sending it to the President for approval. According to the source, the ordinance aims at amending Section 7 of the Act Relating to Constitutional Council (functions, duties, powers and procedures), 2010, which has the mandatory provision of parliamentary hearing for appointing heads and members in constitutional bodies. Judicial Council Secretary Jiwan Hari Adhikary hoped that the move would help resolve the looming crisis. NC, UML object the plan Former Nepali Congress lawmaker Radheshyam Adhikary on Wednesday termed the government move to bring an ordinance to make appointments without parliamentary hearing ‘unconstitutional’. “The move tramples on constitutionalism,” said Adhikary. “The government must deal with all the problems facing the country through political consensus.” According to Adhikary, instead of resolving the crisis, the move will invite disaster. Agni Kharel, former CA member from CPN-UML, said the government was flogging the functioning constitutional provisions. Stating that the government move is against a Supreme Court precedent set on Subodh Man Napit vs GoN case, in which SC had upheld that parliamentary hearing was a must while making appointments to vital posts. Nnnn UML ETHNIC LEADERS DIVIDED Kathmandu, 9 Aug. : Dissident ethnic leaders of the CPN-UML have urged other indigenous leaders not to launch a new political party in haste, saying that such a move would ultimately harm the indigenous movement, The Himalayan Times reports. “We have asked them not to launch a new political party in haste as it will not augur well for the janajati movement,” Prithvi Subba Gurung, a UML politburo member, said. A group of indigenous leaders, led by Chaitanya Subba, however, are all set to announce a new party — Social Democratic Plurinational Party — tomorrow, to mark the World Indigenous Nationalities Day. Subba Gurung, former CA member from UML and former minister, is one of the six prominent dissident leaders who have made public their differences with the party leadership over issues of state restructuring and federalism. Subba Gurung said a new political party should be launched only after the ‘intra-party struggle’ failed to settle their concerns and added that they would not support the move to open a new party as they had not outlined reasons for the launch. “We are still in the process of dialogue with our leadership which has called upon us to sit for talks to address our grievances,” said Subba Gurung. UML standing committee has assigned party’s Secretariat Secretary Bishnu Poudel to establish communication with the dissident leaders. Along with Subba Gurung, UML Vice-chairman Ashok Rai, politburo members Ramchandra Jha and Bijaya Subba and central committee members Kiran Gurung and Rajendra Shrestha have already been relieved of party responsibilities for failing to show up at politburo and central committee meetings. Subba Gurung, who admitted to have absented himself from party meetings, however, expressed displeasure over party decision to relieve them of responsibilities and termed it leadership’s ‘shortsightedness’. UML’s dissident leaders have been calling for carving out federal units on single identity basis, a demand the party leadership and the CC have turned down. The party leadership has been saying that the state needs to be restructured on multiple identity basis to satisfy all the communities in the given units. nnnn.