Sermon On Forming A New Government

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

Everybody likes to give one sermon or another but nobody likes to take it. So, sometimes, people label a person giving a sermon on anything as a stupid person. No matter what the people might call me this time I want to give a little bit of my sermon to prime minister-elect Jhalanath Khanal on forming a new government. He must be having a lot of such sermons but most of those sermons we don’t read or see in public. So, I am making it public for everybody to see and read and find out whether it is a reasonable one or a crazy one.

First of all, Mr. Khanal should not bring anybody from the immediate past cabinet to his new cabinet because the members of the previous cabinet have been the most tainted and corrupt people. Madhav Nepal as a prime minister has broken any record of corruption staying in power for 20 months. Even at the last moment he wanted to open the ever-sealed treasury of the holy shrine Pashupati located in Kathmandu in the name of safely depositing the priceless treasures in banks and museums. Can anybody believe him given his record of corruption?

Then, you need to skip any other person that has been charged with corruption in the past. Your party and other parties such as NC and UDMF have many persons acting as the leaders but they are the most corrupt persons in the Nepalese politics, you should not let them in your cabinet at any cost. Most of them are sitting on the central committees of those parties and some of them are even leading the parties.

Taking a look at the performances of past cabinets, some people might think that once you are in the cabinet, you will certainly be corrupt, as those positions are corruption-prone and people sitting on the chairs of ministers surely involve in one sort of corruption or another. But some of the ministers particularly the former finance minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has been successful to stop corruption at the custom and tax offices to some extent while he has been a minister. I am not praising him liking his ideology or trying to get some favor from him but it is the fact that we need to appreciate if someone does really a good job. Certainly, Dr. Bhattarai have awarded several projects to the cadres of his party and so on but we don’t know whether the money has been properly used or not. During his time at the ministry of finance, custom officials and tax officials have had hard time to manage the official work without getting side payments. Most of the businesspeople have appreciated the smart working of those officials. I am not asking Khanal to appoint him a finance minister. This is just an example, I am saying once you are in the ministerial position; you can do some kinds of good work, too.

Now, what kind of people you need to take in your cabinet. First of all, you need to make a coalition cabinet of all major political parties. What kind of leaders you need to draw from the UCPN-Maoist, you know better but you need to bring some of them to your cabinet. Then, you need to select some of the best and reputed leaders of the NC and bring them to your cabinet. Certainly, the NC has only a few sincere leaders today but still you can find some of them are really sincere and want to work for the country. Most of the sincere NC leaders have left the party for working as human rights activists or for other social work. Then, you need to select very smart Madheshi leaders but not Mr. Gacchedar that has earned enough money and bad reputation while serving in the cabinet of the Madhav Nepal in the immediate past.

Next, I want to go in detail of what portfolio you need to give whom. You need to award the ministry of culture to the new entry to your party famous movies star Bhuvan KC because he deserves it and possibly, he will well manage the cultural aspect of the ministry. I don’t know about the fiscal management. He must have quite a lot of money by the Nepalese standard of reputed stars to maintain his high-profile lifestyle so he might not need to draw extra rupees from the budget of the ministry of which he will be the boss.

You need to draw some human rights activists to your cabinet. Some of them have made a lot of contribution to making Nepal as it is of today. They have been working without any personal interest but with honest interest in making Nepal a real federal and inclusive democratic and prosperous country. So, I want to name some of those guys that you might select from them for including in your cabinet, they are Dr. Devendra Raj Pandey, Daman Nath Dhungana, Padma Ratna Tuladhar and Shyam Shrestha. Dr. Pandey had not any party affiliation but Dhungana and Tuladhar were once NC member and CPN-UML member respectively. Currently, they don’t have any party affiliation and they have been sincerely working for moving the country to a right direction. So, bringing such people to your cabinet, you will not lose anything but gain a lot.

You need to appoint industrialists and businesspersons such as Padma Jyoti of Jyoti groups of industries, Binode Chaudhary of Chaudhary groups of industries, and Rajendra Khetan of Khetan business house to the ministers of Industry and commerce and supplies. These guys have the reputation of running good industries and businesses. It is most unlikely that they will misuse their positions as ministers putting their current status of good reputation at risk. In no case, you should reappoint the politician such as Rajendra Mahato as a minister because he has misused his authority for stealing the petroleum products from the Nepal Oil Corporation: the state-run oil company when he was a minister for supplies in the government headed by Madhav Nepal.

Similarly, you need to appoint somebody from among the retired civil administrators with the good experiences in administration to the minister for administration not the man with two names that have mismanaged the administration during the reign of Madhav Nepal.

You might be tempted to appoint the retired Chief of Army Staff Rukmangud Katuwal to the minister for defense. Never do that because he has been controversial army man and fired by former Prime Minister Prachanda for not following the order of the government but saved by the president fearing the Maoists would grab the power. The lawsuit filed against him for manipulating his birth certificate has been pending at the Supreme Court of Nepal because the Army headquarters has not submitted the documents sought by the court, yet.

You should appoint someone sincere private law practitioner from the Nepal Bar Association to your cabinet, preferably not affiliated to any party but you might have difficulty to find such a person. However, you never think of taking in a person such as Biswokanta Mainali that has taken a group of people to the then-officiating Prime Minister Madhav Nepal and advised him not to call the session of the parliament until May 28, 2011 means the end of the Constituent Assembly. Lawyer Mainali has cleverly advised Madhav Nepal to stay on in power by force until the Constituent Assembly ends and then he could continue indefinitely. Thus, Mr. Mainali wanted to make Madhav Nepal a modern Jung Bahadur.

Now, your first business as a prime minister should be the completion of the peace process and the writing of a new constitution, no matter what other leaders of different parties attempt on pulling your leg down to earth. However, you can complete these two extra-ordinary tasks only working together with all the political parties. Leaving behind one party or another, you cannot do much for achieving the two most important goals of our country.

The next thing you need to do is not to let go the police, army and civil officials responsible for human rights violation with impunity. You need to bring the perpetrators of killing and injuring innocent people during the protests against the previous regime in the past and thereafter. You need to bring the second-in command of Nepal Army Toran Jung Bahadur Singh to justice for enforced disappearance of 49 people. Your predecessor Madhav Nepal had promoted him to the second-in-command of the Nepal Army going against the demand of the international community and human rights activists for bringing him to justice. Similarly, Madhav Nepal and his defense minister have covered up Major Niranjan Basnet wanted by the Kavre District Court for killing Maina Sunawar. A number of killers are taking shelter in your party, UCPN-Maoist, NC and UDMF. You need to make at least some efforts on bringing them to justice.

You need to set up a Truth Reveal Commission. You need to make public the whereabouts of the enforced disappearances. Families of the victims of the enforced disappearances have been agonizing not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones. You need to bring the responsible persons of the Nepal Army and the UCPN-Maoist for the enforced disappearances to justice otherwise you will not be doing justice to the people.

At the same time, you have to ease the power shortage and water shortage. Previous prime minister and ministers have stolen the state money for their own comfort ignoring the people’s needs for power and water. So, you need to immediately ease the shortage of power and water and keep the supply of petroleum products smooth without interruption. If you can do these small things you can be a hero if not then you will need to take not only one slap but also several slaps from all the people including the reporters and journalists.

Don’t follow the immediate predecessor’s life style of using the state money for foreign trips and don’t steal the money from the people’s pockets and from the state treasury as your predecessor Madhav Nepal has done. The state money is the people’s money, hard earned working from the dawn to dusk, so, you should not misuse it.

You have numerous things to do even if you can do only few of those tasks, you will be a successful prime minister. You should not simply follow your immediate predecessor’s path and stick to the prime ministerial position disregarding everything. Nepalis have been very angry with the politicians doing nothing and doing wrong things. You have taken the slap on your cheek for taking the election to a new prime minister hostage for eight months. Now, you need to build your image doing good things for the people.

February 5, 2011