Deeds Of The Oli Administration

Deeds Of The Oli Administration

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

Speaking to the reporters at his Baluwatar official residence on April 19, 2020, Prime Minister KP Oli said that the stay-at-home order would remain in place as long as the coronavirus, which he called non-living beings, would not disappear; he also said that 800 million rupees had been used for distributing relief packages whereas his Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration: Hridesh Tripati not long ago said that about 400 thousands relief packages of each worth of one thousand rupees had been distributed. Mr. Oli had ordered everybody to stay where they were during the lockdown period; and he said that the local administration and the police would take care of them. Fantastic, is it not? However, the folks whether they were migrant workers or students in the country or abroad had been totally left on their own when the entire world had been under lockdown.

Really everything looked nice if anybody were to believe the stories of Mr. Oli and his administration, as Mr. Oli as a salesman could put everything whether it is real or imaginary nicely for buyers to take but what is the reality in the field everybody has for him or her to see the videos posted on “youtube” and then on “facebook” and other social media before s/he would buy the stories.

The communist administration supposed to be working for the proletariats if not the folks in the administration themselves were once proletariats, had forced thousands of the migrant workers walking home on foot for hundreds of kilometers in Nepal not to mention those Nepalese migrant workers left stranded elsewhere in the world. Migrant workers had to walk home in Nepal, as they had no resources to pay for the house rent, and the foods had been running out very fast and they did not know how long their meager savings would last, and the prime minister was going to extend the stay-at-home order.

The Oli administration had been saying that everybody needed to stay where they were during the lockdown period, the police and the local administration would take care of them managing food and drinks and shelter for them for the period of the stay-at-home order remained in place despite the recent order of the Supreme Court to take the migrant workers to their respective homes. Surely, stay-at-home is the only remedy for not getting infected with the fatal coronavirus otherwise the infections would rise exponentially as seen elsewhere currently.

If anybody were to venture out on the streets even for buying gas or medicine certainly the police on the streets would immediately hit him or her with their long cane without even trying to know, who s/he was and why s/he was on the streets, as most of the folks watching the videos posted on “youtube” and “facebook” noticed. This was not probably what the prime minister meant that the police and the local administration would take care of all the folks during the period of the stay-at-home.

So, even the medical doctors had been the victims of the police hitting anybody on the streets not to mention those folks went to buy the essentials. Obviously, the Oli administration had ordered the police to punish anybody defying the stay-at-home order otherwise the police would not dare to hit anybody because the social media and the people had been so strong that the Oli administration could not cover up anything at all.

If the Oli administration in general and Mr. Oli in particular had been really sincere to what they had said that the police and the local administration would take care of those folks in needs, then, the police would first salute anybody on the streets and then would politely asked how could the police help him or her rather than beating anybody on sight without even questioning why s/he was on the streets. Probably, thousands of migrant workers would not need to walk putting their lives risk at night wherever the police patrolled. Pregnant women, women carrying infants, and parents with the young children would not walk hundreds of kilometers for days to reach their final destinations: homes.

The Oli administration and the police having a hangover from the feudal mentality would not salute anybody on the streets; that was for sure but they could listen to anybody, and take him or her to the office of the local administration or the nearest gas depot or the medicine store or escort him or her to home, as it was not time for anybody to walk on the streets because of the coronavirus so deadly could make him or her sick and even send anybody to heaven prematurely. That was what common folks anticipated the republican administration the people had put in place would do. However, everybody had seen in the daylight what the republican government rather the communist government had done so far.

The local administration needed to take the migrant workers to the concerned employers and then tell them to stay where they were and the administration would provide them with whatever they needed mainly the daily provisions they needed to survive without putting any unnecessary financial burden on the employers until the lockdown was lifted. Nobody would need to walk home putting his or her life at risk or as a criminal fearing the police aggressively beating him or her.

Certainly, anybody to anticipate such an ideal situation of the police saluting the folks on the streets, and the local administration helping them as the Oli administration said would, would be really an irrational person because the folks erroneously called themselves communists running the administration had done nothing but simply took the place of the monarchical rulers, and they replaced the king’s administration with the communists’. So, they started working hand-in-hand with the dodgy traders and businesspeople, and companies or they themselves had been behind those moneymaking unprincipled folks thus repeating the history of the monarchical rule. This had been an open secret.

Not surprisingly, the non-communist provincial government of the provine-2 had made the decision on providing the folks locked at home with the relief packages at their homes in the second phase of the relief distribution. Those elected folks definitely knew that the common folks were the power, and those folks willing to stay in power needed to get the mandate from the people in the next general elections. That is what the reality is today. None of the communist provincial governments did dare to do so because they had to take order from the federal government rather the Prime Minister: Oli.

If Prime Minister Oli were to learn from the non-communist government of the province-2 then he would certainly use the two billion rupees he had collected so far from the common folks for the relief of the coronavirus victims for immediately bailing out the loss-making farmers, whose vegetables were not sold out, whose bananas could not reach the market, who had to spill the milk on the streets, who had to toss the eggs on the streets, and who had to dig a pit and put all their chicks there and filled up the pit. This is only a tip of the iceberg of the economic disaster. The Oli administration could also use the two hundred billions rupees of the State money remaining at the Nepal Rastra Bank for rescuing other small businesses in every sector including the public transport, then the large businesses if the money would allow.

If the Oli administration were concerned with some unscrupulous businesspersons taking the benefit of the generosity of the administration rescuing the businesses then the administration could make a simple contract with the businesspeople that if anybody were to take the advantage of the relief amount with the incorrect data then such a person would need to pay back twice the amount anybody had received. The administration needed to enforce such a contract strictly. However, it would be really an idiotic to think even such thing the current communist government Prime Minister Oli has presided over, would do.

Rather the Oli administration had asked the landlords that all the tenants should be exempted from the one-month house rent if not the administration would take strong actions against the landlords; the administration also told the private schools management not to take one month school fee. When every person is losing time and energy to the coronavirus how could the administration ask anybody to take the financial burden? Rather the Oli administration needed to learn from the Delhi administration in India, which said that the administration would pay the three-month rent of every tenant. No wonder the party running the current Delhi administration won the overwhelming majority.

The Oli administration had been going after some retailers charging high prices for any goods, and warning of taking strong actions against them. In fact, the Oli administration had been keeping reportedly the multi-millionaire Sulav Agrawal under custody for the investigation into selling thermal guns costing two thousand rupees at fifteen thousand rupees a piece. Really, this man was greedy and he got what he needed for doing a wrong thing at the time of the crisis.

Ironically, the Oli administration had been trying to protect a contractor company OMNI group that had been successful to bring the medical supplies from China to Kathmandu on the third day of receiving the contract from the Oli administration. Was it not a really drama the Oli administration played?  Unfortunately, for the Oli administration and the company, too, the Oli administration had to rescind the contract on the medical supplies done with the OMNI group after the Nepalese media disclosed the four times higher prices than the market prices the company had charged. The Oli administration had to declare that the company would be put on the blacklist and its security deposit would be seized. However, the Oli administration had not kept its commitments to do so, yet.

The Oli administration had been so generous to the students’ union affiliated to the ruling communist party allowing it to assemble hundreds if not thousands of students on the premises of the Tribhuvan University at Kirtipur on April 18, 2020 for distributing and receiving the relief packages to the students. Surely, nobody would or even could say anything against distributing the relief packages to the students because the students were equally at the risk of not having sufficient foods and drnks to eat and drink but the question was whether they could disregard the strict order of the Oli administration not being together more than 25 people at one place. However, the Oli administration had neither sent the police to enforce the physical and social distancing nor took the actions against the students’ union’s leader for flouting the stay-at-home order probably because the students and their leaders were communists.

Probably, millions of Nepalis needed relief packages worth of billions of rupees but the Oli administration had distributed only 400 thousand relief packages if anybody were to believe Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration Hridesh Tripati, who recently disclosed it while speaking to the anchor of the news-plus program of the FM Radio Thaha. Each relief package containing one thousand rupees worth of rice, lentils, sugar, salt and oil was distributed but some of the relief packages were found to have the rotten rice and lentils the state agencies had sold, the media reported. The Oli administration had really distributed 400 million rupees worth of relief materials nobody would doubt about it but Prime Minister Oli claimed that his administration had already distributed the relief packages worth of 800 million rupees.

The Soviet Union took seventy years to die in Russia whereas the Eastern European communist governments, which had been set up after the victory of the Soviet Army over the army of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the middle of the twentieth century, took only fifty-five years. In fact, the collapse of the Soviet Union had a domino effect on the communist governments in Europe, as the Soviet Union had kept the communist regimes alive forcibly.

Now, the question was how long the communist government in general and the communists in particular would survive in Nepal. After the collapse of the communists and the loss of hope in the communism elsewhere in the world, anybody could safely predict that communists would be winded down in the next general elections, and then the communists would be driven out of not only from Kathmandu but also from Nepal, as did comrade Prachanda in one of his public speeches. Prachanda must be not only a great politician, a great commander-in-chief of the guerrilla army, and also a great astrologer to predict such an untimely political demise of the communists and probably of his own along with his colleagues.

April 20, 2020