Sushil-led Government-67

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Sushil had been facing many problems. Some of them were self-created. He has done with the appointment of the chief executive of the Reconstruction Authority. Sushil’s political cadres killed the cadres of his own party faithful to his rival: Sher Bahadur Deuba. He also had the humongous problem of promulgating a new constitution. Every leader had her/his deadline for promulgating it. Protest fires had been blazing elsewhere in Nepal. Another ghost of the foreign policy also had been plaguing Sushil. He must be sleeping on the thorny bed as Bhisma had been during the Mahabharat war.

Prime Minister Sushil Koirala had finally selected and appointed a man to the CEO of the Reconstruction Authority that would rebuild the structures tore down by the quakes. Some well-wishers said that the man appointed to the CEO was well fitted. But Sushil had appointed the highest bidder for that office rather than the best and the most qualified one. Girija had set the tradition of appointing anybody to any office to a highest bidder. Sushil had simply followed the tradition. Everybody knew the fittest persons for the job. None of them got the job. The social media ‘facebook’ had once their names.

Sushil probably knew that the quake victims had been waiting for his government doing something to them. They had been anticipating not a small thing from the government but a tangible grant for reconstructing houses destroyed by the quakes. Sushil had committed at the outset of the quakes if he had not forgotten, of course. He wanted to rebuild their houses.

His administration had published the building codes. Nepalese could hardly believe that they could meet those codes. What Sushil must have thought that he could build a piece of heaven on earth? That was fine if he were sincere to what he thought he could do.

His CEO needed to recover the bidding amount. Nobody needed to guess what the CEO would do. Sushil had made it plain how to make money while somebody was in an office. Others would laugh at the not-money-making officials as idiots. Surely, people hated such people. They could not do anything more than that. They had voted Sushil and his party. So, they needed to wait until the next elections to punish Sushil and his partners if they wanted to.

The quakes victims had their homes in the tin-sheets-tunnel shelters after graduating from the tents. The monsoons rains had not been so sympathetic to the tin-sheet homes. The rains had been hitting them as hard as possible as if they were the cement roofs. But Sushil was not in a hurry to put them to permanent homes. He published the building codes and appointed the CEO only almost after four months of the first destructive quake hit the Nepalese ground.

What about the Reconstruction Fund? Sushil had nothing to say about it. He probably thought that common folks could guess what he had been doing. The international donors committed to contribute to the reconstruction fund generously. Nepal could draw two billions dollars including one billion dollars Modi committed in his first visit to Nepal from India. But the Nepalese administration needed to initiate the process for receiving the funds from the donor governments they had committed. ‘Had the finance minister initiated it’ not known to the people, yet.

While the communists including the Maoists had been in the peaceful political domain Sushil and his rival politicians had entered the violent world. Sushil’s cadres had murdered the NC Kaski district leader Ramji Poudel in Pokhara on August 13, 2015. Sushil had nothing to say about it. Sushil’s rival Sher Bahadur Deuba lamented that he had lost his right hand in the death of the district leader. He said so while offering flowers to the dead leader, the media reported. This murder was a rehearsal for holding the national convention of the Sushil’s party we called NC.

The NC cadres started off the practice of butchering a rival leader. They probably thought that they could win the leadership in that way. That had been the ancient practice but NC cadres had started anew. They must be sure that the concerned top leader would save them from serving the jail term. They ignored that the law would surely punish them. That was what most of the criminals did not understand. Killing with the impunity had been the thing of the past.

Promulgating a new constitution had been the stupendous problem for Sushil and his fellow partners in the constituent assembly. They wanted to make the provisions for different things that the people did not in a new constitution. They had made many such provisions in a new constitution. People would rather fight against those provisions than accepting their fundamental rights go astray.

Every leader and minister had been smart enough to set the deadline for promulgating a new constitution. Hardly a few Nepalese would believe them. Nepalese believed in a constitution acceptable to the people but the four-party politicians had disregarded this bottom line. So, Nepalese did not care much about when a new constitution would be promulgated.

The four-party leaders had reached an agreement on making Nepal the federation of six provinces. Nobody knew what were the criteria they had used for that. They did not think it necessary to tell the people about the criteria for selecting six provinces. No way to know whether those six provinces were based on the population, natural resources, socio-economic development, culture, languages, religion and so on.

Sushil had tasted the pleasure of the power. His partners and he knew they could do whatever they would like with it. They could amass a tremendous amount of money with the power. The money had been the tool to getting elected. So, why should not they stay in power and run the country?

Ethnic, Madheshi, and religious people had risen for their fundamental rights. Others had risen too with their various demands. In other words, everybody had rose up for the final fight for his or her rights. Sushil had two options: one was the fight to the finish another to accept the people’s demands. Which was to choose was certainly up to Sushil.

Hindus had fell short of declaring the Hindu jihad. They had no shortage of money and power. The neighboring diehard Hindus had been determined to make Nepal a Hindu State no matter at what cost. They could not do so in their own country. That was pity for them. They could at least be proud of Nepal being a Hindu country.

Home Minister Bamdev Gautam did not spare the Nepalese Hindu fanatics from the police’s batons. He sent the police to bash those Hindus fanatics as hard as possible. The police sincerely followed the command of Mr. Gautam to hit them including their leader Kamal Thapa with the batons. Kamal Thapa had been no less than Bamdev Gautam once in the cabinet of the disgraced former monarch.

Mr. Gautam explained to the lawmakers in the parliament that he had to send the police to bring the stone-hurling crowd of the Hindu protestors including their top leaders under control; then, the police had to resort to hitting them to save their own lives. To enforce the law was his first duty but the topmost was to save the lives of the police not of the common folks Home Minister Gautam proudly said?

Mr. Gautam did not save other lawmakers from the police’s batons, too. The Gautam’s police clubbed the lawmakers on the streets. They belonged to the historically underprivileged class. Those lawmakers were demanding to safeguard their fundamental rights in a new constitution. Mr. Gautam had the same regular excuse for hitting the lawmakers. They became rowdy and threatened the police.

Gautam practically became a bully home minister. His law enforcement practice had been to gore anybody demonstrating or protesting on the streets. He had even let the police use live bullets to hit the demonstrators. Several persons had wasted their lives taking the hit of the bullets of the police. Mr. Gautam disregarded killing protestors was adding fuel to the blaze flaring up across the Madhesh, the hills, Kathmandu and practically everywhere in Nepal.

The irony is that the Nepalese Muslims declared propping up the Hindus for making Nepal a Hindu country. What the Taliban would think of them. What the Islamists would think of their brethrens in Nepal supporting Hindus: the archenemies of Muslims. Nepalese Islamists had been scared of the Christians overwhelming them? Was it not a funny?

Nepalese Buddhists peacefully demanded to keep Nepal as a secular country. Monks and religious dancers on the streets demonstrated peacefully. Mr. Gautam stopped short of ordering his police to drive the Buddhists out of the streets. Harming monks would be just like sacrificing a cow, Gautam thought?

Madheshis declared the Madhesh shutdown forever. They said they would keep the Madhesh closed until they would get what they had agreed to receive from late Girija when he was the prime minister. They were not irrational but Sushil and his partners had been.

Some Madheshis had the mindset that the hill people had ruthlessly exploited them in the past. But the truth had been almost ninety nine percent of Nepalese had the same fate as that of the Madheshi brethren during the 240 years of the Shah-despotic rule. Not the hill people but the Shah rulers and their sycophants were the criminals. They needed to be punished. Quite a few sycophants had not stopped singing in praise of Prithvi Shah and his descendants. They dreamed of repressing Nepalese to live the princely lives once again. Nepalese needed to cut off their ugly heads if they were to rise again.

Some Madheshi leaders had even threatened to declare the Madhesh for the self-rule. Sushil and his partners in governance had the choice of declaring the disrupting leaders as anti-nationals, or to consider their demands positively. Sushil could go the hard way. It might surely further provoke the demand for a self-rule. He could also simply enforce the previous agreements the Madheshis had reached with the Girija government. That would keep Nepal in one piece and in peace, too. However, he could shut up those disgruntled mouths for some time by the force but it would not be long lasting.

One of those shouting Madheshi mouths had been of the lawmaker belonging to the Sushil’s own party. Some of the Sushil’s sycophants not only wanted to shut up his mouth but even to do away with the not-so-loyal lawmaker. That might be the blessing disguise to this man.

In the Dr Baburam Bhattarai’s view, the new proposed constitution had been a camel because of the need for accommodating the concerns of so many parties. A camel is made out of one part each of every beautiful animal to make it the most beautiful one but turned out to be the ugly one. Dr Bhattarai as good a politician as an intellectual failed in seeing so many protestors on the streets shouting against the so-called camel constitution. So, the constitution what Dr Bhattarai said had not been a camel yet as the concerns of so many people were to be incorporated in it to make it a real camel.

The Madheshi Front announced that the family of anybody killed in the protest demonstrations in the coming days would receive Rs 5 million from the provincial state, and the person killed would be declared a martyr, the Nepalese media reported on August 19, 2015. It was an informal declaration of the self-rule, Sushil needed to understand. Sushil had again the choice of meeting their justified demands or go head-on collision with them.

Chairman of Constituent Assembly Subhas Nemwang instructed Home Minister Bamdev Gautam to take a look into the Madheshi leaders’ announcement whether they had really announced the award of Rs 5 million to the family of anybody killed in the current Madhesh movement; if it were so then it went against the human rights, Mr. Nemwang reportedly said, according to the news in myrepublica.com on August 20, 2015.

The chief of Nepal Sadbhavana Party Rajendra Mahato said that his fellow members of the constituent assembly and he had quit the assembly as the majority-parties leaders did not heed their voices at the assembly rather they wanted to bully, so, he even closed his party’s Kathmandu office and moved to Madhesh, the Nepalese media reported on August 19, 2015. The media also reported that the assembly secretariat had not received the resignations of Rajendra Mahato and his fellow members of the assembly.

Mr. Rajendra Mahato must be a good tactician. He wanted to know the public reaction to his actions of pulling out of the assembly and even from the Kathmandu office. But other Madheshi leaders said that they had not even thought about it, yet. So, Mahato needed to think twice before quitting the assembly if he were not pretending to just to get the public reactions.

Another interesting piece of news disclosed was one of the leaders of UCPN-Maoist Burshaman Pun said that  a conspiracy has been hatched up  to kill at least 200 to 300 people in the coming protest demonstrations to wreck the crafting of a new constitution but he did not disclosed the source of the news, the Nepalese media reported on August 19, 2015. The gun-wielding establishment could do so but the prices to be paid for that would be tremendously high. Those killers would not escape punishment for the crime. Gyanendra could save himself quietly leaving the palace.

Gangster Kumar Ghainte killed in the police shootout in Kathmandu turned out to be the NC cadre. His real name was Kumar Shrestha. NC cadres including some NC leaders and the police filed up the Maharajgunj Teaching Hospital compound in an apparent showdown. NC leaders particularly lawmaker Jagadish Narsingh KC alleged that Home Minister Bamdev Gautam was the one that had ordered to assassinate Ghainte. The Nepalese online and print media had been full of the reports on the death of the gangster on August 20, 2015.

Gangster Ghainte had been involved in attempted murders, kidnapping, having illegal arms and forcibly collecting money from businesspersons among other crimes such as breaking in the Transport Entrepreneurs Association office, the police alleged. The main political problem in Nepal had been such criminals would rise to be one of the party leaders as Sushil did. Sushil had been once a member of the plane hijackers in 1960s.

Now, let us turn to the hottest issue: the Lipu Lekh. To whom it belonged to: Nepal, India or China? Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his veteran army major general Ashok Mehata to Nepal to tell the Nepalese the Lipu Lekh belonged to India. It was not a surprise. Indians had been illegally occupying this piece of strategically very important land since China attacked India in 1962. The then Shah–king Mahendra let it be so.

So, Mehata was bold enough to say so without historical evidences. He must have thought that with the rising strength of India, his country could simply bully the corrupt Nepalese rulers. Surely, it had been a regular practice to bully the weaker neighbor in the past, so did China to India in 1960s. But Mr. Mehata had not considered the sentiment of the Nepalese people. He would know if he were to visit the social media. Nepalese would not leave even an inch of land to anybody. Mr. Mehata must have thought if China could occupy the Indian Territory why not India the Nepalese Territory.

Chinese leaders had been very happy to sign a pact considering the Lipu Lekh belonged to India. Chinese leaders could change their stand on anything at any time because they had the moneymaking mind and they would do anything to make money but their money would not change the historical evidences. That was for sure.

Probably, the Chinese must have thought King Mahendra sold Lipu Lekh to India as he did the half of the Mt Everest to China in 1960s. Actually, Mt Everest wholly belonged to Nepal nothing to Tibet. But Mahendra traded off the half of the Mt Everest for other parts of Tibet with the Chinese. Tibetans had nothing to say for obvious reasons.

Mt Everest is one of the jewels in the Himalayan mountain range that stretches from Pakistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. Nepal would have solely enjoyed the privilege of owning the Mt Everest, had Mahendra not traded the half of it for other parts of Tibet with the Chinese.

Sushil had not spoken about it, yet. He probably did not want to annoy the Indian leaders. He had already made Indian Prime Minister Modi sore at him once. He had shown his affinity to the Indian Congress leader at the time of swearing Modi as the prime minister of Indian in New Delhi, India. Then, Modi was cross with Sushil.

Sushil also embarrassed Modi not stopping the Nepalese media shouting so much at the Indian army and its search-and-rescue teams and the Indian media for improperly functioning in Nepal. Modi and his government deserved the great appreciation for their immediate response to the devastating quakes that hit Nepal on April 25, 2015 and thereafter. That was where Sushil failed in.

August 20, 2015