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Buying the Support of Politicians
By KTM Metro Reporter
Two-term former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai quit his Nepali Congress party for saving the monarchy. The king has successfully bought one of the founding members of the Nepali congress. The king has also paid a large sum of money to the members of the Central Working Committee of the Nepali Congress including the daughter of the current Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala for their support for stopping the decision on the Nepali Congress going for republican according to the Nepalese press.
When former Prime Minister Bhattarai wrote a letter to the Nepali Congress opposing its decision on going for republican, most of the Congress leaders including former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba brushed him off thinking Mr. Bhattarai was a politically deadwood, and his views were irrelevant.
On Monday, October 08, 2007, Mr. Bhattarai called a press conference at his residence to announce his support for the king and to insist on Nepal needed a king, and called for the support to the king in the special session of the Interim Legislature to be held on October 11, 2007. Next day, he met the chief of a royalist party, Rabindranath Sharma for consultations. Mr. Bhattarai had publicly stated that he had a trunk full of banknotes after he left the Prime Minister’s residence in 1991.
Former minister Rabindranath Sharma heads the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal that has been campaigning for the retention of monarchy since last year. Mr. Sharma was one of the former ministers charged by the Commission on Investigation into Abuse of Authority for corruption but the Special Court acquitted him on the technical ground. The Nepalese media had widely reported that Mr. Sharma had met with former Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Nepal, Dilip Kumar Poudel before the Special Court ruled on his case.
Rastriya Prajatantra Party headed by Pashupati Shumsher Rana declared that its four members in the Interim Legislature would vote against the proposal for abolishing the monarchy according to the Nepalese press. It was not a surprise to Nepalis as members of this party and its breakaway parties such as Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal headed by Rabindranath Sharma, and Rastriya Janashakti Party headed by former Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa were the members of the discredited Panchayat regime. Probably, they would have been in jail if the government headed by current Prime Minister and the government headed by former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had taken the actions against those culprits mentioned in the Mallik Commission’s report.
