Dr. Baburam Bhattarai Stays On-Part XVII

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai on Monday, July 9, 2012 warned former King Gyanendra Shah of losing the benefits he had been enjoying provided by the state at the cost of the taxpayers if he went on talking about making a comeback. This type of talking if somebody did during the regime of the Rana rule was called ‘itching of a neck’ means the ruler would chop off the neck. That would not happen to Mr. Shah as we are living in the 21st century not during the Rana regime: the period the Ranas had directly ruled Nepal sideling the Shah dynastic ruler for 104 years. However, Mr. Shah needs to talk only following the constitution in other words following the fundamental human rights as every sovereign citizen enjoys if he wants to live the rest of his life in peace. Almost at the same time, the United States of American and Kingdom of Nepal were born in the similar circumstances but the people’s rule in America made the Americans richest but the Shah dynastic rule in Nepal made Nepalis the poorest in the world.

Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has timely and correctly warned Mr. Shah of stripping him of all benefits he has been receiving from the state so far. In fact, the prime minister needs to cut off all sorts of benefits Mr. Shah has been enjoying, as we don’t need to keep the last remnant of the feudal lords that had stolen everything from the people during their 240-year long rule. Actually, Mr. Shah should stand trial for killing so many people during the people’s movement in 2006 and for misusing the taxpayers’ money for his luxurious lives and for attempting on forcibly putting off the people’s uprising against the totalitarian regime Mr. Shah had briefly run from 2001 to 2006.

The Shah-Rana rulers had stolen everything from the people taking everything the farmers grew in the field the Shah-Rana oligarchy owned in the name of land rent. Almost all Nepalis had been farmers, as the rulers did not provide them with any opportunity of other businesses other than plowing the land belonging to the rulers and their sycophants. Farmers had hardly anything to eat after paying the land rent to the landlords. They had lived on whatever the agricultural residue left after turning over all the crops to the rulers. So, the life expectancy was just 24 years at the time of the Shah-Rana rule.

During the Rana period, Nepalis feared of speaking anything about the Rana. If you said something about Ranas people would warn you of you had an itchy neck means soon you would be in trouble and the Ranas might chop off your neck. People lived in terror believing even ‘walls have ears.’ Not only people could not speak out but also could not point fingers even at the Rana statues placed at the crossroads in Kathmandu. Thus, Nepalis lived in perpetual fear during the Rana regime.

The Ranas took away every beautiful woman from the people. Whenever the Ranas travel along the lane in any neighborhood in a town, Nepalis shut all windows up and kept away young daughters, daughters-in-law and wives so that the Ranas would not see them. If they saw someone by chance a beautiful woman, then next day some soldiers came to pick that woman up and then take her to the palace. She would never come back again to her family.

When I was a young boy my parents allowed me to wear only the clothing made of hand-woven fabrics, as the clothing made of the imported machine-made fabrics would draw the attention of the Rana rulers. We could not wear a pair of nice footwear again fearing the wrath of the Ranas. If they found someone was rich then they made an excuse to arrest such a wealthy man and seized everything from him making false accusations. So, everybody had to live in poverty. Enjoying life became the monopoly of the Ranas. They became the most prosperous people while the whole country sank into poverty and the people lived in destitute.

The Rana rulers made ‘opening a school’ a crime believing the educated Nepalis would challenge their rule. So, almost all Nepalis remained illiterate. Only a few people crossed over the border with India and could go to school there. Anybody having a little bit of schooling became the servants of the Ranas. However, during the early 1940s, the Ranas opened a school called ‘Durbar’ for their offspring but later on opened to the public.

Then, a few educated Nepalis started off making voices against the autocratic rule of the Ranas. Some of them set up a tiny underground party and rose against the Rana rule in Kathmandu. At the same time, Nepalis educated in India set up a political party to finish off the autocratic rule in Nepal. When the people’s revolution gained the momentum the then-sidelined King Tribhuvan Shah took to the side of the people fighting against the Ranas and fled to India in December 1950, and signed off the peace treaty sidelining the Nepali Congress (NC) party that had spearhead the revolution against the Ranas and ended the Rana rule only to set up a king’s rule headed by the same Rana prime minister in 1951.

However, Nepalis thought that democracy had become a reality, as they could open schools, set up any organizations, open political parties or any other private parties and do business as they wanted and could. Hundreds of schools came to exist in the country where anybody could count the number of schools it had in her/his fingertips. People could feel how they had been free from the shackles of the Rana rule. People made a tremendous progress in their lives but such unfettered progress did not last long.

In the mid 1950s, Tribhuvan Shah died of excessive drinking and womanizing before holding the election to a Constituent Assembly (CA) that he had promised to hold for writing a constitution of Nepal. His son Mahendra Shah did not bother to hold the election to a CA. However, the then political party NC forced Mr. Mahendra Shah to promulgate a constitution and hold elections to a parliament. He promulgated a constitution and held an election to a parliament in 1958. The NC won overwhelming majority in a newly elected parliament.

Mahendra became restless seeing the NC leaders taking the power. The NC government did many things including the land reform making the land rent nominal. However, the NC leaders had hardly two years to run the administration, Mahendra again took over and put all the political leaders in jail and banned all political parties, and declared anybody talking about the multi-party system as anti-national. Thus, again Nepal became effectively the monarchical country in 1960.

Mahendra stopped all good works done by the NC government, took over all private schools, stopped any political activities except for anything doing in praise of Mahendra. Thus, he put the brake on the development process and the rulers remained above all the people. All the state revenues went to gratify the monarch and his sycophants. Then, suddenly Mahendra died in December 1971 making his son Birendra a king.

Birendra was educated in England and Japan and had widely traveled all over the world and met with the world leaders including Mao Zedong: Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. Thus, Mahendra had groomed Birendra very well to become a king. Before Birendra became a king in an interview given to ‘Time’ magazine he had said that he would like to be an elected monarch rather than a hereditary king. When he became a king he used a common-folks language in his first speech but his intention to be the representative of the common folks did not last long; later on he went back to the royal dialect.

Birendra enjoyed his royal life far better than his father Mahendra and grandfather Tribhuvan. He used the army helicopter to travel from the southern plain-area-town Surkhet to visit the remote areas in the north for the pleasure of his spouse and his too during the one-month long winter retreat he held every year. Anybody could imagine how a poor country like Nepal could afford the month-long helicopter ride of the monarch without keeping the majority of the people poor. Thus, as any Rana ruler, Birendra also used the national resources for his pleasure flight.

Majority of Nepalis remained poor despite the downpour of huge foreign resources as assistance to the people had been since 1950s. Only a small group of the people in the administration, police and the army could benefit from the foreign assistance. The trickle-down policy of the government as well as of the foreign donors could not reach the poor. People did not have the freedom of speech to vent their displeasure whatever wrongs the state administration, and the police and the army did to the people. The administration, police and the army had discriminated against the ethnic, Madheshi, dalits and women preventing them from joining in these three main state employment sectors.

Discontent of the people went on increasing as the royalists enjoyed their lavish-life style keeping the majority of the people aside and poor. Then, some students wanted to submit a protest memo to the embassy of Pakistan in Kathmandu against the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The police stopped the students at Lainchaur that became the cause of the explosion of the students’ anger at the establishment. It became the spontaneous movement against the establishment. Then, Birendra quickly announced the referendum on the choice between the improved Panchayat system and the multi-party system the people wanted, and diffused the discontent of the people for some time.

In 1980, the then government headed by Prime Minster Surya Bahadur Thapa held the referendum on the choice between the improved Panchayat system and the multi-party system. The government gave yellow color to the Panchayat and the blue color to the multi-party as the election symbols. Yellow color became synonymous with the corrupt Panchayat while blue became the symbol of democracy and the people’s power. Voters turned out in large numbers and most of them lined up for several hours even up to a half-day for casting their votes in order to make sure that democracy would return back.

Prime Minster Surya Bahadur Thapa used the standing green trees in the Terai areas to fund the winning of the election in favor of the improved Panchayat. He ordered to cut as many trees as required to make money for providing the funding to win the election in favor of the improved Panchayat system. The improved Panchayat system won the election at the cost of deforestation to the nation and after counting the votes for months. The election results showed that the multi-party system narrowly lost to the improved Panchayat. The government used the astrologers to predict the election results and the Election Commission published the election results as predicted by the astrologers.

After the referendum, Birendra and his Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa relaxed and smiled confidently that the Panchayat had won the game decisively forever putting off the possibility of the politicians of the multi-party system making a comeback. Supporters of the Panchayat celebrated the winning of the elections for months. Corruption and abuse of the authority at any level of the civil administration, the police and the army administration went unabated. That was the results of the referendum called by Birendra.

Protagonists of the multi-party system had gradually built up as Birendra and his Panchayat rulers stole everything possible from the people. However, Birendra and his sycophants living even very close to the daily lives of the people did not feel what sorts of grievances the common folks had been facing. Hatred of Birendra and even his son Dipendra had reached such an extreme that some people refused to use the postal stamp with the portrait of Dipendra. Obviously, this message did not reached them as the sycophants had built a barricade between the rulers and the common folks.

Banned NC and the number of communist parties formed a joint front to fight against the Panchayat system. The then-senior leader of NC Ganeshman Singh asked the leaders of all communist parties to form a unified party. Then, they gave birth to a Communist Patty of Nepal-Unified Marxist and Leninist (CPN-UML) of today. The NC and the CPN-UML set up a joint front to launch a peaceful protest demanding the reinstatement of the multi-party system dissolving the corrupt despotic Panchayat system in February 1990. They did not demand the monarchy to go, yet.

Hundreds of thousands of political cadres came out peacefully on the streets across the country. Later on, common folks spontaneously participated in the street protests enlarging the size of the protestors every day. The government not knowing the results of suppressing the peaceful protests took many political and civil society leaders in custody and held them in different police detention centers. However, that did not deter the common folks to participate in the ongoing street protests.

The then Prime Minister Marichman Singh Shrestha said that a bunch of dissatisfied people had launched the street protests; so it would not last long. Surely, he used every-possible-state machinery to stop the people’s movement. However, people did not stop from going to streets and shouting slogans. They were determined to achieve the demand for the restoration of the multi-party system by dissolving the Panchayat. Marichman Singh Shrestha and his police and even the army killed the innocent Nepalis but could not stop the people from revolting.

Birendra saw no alternative to fire Marichman and replaced him with Lokendra Bahadur Chand to quiet the protestors down. Prime Minister Chand sent an emissary to the jailed supreme leader of the joint front of NC and CPN-UML Ganeshman Singh at the state hospital called Bir Hospital in Kathmandu in April 1990, and offered an improved Panchayat system with the participation of the opposition politicians but Supreme Leader Ganeshman Singh outright rejected any offer and clearly told the emissary he would accept nothing but the dissolution of the Panchayat and reinstatement of the multi-party system. Chand imposed curfew day and night but the movement against the establishment did not stop. Chand became the prime minister for the last four days of the Panchayat.

After 49 days of the movement and a number of lives lost to the bullets fired by the state police, Birendra gave in and declared the dissolution of the Panchayat and reinstatement of the multi-party system. All political leaders freed. The people celebrated the victory of the multi-party system fluttering the flags of the NC and the CPN-UML everywhere possible.

Birendra invited Supreme Leader Ganeshman Singh and his colleagues to the palace and offered him the office of prime minister but Ganeshman Singh outright rejected the king’s offer and said, “from now on, the people will appoint a prime minister not the king,” and pointed at Krishna Prasad Bhattarai saying, “he will be the next prime minister.” Birendra quietly accepted the people’s leader statement. Thus, only after ten years of forcibly making the Panchayat victorious in the referendum held in 1980, Birendra had to accept another blow to his dynastic rule but he was lucky that the NC and CPN-UML leaders still kept the monarchy. Interim Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai formed a coalition government of NC and CPN-UML, and got a constitution of 1990 promulgated, and held an election to a parliament following the new constitution.

Girija Prasad Koirala became the first elected prime minister after the reinstatement of the multi-party system. He had manipulated the elections to the parliament to defeat the candidates seconded by Supreme Leader Ganeshman Singh and even to defeat the incumbent interim Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. Girija forgot the norms and values of the democratic system and did not listen to the supreme leader not to mention his colleague Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. Girija took the suggestions and recommendation made by Supreme Leader Ganeshman Singh as the hurdle to his administration and wanted to totally get rid of him seeking fresh mandate from the people calling the mid-term polls believing that he would get two-thirds majority in 1994. Unfortunately to him and his party, too, the election results went to in favor of the CPN-UML that had launched vigorous campaign against the Girija administration from the beginning Girija took office. The CPN-UML leaders squarely blamed the Girija administration for the ostensibly accidental death of Chairman of CPN-UML Madan Bhandari but most likely one of the leaders of the CPN-UML had planned so well to look it as an accident. His spouse Bidhya Bhandari went on to be one of the CPN-UML leaders and held ministerial portfolios obviously as the bonus for the death of her husband. Madhav Nepal wore the crown of the Chairman of the CPN-UML.

However, the mid-term polls did not give any party the majority seats in the parliament. The CPN-UML got the maximum number of seats but not enough for forming a majority government, the NC got the second highest number and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP): political assembly of the former Panchas received 20 seats making it a comeback. The CPN-UML could form a majority government in coalition either with the NC or with the RPP but the CPN-UML leaders treated the former Pancha leaders as untouchables given the past political corrupt background they had, and the NC as the bourgeois. The CPN-UML insisted on having the rights to form a government, as it had the majority seats. Ultimately, the CPN-UML formed a minority government subject to get the confidence vote in the parliament within six months. However, the CPN-UML Prime Minster Manmohan Adhikari and his deputy Madhav Nepal opted for going to the general elections dissolving the parliament elected only nine months ago. The NC leaders went to the Supreme Court of Nepal claiming the minority government had no authority to call a fresh election to the parliament. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NC and the parliament came to life. NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba formed a government in coalition with the RPP. Then, corruption became the open business. During the Deuba’s time the Maoists had given the 40-point memo to correct the corrupt practices of the government otherwise take up arms. Prime Minister Deuba brushed the memo of the Maoists off saying it was the memo of some communist extremists. The Maoists launched the campaign in 1996. Giving bribe and taking it had been the regular business at every office of the Deuba administration. Then, the CPN-UML made a deal with the dissident group of the RPP and formed a government headed by Lokendra Bahadur Chand only after five years he got fired from the Prime Minister of the corrupt Panchayat. CPN-UML Leaders Bamdev Gautam became his deputy but in reality the deputy ran the administration. Corruption became endemic to the administration. Another group of RPP headed by Surya Bahadur Thapa took over from Lokendra Bahadur Chand only to turn it over to Girija Prasad Koirala.

Thus, Girija Prasad Koirala made a comeback. It was already time to hold the elections to the parliament. Girija shrewdly projected the clean political image of Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as the next prime minister in the election campaign and won the majority seats required for forming a government in the elections he held. However, as promised in the election campaign he made Krishna Prasad Bhattarai a prime minister but did not keep him in power for long and forced him to quit the office after a year and Girija again became the prime minister.

The hardest hit Girija took was the palace massacre on June 1, 2001. Obviously, Girija as an elected prime minister could not spare the lives of so many royalties including the five members of King Birendra’s family. Girija showed his helplessness letting the power go in the hands of Gyanendra Shah: the brother of Birendra as if the elected prime minister had no power and the elected parliament had nothing to do with the lives of so many royalties.

Gyanendra Shah skillfully maneuvered the palace massacre to put him on the throne. He kept crown prince Dipendra on the life-supporting machine, and then called the meeting of the Privy Council (Rajshava Standing Committee) to declare the death of King Birendra and declare Dipendra a new king and Gyanendra (himself) a new crown prince. It worked very nicely for him. Then, he called again the meeting of the Privy Council to declare King Dipendra dead and declare Gyanendra a new king. In one stroke, Gyanendra killed two kings and became a new king.

Gyanendra went through the religious rituals to ensure that he was actually a new king but the people did not receive him well. While riding from the old palace after completing the religious ceremonies and wearing the precious-jewels-containing crown badly fitted to his head, newly crowned King Gyanendra passing by the crowd of the people lined up in front of the Bir Hospital received the ‘jeers’ from them. Anyway, he became the king no matter whether the people liked him or not. However, he totally ignored the parliament and did not bother to get him endorsed as a king from the parliament. Gyanendra did not immediately declared his playboy son Paras a new crown prince for the fear of provoking the people’s wrath, and waited until the longest Hindu festival called Dashain to declare Paras a crown prince without fanfare.

As Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was not only unable to save the lives of so many people but also became quite impotent to do anything after the palace massacre. Gyanendra as a new king supposed to be a constitutional monarch following the Constitution of Nepal of 1990 but acted as an absolute monarch bypassing the elected Prime Minister Koirala. Gyanendra set up a commission with three members such as Speaker of the parliament, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal and the Opposition Leader in the parliament to hold an investigation into the palace massacre. The then opposition leader Madhav Nepal refused to join in the commission challenging the authority of Gyanendra to set up a commission on investigating the palace massacre. However, Gyanendra did not take it seriously thinking he was a king he could do whatever he wanted. Thus. Prime Minister Koirala was severely weakened and quit the office in favor of his cadre Sher Bahadur Deuba in July 2001.

Prime Minister Deuba played the drama of holding the peace talks with the Maoists. In fact, the Maoists’ team headed by Dr. Baburam Bhattarai (current prime minister) came to Kathmandu to talk with the government team but the Maoists soon found out that the government was not serious and broke the peace talks and intensified their fight against the state. Deuba declared a state of emergency and cut the fundament human rights of Nepalis and sent the Nepal Army on the mission of raiding the houses of innocent people and killing innocent people in the name of fighting against the Maoists provoking the people’s wrath not only against Deuba but also against Gyanendra Shah, too.

Then in May 2002, Gyanendra suddenly dissolved the parliament and announced the mid-term polls to be held in November of that year on the recommendations of Prime Minister Deuba. Obviously, Deuba did not consult with his party boss Girija Prasad Koirala; infuriated by the dissolution of the parliament, President of NC Girija Prasad Koirala fired Deuba from the party. Deuba in turn formed a new breakaway party called NC-D. Some people said that Gyanendra had incited Deuba to dissolve the parliament.

In October 2002, Prime Minister Deuba went to Gyanendra requesting for postponing the general elections scheduled for November stating the Maoists’ activities were not conducive to holding the general elections only to get fired from the office. When Deuba proposed to postpone the general elections, Gyanendra smiled at Deuba and nodded. Before Deuba could reach his official residential at Baluwatar, Gyanendra prepared for appearing on the state-run Nepal TV. On the night, Gyanendra spoke to the Nepalis on the Nepal TV and told the people that Deuba was incompetent to hold the general elections, so, he fired him from the office but he did not say anything about holding the general elections. If Gyanendra were smart enough he could have said that he would make sure the elections would be held as scheduled.

Then, Gyanendra appointed Lokendra Bahadur Chand a new prime minister and not even a year passed, Gyanendra fired him in May 2003 and appointed Surya Bahadur Thapa a next prime minister. Gyanendra was enjoying juggling one leader after another for his political pleasure not knowing that politics was a serious business. Ultimately, in June 2004, Gyanendra appointed Deuba as a new prime minister to form a coalition government of the NC-D and the CPN-UML. Leaders of CPN-UML happily joined in the Deuba government stating the power came back to the people but other political parties did not agree it.

NC and CPN-UML along with other small political parties had set up a seven-party alliance (SPA) to protest the dissolution of the parliament in October 2002. SPA had continued the peaceful street movement demanding the reinstatement of the parliament since then but without any results, as Gyanendra did not bother to listen to the SPA and went on enjoying the absolute power. After the Deuba’s appointment to the prime minister in 2004, the CPN-UML joined the government and quit the street movement.

Most likely, Gyanendra was not happy with the performances of the coalition government of the NC-D and CPN-UML, and ultimately fired Deuba again and dissolved the coalition government on February 01, 2005. Gyanendra then became a real king not knowing that he was shortening the life of the Shah dynastic rule.

CPN-UML came back to the SPA alliance and continued the street movement again without much results, as Gyanendra and his handful of ministers did not bother the street movement not knowing a new turn was going to take soon. After three years of unsuccessful street movement, finally, the SPA held a talk with the Maoist leaders in New Delhi, India to launch a joint movement to finish off not only Gyanendra but also the Shah dynastic rule in Nepal. Girija Prasad Koirala on behalf of the SPA, and Prachanda on behalf of the then CPN-Maoist signed off the ‘Twelve-point Understanding’ in New Delhi on November 22, 2005. Then the joint movement of the SPA and the Maoists started off across the country. After 19 days of the joint movement of the SPA and the CPN-Maoist, on April 24, 2006, Gyanendra surrendered the power to the SPA but practically to the CPN-Maoist and reinstated the parliament dissolved on May 22, 2002. The then Speaker Taranath Ranabhat forced out of the office, and the parliament elected Subash Nemwang a new Speaker on May 13, 2006. The parliament declared it a sovereign authority and changed the name of the government from ‘His Majesty’s Government of Nepal’ to ‘Government of Nepal’, Royal Nepal Army into Nepal Army and removed all royals from the names of the state agencies and organizations on May 18, 2006. The parliament approved the Interim Constitution of Nepal of 2007 and formed a new parliament with 330 members, 83 of them were Maoists, and dissolved the old parliament on January 3, 2007. Girija Prasad Koirala became the Interim Prime Minister. The parliament set November 22, 2007 for holding an election to a Constituent Assembly (CA). Actually, the election to a CA was held on April 10, 2008. On May 28, 2008, the Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a Federal Democratic Republic. Girija Prasad Koirala became the Prime Minister-cum-head of state. Gyanendra Shah was forced out of the palace on June 7, 2008. That was the end of the 240-year Shah dynastic rule in Nepal.

Thereafter, Mr. Shah has dedicated his life to the religious activities visiting various religious shrines in Nepal and even in India. He gave interviews to the media occasionally but had remained within the line of limit of the fundamental human rights.

Then, came Mr. Shah’s interview given to the ‘NEWS 24 TV’ in the Nepalese media on July 8, 2012 provoking the strong reactions particularly from the NC and the CPN-UML leaders. If anybody had watched the 30-minute video of Mr. Shah’s interview posted on nepalnews.com, s/he would find that he did not say anything that needed so much provocative reactions of politicians, as he had only said that he would take the power only if the Nepalis would give him. None of the politicians was going to give him the power on a platter. Even Kamal Thapa would not do so. So, Nepalese politicians would have been well off leaving Mr. Shah in peace because he had done nothing but enjoyed his fundamental rights as a citizen to speak out his mind.

Mr. Shah did not seem to have much energy to engage in the political entanglement. He had correctly engaged in religious rituals visiting religious shrines at different places in Nepal and even in India. During his visit if anybody shouted a slogan in his favor hoping to have a piece of bones from him it was not his fault at all. Nobody could stop them from shouting such slogans if the constitution allowed them to enjoy their fundamental rights.

However, some of the Nepalese politicians particularly the leaders of NC and CPN-UML had been nervous about the latest interview of Mr. Shah. NC leaders had been nervous about Mr. Shah saying he had a number of correspondences the Seven-party Alliance (SPA) had sent him assuring him of keeping him as a constitutional monarch. Mr. Shah said that the papers might be lying somewhere. To this comment, General Secretary of NC Krishna Prasad Sitaula demanded the paper if Mr. Shah had any. The question was what the NC leaders would do if Mr. Shah really were to produce those letters apparently written by the SPA.

According to the news posted on ‘thehimalayantimes.com’ on July 10, 2012, Senior Leader of CPN-UML Madhav Nepal told the deposed king Gyanendra to stop daydreaming of returning back to the throne once again, as it was not acceptable to his party; he also challenged the former king to show agreement if the king had signed with the political parties to protect the monarchy during the people’s movement-II of 2006 as the former king claimed during a television interview; he said that the former king’s claim of having an agreement with the political parties was absolutely false, and the Gyanendra’s interview was abominable.

The news posted on ‘thehimalayantimes.com’ on July 10, 2012 says that NC Leader Sujata Koirala ruled out any possibility of the revival of the monarchy in the country, as Nepalis had already consigned the monarchy to the history and its revival was impossible no matter how much the former king strived for it, the NC leader told the reporters at the Biratnagar Airport. She also ruled out any deal (the king had) with the late NC leader Girija Prasad Koirala as claimed by the deposed king, she argued Shah had done harm to himself by drawing into controversy.

According to the news posted on nepalnews.com on July 9, 2012, General Secretary of NC Krishna Prasad Sitaula said that former king Gyanendra Shah’s claim for having an agreement with the political parties on keeping a constitutional monarchy was a lie; no such an agreement was made six years ago rather the NC-led government abolished the monarchy in 2008. “If he had indeed made such an agreement, then I challenge him to provide proof for the same,” nepalnews.com quotes Sitaula as saying. Saying the “political remarks” made by the former king as “outrageous and objectionable”, General Secretary Sitaula demanded the government immediately revoke all the state benefits provided to the former monarch if he continued to make such statements.

Ultimately, Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai warned former-King Gyanendra Shah of stripping of all the benefits the ousted king had been enjoying according to the news posted on ‘Thehimalayantimes.com’ on July 9, 2012. “The resurrection of monarchy is impossible. But it seems former king has not learnt lesson yet. The state shall deprive him of all the benefits. The ousted king should acknowledge that no party is in favor of revitalizing the dead monarchy even if there are disputes among political parties," ‘thehimalayantimes.com’ quotes Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai as saying.

Obviously, Mr. Gyanendra Shah does not pose any threat to Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal but the opposition political leaders of NC and CPN-UML had been seriously posing the threat to Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal opposing the inclusive federalism and pushing the head of state President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav to take undemocratic actions such as firing the democratically elected prime minister and appointing another person undemocratically to a new prime minister, and at the same time opposing the elections to a new CA.

According to the news posted on nepalnews.com on July 12, 2012, NC Leader Dr. Ram Saran Mahat said that the President was going to fire the prime minister after July 21 for forming a new government. "The President will wait until July 21. He will ask the parties to form national unity government if the PM does not resign by then," nepalnews.com quotes Mahat as saying, speaking at the Reporters Club on Thursday, July 12, 2012 and added, "There will be a new government within the next two weeks."

At the same time Nepalis needed to be alert to the statement of some irrational politician such as Narayan Man Bijukchhe, as he had been inviting the head of state to be a dictatorial. We did not lack the so-called communist leaders that loved dictatorship.

According to the news posted on ‘Thehimalayantimes.com’ on July 9, 2012, Chairman of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) Narayan Man Bijukchhe stated that the head of the state should take power in his hand in order to alleviate the country reeling under political crisis and constitutional hurdles in the wake of the demise of the Constituent Assembly (CA) on May 27. “In order to hammer out the complex web of issues ranging from budget fiasco to formation of national consensus government, what to do about the dissolved Constituent Assembly and the drafting of the new constitution, President must take power in his hand,” ‘Thehimalayantimes.com’ quotes Bijukchhe as saying while talking to a Kathmandu-based FM station on Monday morning, July 9, 2012. ‘Thehimalayantimes.com’ writes that only on Sunday, Bijukchhe had advised Prime Minster Dr Baburam Bhattarai to consult all the parties to bring the full budget and terminate government’s unilateral move, which would only escalate the existing political and constitutional crisis.

Now, Nepalis need to build an inclusive Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, as only such governance system could guarantee the all-round development of Nepalis in general, as the whole world has seen that the United States of American and Kingdom of Nepal were born in the similar circumstances at almost the same time, but the people’s rule in America made the Americans richest but the Shah dynastic rule in Nepal made Nepalis the poorest in the world.

July 13, 2012