Sushil-led Government-66

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

“Is Sushil Koirala a ringleader?” had been a valid question asked at every quarters of the Nepalese society recently, as his one minister after another had been involved in illicit activities but Sushil had been so generous to them he ignored the need for taking the strong actions against such bad guys.

First let us start with the widely know irregularities in not only procuring the tarpaulins and tents for the quake victims but also involving the wrong ministry in procuring the supplies required by the state. The ministry of commerce and supplies was there for the procurement of any supplies and services required by the state if Sushil were to strictly follow the rules and regulations and the name of the ministry but Sushil generously let his minister for the urban development procure tarpaulins and tents worth billions of Nepalese rupees (100 rupees=one US dollar in August 2015). The Nepalese media had made a number of headlines of the irregularities in buying tarpaulins and tents for the quake victims but the prime minister was not moved. The parliamentary public account committee called the minister to explain the irregularities but it did shake neither the minister nor the prime minister.

Why Prime Minister Koirala did not take any actions against the minister for urban development for committing such a grave mistake of causing the irregularities in purchasing tents and tarpaulins at the cost of billions of rupees to the state was obvious because the minister in question was his party man and the man must have done so for the benefits of the NC party rather than for his personal benefits. So, no matter what the media or the members of parliaments on the parliamentary public account committee or the public in general had shown their concern about the purchases of relief supplies wrongly done, Sushil did not care about them.

Another question was why the minister for commerce and supplies and his assistant did not objected to the minister for urban development purchasing the supplies for the quake victims when their ministry by its name itself was to provide the relief supplies because these guys were the junior partners of the Koirala administration. They belonged to the minority party called RPP original. If they were to make any claims for their rights to procure the relief supplies then Prime Minister Koirala could do away with them for the obvious reasons. These guys knew it. So, they must have thought that it was better for them to keep quiet and stay on course rather than making any noises that would backfire them, as the chances of buying other things such as fertilizers, and sugar were there for them to make huge money.

The world knew that the personal secretary to the finance minister had attempted on diverting the tin sheets reached the Nuwakot district for distributing to the quake victims for making temporary shelters, to Kathmandu obviously for sale but neither the finance minister nor Sushil wanted to do any serious thing against the personal secretary involved in such a daring business of retuning back the relief supplies sent for distributing to the quake victims. It was sufficiently clear that the personal secretary to the finance minister did not surely have acted alone in this case. He must have the instructions from above otherwise how he could dare to divert the tin sheets worth of Rs 4.5 millions back to Kathmandu. Even the Commission on Investigation into Abuse of Authority (CIAA) did not touch it even though it was a serious State matter. Thus, CIAA must have been indirectly assisting the NC leaders such as Prime Minister Koirala and his ministers in the moneymaking business.

The Nepalese media had been the full of the stories that the finance minister through his faithful spouse had been collecting millions of rupees for his NC party from the agencies and individuals seeking services from the finance ministry. Sushil had nothing to say to anybody about such monkey businesses. He could brush off the media reports as the noises that unusually disturbed him and his administration that must have been quietly siphoning the public money to the pockets of different ministers.

So, Sushil as the prime minister wanted to teach one or two lessons to the media restricting the media freedom in a new proposed constitution. The media had been the nasty agents to make so many troubles to the Koirala administration that had been publicly told that they had been shamelessly amassing huge resources (Even the foreign diplomats in Kathmandu once told that they feared the money deposited in the prime minister’s disaster relief fund would find the way to funding the election campaigns) obviously for the next elections that were supposed to be held after the promulgation of a new constitution, which the four-party leaders had been saying that they would do so in the last week of the August. His minister for communication had been defending the provision made in the preliminary draft of a new constitution for cutting the freedom of reporting. The minister in question had been advocating that the media freedom should go along with the privacy rights.

Now, let us turn to the ministers belonging to the CPN-UML party: the equal partner of the NC in the coalition government of Prime Minister Sushil Koirala.

On June 30, 2015: the day Nepalese farmers celebrated the festival of the transplantation of the rice saplings. They celebrated it splashing mud onto each other, eating flattened rice with yogurt, and singing the ‘ashare’ songs on the rice fields. As the recent generation of the Nepalese introduced the drinking of alcohol to any party of every festival or celebration or event, farmers also enjoyed drinking alcohol and then splashing mud onto each other.

On this day, a group of farmers in Bhaktapur invited the honorable minister for agriculture to participate in their celebration of the day of the transplantation of the rice saplings. They were supposed to eat flattened rice with yogurt with the honorable minister and then splash mud onto the minister, as the celebration would start. The minister was late for two hours keeping the farmers and media people waiting forever.

When the minister finally arrived at the place he had no time to talk to the media reporters. He immediately landed on the muddy rice field where farmers had been working. He immediately got smeared with the mud on his face and his brand new white apparels. Then, he went on holding the hands of young women on the field, and then groping some of them wildly while the media cameras caught his horrible activities on the rice-transplanting field. Some women resisted him others simply laughed heartily not knowing what would be the consequences. Obviously, the minister was over drunk and he did not know what he was doing among the farmers amid the media reporters and the cameras.

The smart reporters made the good news of what the minister for agriculture did to the women on the rice field. Some of the cameramen posted the video catching the minister groping the women on the muddy rice field on the Internet. The video immediately went viral. Soon, the media uproar caused embarrassment not only to the minister but also to his party boss and the CPN-UML party. After the media hullabaloo over the minister’s lively activities on the muddy rice field among the farmers particularly the women, some women regretted for what had happened others charged the media with over blowing the minister’s light mood and the mud play with women. Anyway some people liked what the minister did on the field on the agricultural festival day but others did not. It had been the way beyond the boundary of the civility of the minister, the reporters said.

However, the minister did not escaped from the punishment meted out by his party boss. Next day, Chairman of CPN-UML KP Oli called the cheerful minister that had enjoyed the agricultural festival day groping the women farmers on the muddy rice field to his office also in Bhaktapur, and blasted the unruly minister in presence of his colleagues. The poor minister that had gone almost mad with the pleasure of groping the women had no excuse for his joyful misdeeds after the videos on the Internet.

The chairman lashed out at the brazen minister strongly, and the party boss fired him then and there forcing him to write a resignation letter. The chairman took the resignation letter from him, and gave it to his personal secretary to submit it to the prime minister for immediately accepting it. He also was to nominate another party person to the office of the minister for agriculture vacated by the villain. Thus, the heavy drinking had betrayed the agriculture minister but it also opened a position for another person of the party. So far, deputy Prime Minister Bamdev Gautam had been holding the portfolio of the office of the agriculture minister. It must be a temporary arrangement until the party boss would find a suitable candidate.

The minister for general admin had vowed to bring the state employees holding permanent residence visas for foreign countries to justice. I did not know why he had so much grudge against such visa holders when he knew that even some ministers might be holding such visas. Actually, the minister for urban development publicly denied having any such visa for any foreign country. The minister for finance had brushed aside the possibility of anybody holding such visa. In fact, the finance minister initially questioned what was wrong with the state employees holding such visas. But the minister for general admin did not step back from his strong stand on taking actions against any state employees holding permanent visas for countries.

When the minister wanted to initiate his actions against the state employees holding visas for foreign countries, his secretary told him that the ministry could not do so as no such laws or rules and regulations existed for taking such actions. That was surely the good news for any state employees if they were holding visas for foreign countries. But the minister was not to give in to the absence of rules and regulations. He knew that the cabinet could pass rules and regulations making the state employees holding permanent residence visas for foreign countries punishable. So, he ordered his secretary to craft rules and regulations.

With the firm intention to take strong actins against any state employees holding permanent residence visas for foreign countries, the minister for general admin went to the cabinet with his new rules and regulations for punishing the state employees holding such visas for foreign countries. Not surprisingly, he could not even registered the proposal for his rules and regulations at the cabinet because some ministers particularly the minister for finance, and the minister for urban development vehemently opposed any such rules and regulations even to registered at the cabinet not to mention passing them by the cabinet.

The general admin minister was frustrated with his colleagues opposing his mission on ending the foreign visa holders in the administration but he did not give up his attempt on doing away with the foreign visa holders. He came out to the public stating what obstacles to his mission he faced. Obviously, he must have thought that the mission was selfless on cleaning up the state administration. He kept on trying to introduce his rules and regulations at the cabinet. He ultimately succeeded and came out with the rules and regulations passed by the cabinet of ministers. That was a great victory to the general admin minister but it also was the defeat to the foreign visa holders if anybody in the state admin had been holding them.

The victorious general admin minister had his tools but how to work with the tools was the challenge to him. He could take actions against anybody holding the permanent visa for a foreign country, no doubt about that. But how to know who was holding what visas, was the main hurdle for the general admin minister to pass over before making his dream come true. Nobody would come forward to state s/he had a permanent visa for a foreign country. None of the diplomatic missions in Kathmandu would provide the anxious general admin minister with the information on any Nepalese holding permanent residence visas. They could not reveal such personal data following the privacy act that the general admin minister probably could not believe that such law existed.

The general admin minister neither received a pat on his back nor a lash in front from his boss Chairman of CPN-UML for his stupendous efforts on bringing the state employees holding permanent residence visas for foreign countries to justice. The general admin minister would have the appreciation from the public for his efforts if he were to make on bringing the corrupt state employees, and ministers to justice. That was not his mission. The general admin minister needed money, too. Anybody not making money while in the office would be labeled as an idiot. The general admin minister wasted his efforts on such non-consequential issues rather than on the hot issues of corruption that had ruined the country.

Another poor minister for foreign affairs felt humiliation when political heavyweights such as Prachanda of UCPN-Maoist and Sher Bahadur Deuba of NC did not even inform his ministry to make a visit to India apparently at the invitation of the Indian leaders in July 2015. Both of them were former prime ministers. Their visits to any country were the state businesses, he stated; so they needed to inform his ministry if not to take approval, the minister publicly stated. But the poor minister had nobody to support him for this matter. Even his boss Chairman of CPN-UML did not give a fig to this matter. So, his business had been nobody’s concern.

The ministry of finance and the national planning commission stole even the credit for his prime business such as holding the International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction 2015. The minister for foreign affairs was relegated to the last for speaking at the conference held for mobilizing the international resources for reconstruction of the April-25-quake-devastated structures in the central Nepal. The conference was held on June 25, 2015 exactly after two months of the first quake hit the central Nepal with the unbelievable destructive forces.

However, the minister for foreign affairs enjoyed exclusive foreign visits. Nobody could stop him from visiting foreign countries even at the time of the national disaster after the heavily damaging quake hit Nepal. He did not need to worry about the quake victims. The merciless quakes did not choose the minister for foreign affairs and his ministry for hitting hard. He was lucky both to escape from the quakes and to have the foreign visits without hindrances.

The next minister of the Koirala government, Mahesh Basnet appointed by chairman of CPN-UML KP Oli but employed by Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, had written a self portrait titled “I Am Mahesh Basnet”. Chairman Oli generously brought the book to light on one of the public events in Kathmandu recently. On this occasion, Chairman Oli kindly commented on the book even though he said that he had not read the book as he had been busy with publishing another book called “A New Constitution,” the local media stated. The media quoted Oli as saying: “Mahesh had not transform from the robber Ratnakar to the saint Balmiki.”

The Nepalese media had once widely publicized the Mahesh’s comment on making Oli as the chairman of the CPN-UML in which Mahesh said that he had spent Rs 100 million (ten crores) on the elections to elect Oli to the chairman of the CPN-UML, and he needed to recover it by all means. Thanks to the Mahesh’s capability of spending so much of money, Oli had been the powerful chairman of CPN-UML. Oli had been the next in line to take the office of prime minister immediately after the promulgation of a new constitution.

Annex

1. Prime Minister Sushil Koirala NC reputed for not taking actions against corrupt
2. Minister for Finance: Dr Ram Sharan Mahat NC
3. Minister for Communication: Dr Minendra Rijal NC
4. Minister for Urban Development: Dr Narayan Khadka NC
5. Minister for General Admin: Lalbabu Pandit CPN-UML
6. Minister for Foreign Affairs: Mahendra Bahadur Pandey CPN-UML
7. Minister for Commerce and Supplies: Sunil Bahadur Thapa RPP Original
8. Minister of State for Commerce and Supplies: Giri Bahadur KC RPP Original
9. Minister for Agriculture Development: Guess who could be the disgraced CPN-UML man. The boisterous minister was Hari Prasad Parajuli.

August 16, 2015