Oli-led Government-13

 What A Country Nepal

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Irregularity in the power supply had been plaguing the country, breaching of traffic rules had been taking the lives of innocent commuters, parallel market had been sucking the common folks dry while the most corrupt finance minister received the award of the best-performing finance minister of 2015. A cadre of one or two powerful ethnic groups had been running the country as had the Shah-Rana run for 250 years causing tremendous sufferings to the common folks. The country had been again ripe for the arm conflict whether the Madheshis or the Maoists would take up the arms remains to be seen.

I was happy to see the revised schedule of the power supply and outage. It looked to me the most rational power distribution system schedule during the short supply of power. The state-run monopoly company called Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) had been responsible for power purchase and sell. A number of the State-appointed officials had been involved in the scandalous purchase of transformers at the high prices for the low quality. Previous ministers including the current prime minister had been enjoying the free ride on the cars supplied by the NEA that had been providing those ministers not only with the cars but also with the fuels and maintenance. Only the Rana prime ministers had not differentiated their private treasury with the State treasury.

When suddenly a green light appeared on the microwave oven, the refrigerator started off buzzing, I checked the schedule tightly held by two commercial-ads magnets on the refrigerator. I did not see any schedule correctly matched with the actual power supply. I thought that it might be the mistake of the technician controlling the power distribution system.

As the power had been available all the electrical appliances started off working. The pump pulled the water from the underground tank to the rooftop tank. The washing machine did the leftover work from the previous power supply. Recently purchased electric stove started cooking the dal bhatt: the popular Nepalese dish eaten in the morning and evening. The electric kettle was boiling the water. I charged my cell phone and laptop. In other words the whole house had been illuminated.

Then, suddenly, the power went off. Everything stopped working. The house became soulless. We were in darkness. Someone said that everybody turned on everything when the power came, the system was over heated, and the power snapped; within a few minutes, it would come again. True, after a few minutes, power was back again. The life went on.

I filled up all the thermo flasks with hot water from the electric kettle. The rooftop tank spilled over the water, the washing machine was spinning the clothes, and the stove was doing its business of cooking dal bhatt. The batteries in cell phones and laptop had been filled up. It was during the four-hour power supply we did everything possible from the power. Then, the power went off almost it looked like forever.

I checked the power-supply-and-outage schedule held on the refrigerator again and again to see when the power would be back. Power did not show up. Power came back not following the schedule. It was terribly erratic. Anybody looking at the schedule would say that how the NEA had been smartly providing the common folks with power but actually it was only the trick.

The energy minister had ordered the NEA to provide the common folks with power in the morning and evening at the time of cooking foods. The minister simply wanted to mitigate the troubles caused by the short supply of cooking gas. The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been smartly adopting the go slow in sending supplies particularly the petroleum products to Nepal. Modi had been supporting the ethnic Nepalese for their cause of having the equal rights in Nepal. However, the power supply did not follow the schedule that actually also did not follow the minister’s order.

The State-owned company called Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) had been facing the embargo on the petroleum products unofficially imposed by Modi but the NOC itself had been imposing another embargo on supplying vehicle fuels and cooking gas passing those fuels through the unscrupulous agents in the parallel market. Indian ambassador in Kathmandu had said that sufficient petroleum products had been passing through the border between Nepal and India; how come the short supply had been in Nepal.

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala had caused short supply of petroleum products from 2006 to 2008. The long line of vehicles standing for fuels at certain fuel pumps had reminded me the time when Girija caused the short supply of petroleum products for two years causing the adverse impact on the socio-economic development of the common folks. Probably today, Prime Minister KP Oli had been simply following the trick played by Girija on the common folks for making money.

The NOC had adopted the policy on providing the half-cylinder-cooking gas at one thousand rupees. People lined up for even half-filled cylinders of gas. The half-filled cylinders turned out to be the quarter-filled cylinders. Some customers complained that the so-called half-filled gas did not last even two days for cooking regular foods. The hard-earned money of the common folks directly went to the pocket of the NOC and then must be to the different pockets of the State-appointed officials.

Prime Minister Modi had made available the good opportunity of making money to the Nepalese State officials causing the short supply of petroleum products. Thanks to the Modi’s actions, the Nepalese political cadre, politicians, and crook officials had the good opportunity of stealing the money from the common folks. This was not very far from what the Shah-Rana rulers did in the past.

More than what the Shah-Rana rulers did, the current rulers had been doing simply making available the vehicle fuels and cooking gas at the parallel market at the fantastically high prices. That was how the current rulers had been stealing the common folks rather than directly taking everything from the people as the Shah-Rana rulers did.

The traffic in Kathmandu had been totally in chaos. Nobody seemed to follow the traffic rules. Loss of the innocent lives in the vehicular accidents had been the regular incidents. Motorbikes, micro vans, cars, pickup trucks, and three wheelers all moved on their own. Then, I thought why these guys should follow the rules and laws when their newly elected president shoved the constitution aside simply becoming the mute witness of the lawlessness. The president had taken the oath to safeguard the constitution but she was not doing her constitutional job.

A cadre of one or two ethnic groups had adopted the new constitution to suit their interest, and to have the privilege of running the country for another fifty or more years, according to the constitutional experts. It was not their mistake but that of the voters that had voted the wrong political parties that had been against the common folks. To correct this mistake it would take long time even following the rule of law but the new rulers had been not ready to follow the rules, as the Shah-Rana rulers did not.

Jung Bahadur adopted the civil code in the second half of the nineteenth century but his successors and he did not follow the code. The same thing had been happening now. The new constitution limited the number of the cabinet members to 25 including the prime minister but the number of cabinet members had reached 40. It was the blatant violation of the constitution.

The president was illiterate of the constitution otherwise she would have stopped the prime minister from exceeding the cabinet ministers 25. She had been busy with performing the religious ceremonies. She had even provoked the wrath of the Madheshi youths visiting the Janaki Mandir recently. Probably, she had received the presidency as the compensation for losing her husband to one of the general secretaries of the CPN-UML.

Prime Minister KP Oli had been nothing more than Jung Bahadur. Oli had been awarding the offices of ministers to the people that had supporting him to be the prime minister as did Jung to his seventeen brothers that had helped him in taking the position of the three-star king of Lamjung and Kaski to inherit his office. So, these guys had been violating the fundamental law of the country to suit their interest.

Now, the former Finance Minister Dr Ram Sharan Mahat had received the award of the best finance minister of 2015 from the British magazine called “The Banker.” “The Banker” stated that the award of the best-performing finance minister of 2015 went to Dr Ram Sharan Mahat for his performances in the disaster management, relief and rehabilitation after the devastating quake hit Nepal on April 25, 2015, according to the online news posted on Khabardabli.com on January 4, 2016. http://www.khabardabali.com/2016/01/53711/

Dr Mahat had been smart enough to send his personal secretary another Mahat to Nuwakot to send back the tin sheets sent for the relief of the quake victims. The tin sheets worth Rs 4.5 millions would have been taken back to Kathmandu but the local people and the quake victims stopped the secretary Mahat from sending the tin sheets back to Kathmandu. Those Mahats would have made so much money if the local people were not there to stop secretary Mahat from doing such morally and ethically wrong thing. So, the award had been for his best performances as the finance minister probably looting everything possible while in office.

The finance minister had been actually best for selling the State-owned factories and destroying the trolley bus particularly the Chinese-made factories and the trolley the Chinese government had so generously built for the impoverished and exploited Nepalese people by the Shah-Rana rulers for more than a two-and-a-half century at the dirt prices.

I used to read news in the newspapers that the Indian Bollywood celebrities went with a bunch of banknotes to the judges that decided whom to award certain medals. So, it was the money that decided the winning or losing of medals among the Indian movie celebrities. The question was how much Dr. Mahat needed to spend on winning the award of the best-performing finance minister of 2015.

Prachanda now days converted into his father-given name Pushpa Kamal Dahal had said that India wanted to make Nepal either a Crimea, or a Sikkim or East Pakistan. Crimea had been part of Ukraine that had lost it to Vladimir Putin: President of Russia. Going against the Russian population of Ukraine, the most notorious rulers of Ukraine drove the country to break down. The ruler of Sikkim voluntarily joined the Indian federation. East Pakistan now Bangladesh had the history similar to Crimea. Awami League headed by Sheik Muajbir Rahman won the majority in the parliamentary elections held in 1971. Following the rule of law, Muajbir Rahman should have been the prime minister of the then East and West Pakistan but the then Prime Minister Julfikar Ali Bhutto did not accept the rule of Rahman in the West Pakistan. The consequences had been the bloody war and formation of a new country called Bangladesh.

These political events should be good guides for the current Nepalese politicians and rulers that shoved the constitution they had adopted and made the jumbo cabinet of 40 members. Prachanda had correctly foreseen that Nepal could face the events just mentioned above. So, Prachanda needed to force the president to safeguard the constitution otherwise impeach her, and forced the Prime Minister Oli to follow the law otherwise forced him out of office. Nepalese politicians had not many choices. The political pressure had been growing; it might burst causing political quakes similar to the recent quakes in the central region of Nepal.

If Prachanda were to save Nepal from the events he had correctly mentioned happening in Nepal, then he should be able to amend the constitution to enable anyone of the Nepalese be a prime minister following the constitution. Any Tharu, Madheshi, Limbu, Rai, Tamang, Nevah, Chepang, Chhetry or Bahun should have equal opportunity. Some constitutional experts said that the newly adopted constitution had been for the one or two ethnic Nepalese to hold the office of prime minister forever. If that were true, Modi needed not do anything the Nepalese would do what Prachanda had predicted to happen.

January 8, 2016