Mero Samachar

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  Maila Baje 6:33 am on 2013/05/13 Permalink | Reply  

  Living With Loktantra’s Lok Mans 

  

  
  The domestic drivers of the April 2006 uprising tried their best to portray the appointment of Lok Man Singh Karki as the chief of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority as the greatest threat Nepal as a nation has faced in the last seven years. But, apparently, best was not enough.
  Why those who proposed Karki – given his controversial background in the civil service going back decades over three political systems – saw him as the only person fit for the job remains intriguing. No less mysterious is the fact that those who opposed him so vociferously failed to stop the formal appointment.
  If the notorious foreign hand indeed played the major role here, it would not be hard to understand. After all, what area of Nepali life has been spared the insolence of incessant external interference as we continue on our journey toward a nebulous newness?
  Come to think of it, Nepalis are a distinctive breed. When we feel under siege domestically, we anxiously beseech foreigners to bail us out. When foreigners, having lent such support, try to recover their return on investment, we scream mad.
  What makes us expect anyone to help us so selflessly in the first place? A national sense of entitlement stemming from a notion that our very existence is somehow a favor to the rest of the world? On the other hand, if we recognized that every offer or action came with a price tag, would we stop seeking foreign support?
  Alas, our collective choice is not so clear-cut, especially considering how our geography has shaped our history. Ever since our emergence as a modern state, if we have tried to balance our place precariously between our two mighty neighbors, we have merely engaged in self-interest. Yet we have been quick to denigrate those pursuing such a policy – in the past and in the present – as merely wanting to perpetuate their personal power.
  After 1950, when the active monarchists, Nepali Congress and the communists embarked on a campaign to denounce the Ranas as an oppressive oligarchy, they were not telling the whole story. Jang Bahadur and Chandra Shamsher may not have been your ideal democrat. But they did succeed in preserving Nepal’s independent identity during those turbulent times in our region.
  Now, Maila Baje concedes, we can argue whether this independence was well worth the asphyxiation. But it would be dishonest to continue to take pride in our unbroken history of independence while condemning those who helped us achieve that feat. The Nepali Congress, like the monarchy, the CPN-UML and the Maoists, has learned how selective interpretation of the past can come to haunt the present.
  The Yam Theory, isolation, democratic internationalism, Zone of Peace proposal, equidistance, equiproximity, transit hub, trilateral cooperation all stem from a realization that Nepal’s well-being lies in a stable region. The flipside of that recognition is that there are three countries involved that are individually defined by their own values, attitudes, needs and expectations in an increasingly globalized world that exerts it own set of pressures.
  If Nepal feels its sovereign options are being undermined, it has the choice of trying to build the requisite response. That does not mean we are obliged to obey everything would-be allies say. Yet we expect China to help us loosen the grip of India, only to discover how tight Beijing’s own grasp has become. (Tibet, anyone?)
  The international system is in a constant state of flux. But we act as if every country is automatically entitled to exercise sovereignty AND democracy without making painstaking investment in either. And then look what happens. The prize of loktantra comes at the price of Lok Mans.

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  Maila Baje 1:18 am on 2013/05/06 Permalink | Reply  

  It’s Going To Be His Way 

  

  Khil Raj Regmi, the chairman of the Interim Election Council, looks and sounds like someone who is madly in love with his first job. Ever since taking on the second one in March, the chief justice – at least to Maila Baje – has seemed remarkably ill at ease off the bench.
  Yet there comes a time when one must perforce feel comfortable where one is. That time has come for Regmi. One way he is showing it is by answering the antics in the political establishment.
  Seeking to quell the criticism swirling since his appointment as head of government, Regmi chose not to take on the specifics, like, say, the failure to set the election dates. Instead, the other day, he reminded us how he was minding his own business when Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal sprang up his name as the next premier.
  As the proposal gained traction, Regmi told an audience last week, he twice declined the offer during meetings with political leaders. He subsequently relented, Regmi said, in deference to the international community’s repeated requests. (Which goes on to show how a lot depends on who’s asking.)
  Now that he is here, Regmi insisted that he would not resign as chief justice, not even on the hallowed grounds of separation of powers. The current situation, he implied, was abnormal enough to nullify such constitutional niceties. Although Regmi did not say so, keeping both offices was probably the principal condition he laid out before our foreign friends.
  Regmi’s revelation of an external role in his elevation is not as startling as it might sound. How parties and politicians that had consistently opposed his candidacy caved virtually overnight said all that needed to be said. In any event, the post-April 2006 enterprise largely has been foreign driven. It’s the resources and reputation of foreign forces that is on the line. So far, they have been guided by what they know they don’t want to happen in Nepal. Until they can figure out what it is that they do want – or, perhaps more importantly, what is most viably possible within the specific geostrategic context – they have to keep up the narrative of normalcy.
  Yet many of these same flimsy parties and politicians tried to portray their turnaround as being rooted in some kind of indigenous altruism. And that, they perhaps thought, would let them drive the new government’s agenda – or at least keep up the appearance to their followers and flunkies.
  Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development Vidyadhar Mallik’s assertion last week must have come as a blow to the political class. Mallik described the High Level Political Committee as merely an advisory body, which the government would listen to but was not obliged to follow. (Could it be merely accidental that some leaders have now started demanding Regmi’s resignation as head of government?)
  There can be little doubt that Mallik was expressing the sentiments of his boss. Days later, Regmi himself broadened that message by urging the political parties to move ahead by learning from their past mistakes.
  So this much is clear: if Regmi succeeds or fails, he feels it will have to be on his own account. He will not let the parties, which failed spectacularly when they were directly in charge, to pull the strings from behind in any direction.
  In this phase of our Age of Perpetual Experimentation, Chief Justice and Prime Minister Regmi is going to do things his way – whatever way that is.

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  MeroSamachar.com 4:36 pm on 2013/05/03 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: GroundReport.com ( 8 ), National ( 8 )   

  World Press Freedom Day: Professionalism and Moral Responsibility Stressed in Nepal 

  An academic seminar jointly organized on Friday by the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) and the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at Kantipur City in Kathmandu emphasized on the moral standard and professionalism in media work. The seminar under the banner entitled Press Freedom for Better Nepal: Dynamize the Nepali Minds also shed light on the need to address the overall transformation agenda of the Nepali society. 

  Addressing about 50 participants, most of them master level mass communication and journalism students at Kantipur City college, Prof. R. K. Regmee highlighted  the need to address diverse issues, with digital divide and lack of communication infrastructures in mind. Pointing out to the potential benefits of press freedom, he said that press freedom was not for brainwashing and imposition but for offering options and alternatives in a pluralistic democratic society.
   

  Representing the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), former FNJ President Suresh Acharya admitted that even mainstream journalists have moral problems. He expressed his concern that journalism in Nepal, despite the drastic growth in the number of print and electronic media, requires much work to upgrade professionalism.
   

  Representing the participating students, eight Master of Arts in Mass Communication and Journalism students supported the idea that  professionalism and a deep sense of social responsibility geared at the positive transformation of the Nepali society were needed while using press freedom. Some of them even questioned media experts about why new comers in journalism often become victims of attack while those affiliated to the most powerful media and parties remain less proactive role players in the fight for journalists’ safety.
   

  The participants unanimously voiced their concern over the deteriorating safety of journalists in Nepal.
  The seminar was organized to mark the World Press Freedom Day.

   

  from GroundReport.com.

   
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  Maila Baje 3:45 am on 2013/04/29 Permalink | Reply  

  What Really Irks Our Comrades 

  For a movement still spinning in a frenzied fission-fusion cycle, anniversaries tend to make little sense. So when our principal comrades used the backdrop of the 65th anniversary of the founding of Nepal Communist Party to exchange abuses, you couldn’t really say they spoiled the moment.
  Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, freshly energized from a high-profile visit to China, boldly proclaimed the end of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML). Having packaged his record of flip-flops

  

  as pragmatism, Dahal also dismissed his dogmatic one-time mentor Mohan Baidya, saying the rival Maoist faction was leading a revolution on paper that was ultimately doomed.
  Since Baidya himself has lately unleashed tirades on his erstwhile protégé, Maila Baje thought anything Dahal said at this point could not have meant much there. However, the CPN-UML was infuriated.
  The leadership trio – Jhal Nath Khanal, Madhav Kumar Nepal and Khadga Prasad Sharma Oil – drew out their long knives on the Maoist chief, albeit from different angles. Khanal virtually called Dahal an idiot, while Nepal called him insane. Oli described Dahal and his party as outlaws.
  Nepali communists are still arguing over whether Pushpa Lal Shrestha, the founding general secretary of our own communist party, was or was not a traitor – and why and why not. In the process, the original party has split into pieces too numerous to count – often as much on personality clashes as on ideological ones. Outrage is hallmark of our comrades.
  It’s not hard to begin to understand why the UML is so mad. The Maoists were supposed to be a fringe group, living on the crumbs the UML deigned to offer. UML leaders, after all, were the ones who established the relevance of communism in a post-communist world. By pouring perestroika and glasnost into a Nepali brew called People’s Multiparty Democracy, the UML sat atop the world’s first freely elected national communist government in 1994.
  Yet, months later, the Maoists emerged to challenge what they saw was a brazen dilution of the faith, beginning a decade-long spree of murder and mayhem. An amalgam of communists including the once-feared Jhapali headhunters, the UML considered the notion of armed uprising untenable in Nepal’s context.
  Once the insurgency spread, the party joined the rest of the mainstream – which then included the palace – to suppress the warriors. At one point, Comrade Nepal even petitioned the palace that he was the best man to complete the task, although he was also furtively meeting with rebel leaders on foreign soil.
  Miffed by repeated royal rebuffs, the UML and its six allies pivoted against the palace, but only after the Maoists forced them walk behind in an interminable journey toward nebulous newness. And insult of insults, the Maoists – who had disproved the UML on the validity of armed action – now reinvented themselves as peace messengers to dominate the left flank of Nepali politics.
  Yet Comrade Nepal, who the Nepali electorate doubly determined did not deserve a seat in the new legislature, still managed to sneak in, as the Maoists threw another crumb his way. Today, Dahal might seem to have grown an inflated image of himself as the consummate Nepali geopolitician. Still, he looks better than his UML critics.
  Admittedly, these two big communist parties have a major challenge in maintaining their claim to the brand name. If the Maoists become the next UML, caving and compromising on everything, that would further hollow out their diminishing reputation. If the UML becomes more radicalized in order to supplant the Maoists on the extreme end of the field, well, they don’t seem to have it in themselves to do so.
  For now, each can try to be what it is not and hope to make some headway. But the basic contradiction of seeking to universalize an ideology meant for little more than twentysomething utopians will not have gone away. And that realization is probably what makes our ageing comrades the angriest.

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  Maila Baje 5:56 am on 2013/04/21 Permalink | Reply  

  Someone Had To Say It! 

  

  There was a conspicuous clang of condescension in United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s assertion that he was visiting Beijing in an effort to help Nepal maintain equidistance between its two giant neighbors.
  Dahal’s meetings with China’s new President Xi Jinping and other senior leaders were widely covered by the state-controlled Chinese media. Yet this time, the Chinese media also covered how widely their Nepali counterparts covered Dahal’s trip. And Dahal, for his part, conveyed both Chinese and Nepali concerns during a candid interview with a Nepali reporter in Beijing.
  That the Chinese would use Dahal to convey their concerns on Tibet and Nepal’s moves toward federalism can perhaps best be understood against Beijing’s demonstrable reluctance to be seen interfering in our domestic affairs (and thereby contrast itself with India).
  The Chinese, according to Dahal, are not necessarily against federalism. They just want to be sure that the model Nepal seems to be favoring does not end up prolonging national instability.
  Amid the predictable jeers back home surrounding the Maoist chairman’s undertaking – for instance, how he furtively met the Indian ambassador thrice before his trip up north – Maila Baje feels Dahal made a constructive contribution to the Nepal-China dialogue process.
  What China wants and does not want from Nepal have largely superseded Nepal’s own aspirations and expectations in recent years. Nepal’s international image has been hit by successive government crackdowns on the Tibetan community here.
  Nepali protestations that we are under intense Chinese pressure to abide by our commitment to a one China policy have not found favor among the other international stakeholders, which have legitimized almost every other action the post-April 2006 leadership has taken regardless of ideological orientation.
  That the domestic drivers of ‘new Nepal’ are not emboldened enough to face up to the Chinese is, ultimately, a slap in the face of these other external stakeholders.
  It is in this context that Dahal’s contention that a poor Nepal cannot abide by its commitment to a one China policy comes into sharp focus. The reality that Nepal will continue to be a base for Tibetan independence/autonomy movement is now as clear as the recognition that it was always so after the 1959 Tibetan uprising. That Nepal once exercised extra-territorial rights in Tibet may be a historical footnote at this point in time, but it does provide the context to our special position there, exemplified by the fact that we are the only country with a consulate in Lhasa. (For an exhaustive treatment of this angle, Maila Baje recommends Nepal and the Geo-Strategic Rivalry Between China and India, written recently by Nepali journalist Sanjaya Upadhyaya.)
  Nepal’s full cooperation in China’s campaign to stabilize Tibet has become more imperative amid our own seemingly inexorable instability. The Nepal-China border may be topographically forbidding, but it is still porous enough to be an asset to those seeking to contain (or whatever you want to call it) an assertive China. Amid deepening turmoil, the political and economic incentives from China’s rivals for Nepal to water down, if not entirely discard, its one-China policy can become more expedient to our leadership.
  Thus Dahal’s exhortation to the Chinese to put their money where their mouth was long overdue. Clearly, the Chinese must have recognized how badly they have mishandled the post-April 2006 situation. By abandoning the monarchy so visibly, Beijing probably had hoped to win over the new political players. (Let’s not forget how eagerly the Chinese ambassador became the first foreign representative not to present his credentials to the king).
  Yet Beijing’s very public display of ‘unsentimental pragmatism’ led the newly ascendant political parties to doubt not only China’s motives but also its willingness to sustain its newfound overtures. The political quid pro quo within which the Chinese have preferred to conduct their economic diplomacy with Nepal over the past seven years has made this much clear: Nepalis’ congenital distrust of India does not necessarily translate into outright companionship with China.
  Call it equidistance or equiproximity or the Yam Doctrine, Nepali aspirations have always been the same: retaining the ability to exercise its sovereign options without fear or favor. Now what’s wrong with that?

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  MeroSamachar.com 9:36 am on 2013/04/19 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: GroundReport.com ( 8 ), National ( 8 )   

  Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks reconfirmation on One China Policy from Nepal 

   Unified Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (UCPNM) Chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Chinese President Xi Jinping did have a dialogue on Thursday on Sino-Nepal issues.

  On the occasion, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to boost win-win cooperation between Nepal and China, the Chinese news agency Xinhua stated.

  Publicly disseminated information confirmed the dialogue had mainly focused on China’s concern on the use of the Nepali territory for free Tibet causes though the President did not fail to appreciate Nepal’s efforts to maintain her One-China Policy.

  Dahal expressed his expectation of more financial and technical help from China to facilitate the development of fundamental economic structures in Nepal. 

   

  The Chinese President strongly advised Nepal to work for political stability without which Nepal would face difficulty proceeding with political independence.

   

  Nepal is in a serious political dilemma following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly elected in 2008 to draft a new pro-change constitution as a tool to manage the 10-year armed insurgency across Nepal. 

   

  from GroundReport.com.

   
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  Maila Baje 1:32 am on 2013/04/15 Permalink | Reply  

  Teetering Amid Transitions 

  

  With the prospects of new elections in June now virtually vaporized, a new round of blame game has ensued among the government, election commission and political parties. In reality, our major politicians must be relieved at this postponement of their tryst with the people.
  Much has been made about how the peace process formally came to a close last week, with the dissolution of the special committee entrusted with supervision, integration and rehabilitation of thousands of Maoist ex-combatants.
  Peace more or less prevails across the nation. A process of sorts, too, has been under way for a while, averting several last-minute breakdowns. Nepal as a country continues to exists. We still breathe and bounce around, at home and abroad, as full-fledged Nepalis.
  The international news media, however, is picking up bits and pieces to paint a portentous portrait. The specialized outlets are especially worried. Some are concerned about the future of homosexuals. Others are anxious about the fate of women. Non-Hindus are restive over their rights. Nationalities are edgy over the disrepute the word ‘federalism’ has been kicked into. (So much so they want to resurrect the constituent assembly that had already been on life support for two years.)
  Under Khil Raj Regmi, our novel head of government, Nepal’s narrative seems to be moving from one of a politically fractious state to that of an administrative/bureaucratic variety. On the surface, the high-level political committee appears to be directing affairs. But even Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who heads the political mechanism, has started extolling the virtues of evolution. (Without his flip-flops over the past decade and a half, there would have been neither war nor peace, the Maoist supremo reminds us.)
  Deeper down, the government of ex-bureaucrats is doing what it can only do best: consolidating the trapping of state. Enjoying the support of the international community and most of the political parties – albeit grudgingly – the Regmi government gives us the pretense of business as usual. When the world’s sole superpower and strongest democracy now is increasingly ruled by executive orders and bureaucratic regulations, there is little point in our feeling out of step.
  As long as the political process that began in April 2006 shows no immediate sign of collapse, the principal political protagonists and their civil society cheerleaders should be satisfied with anything. They will shriek and shout about principles and propriety, but that is all part of the script.
  Still, this transition, by its very definition, must be transitory. When will we ever see some sort of closure? First, it was the leadership transition in China, but that has moved apace. Next on schedule is the passing of the torch in the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty down south ahead of national elections. The power equations within the Hindu nationalist fold, too, need to be reset. And regional forces, including those bordering Nepal, still have to undergo some realignment.
  That will easily take us to 2014, for sure. Will we then have arrived anywhere? Maila Baje thinks not. We might have to await the transition in the Tibetan leadership, as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s walks deeper into the twilight of his life, setting off fierce geopolitical jockeying for years.
  If the Chinese, Indians, Americans and Europeans are all absorbed in that direction, maybe we, too, should start paying more attention – for our sake.
  

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  Maila Baje 5:24 am on 2013/04/08 Permalink | Reply  

  Nepali Congress’ Crowning Catch-22 

  

  There seems to be an outbreak of nationalism angst in the middle rungs of the Nepali Congress. Be it on the asphyxiating hold of international stakeholders or the issue of domestic federalism, leaders of Nepal’s self-proclaimed single democratic party these leaders have awakened to the nation’s existential peril.
  From Shekhar Koirala to Mahesh Acharya to Minendra Rijal, the imperative of an immediate course correction has come out in variety of ways. Some have belatedly recognized how they have used in a hasty plunge into national reinvention; others are suffocating on the sidelines.
  B.P. Koirala, the party’s presiding deity, always excited the faithful. Yet today, when party members mouth his call for fusing democracy and nationalism, they do so by much more than paying lip service.
  Congress leaders and workers may not say it aloud, but the torment is traceable to the party’s abandonment of its traditional commitment to constitutional monarchy. Whatever may have led the late Girija Prasad Koirala to hurtle toward full-blown republicanism – exasperation, a sense of history, ambition or an outright quest for revenge – there were those who were dubious of the rupture from the outset.
  Forced to choose between fealty to democracy and monarchy, it certainly seemed fashionable for the party to ditch the palace. There was also a certain smugness about the separation. The idea that the party would require enough basic relevance in order to be able to hoist the banner of democracy was simply discounted.
  What energized the Nepali Congress during good times and bad was its ability to combine its commitment to democracy and monarchy into a call for action. Even when the party attempted to murder two kings, it could assert with enough credibility that it was merely targeting autocratic monarchy.
  Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal proudly insists that the Nepali Congress has lost much of its significance simply because Nepal is now a republic. Nepali Congress leaders and workers who thought they were doing the monarchy a favor are today feeling its absence.
  What can the Nepali Congress do? Platitudes on peace and prosperity can only lead them so far among the people. At least the communists have the organization and regimentation to drag along a dead ideology. With the departure of Girija Koirala, the party has become an even more pathetic collection of individuals battling extinction.
  Thus, the more important question is, what will the Nepali Congress do? Reversing its abandonment of constitutional monarchy will hardly seem credible, even with an overdose of contrition. Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal has a stronger case there.
  Many Nepali Congress leaders, by virtue of their recent silence on the issue of monarchy, look more dignified than, say, Surya Bahadur Thapa and Pashupati Shamsher Rana. (The first of these avowed republicans, Maila Baje recalls, once wanted King Birendra to hang B.P. Koirala, while the second, as education minister during the 1979 student protests, thought he could simply snuff out those on the streets before he finally resigned.)
  Still, a Nepali Congress alliance with so-called nationalist forces will divert too much attention on the meanings of both ‘alliance’ and ‘nationalism’. Let’s say such an amalgamation does become the dominant political force – one that might even lead to the restoration of the monarchy.
  What would the Nepali Congress do about the damage that has already been done to Nepal’s ability to exercise its sovereign options? Here, the onus would fall heavily on the Nepali Congress, too, because much of that damage was inflicted by its rash desertion of the monarchy in the first place.
  

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  Maila Baje 3:19 am on 2013/04/01 Permalink | Reply  

  The Benefits Of Being On The Fringe 

  

  We have got a real problem here when, in terms of sheer numbers, there are more fringe parties than there are those driving the political agenda.
  Now, Maila Baje doesn’t want to hear any growls or grunts. The four major constituents of our satrapy remain the best-organized outfits and would probably dominate the outcome of the upcoming elections. Yet, by last count, 33 parties are resisting the quartet’s obdurate campaign to take the country wherever they are.
  Granted, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which broke away from the once-formidable organization that waged that romanticized 10-year spiral of death and destruction, cannot be dismissed as fringe. They still have the muscle and money to enforce their will. The other 32 are thus mere followers in an alliance of convenience.
  Most of these smaller parties will probably never be able to garner enough collective electoral strength to impose their agenda, even if they were to cobble together one. But, if history is any guide, they do have the collective power to thwart the agendas of others. And that is what is becoming scarier by the day in these creepy times.
  The notion of change remains popular until you ask people what the term really means to them. Everyone loves his or her own version of transformation. But they seem to revile far more deeply what others expect change to mean.
  Everybody has all kinds of solutions for the country’s real and imagined problems. The basic problem is, each one us wants exclusive rights to implement our own solutions. And when we realize we can’t have that, then we embark on the second-best course: share the littlest with the fewest.
  So Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi gets to become head of the interim election council because no real politician wanted any other member of his/her fraternity to succeed Dr. Baburam Bhattarai.
  Still, we’re left arguing whether Regmi will end up becoming a weak reflection of discredited political parties or turn into a purveyor of something entirely sinister.
  Critics want him to quit as chief justice to ensure free and fair elections. Where do notions like separation of powers even come in when the larger process is already being driven by absolutism and imperiousness?
  Consider the fallout. Political parties that ordinarily would have been talking about winning comfortable majorities on their own are busy contemplating the most fruitful alliances. Regmi, meanwhile, gets to assert that he would be able to announce progress toward elections only when his opponents cease their campaign of disruption.
  President Ram Baran Yadav, for his part, is emboldened to voice dissatisfaction with a head of government who is barely three days in office. The external sponsors of the current formula continue to get to pit the president against prime minister, ensuring that neither could accumulate institutional robustness that could prove deleterious to non-Nepalis down the line.
  As such, each day wasted in acrimony and animosity deals another blow to the credibility of the poll results even before the first votes have been campaigned for, much less cast. And it’s in that hostile expanse where a bloated fringe has the greatest room for maneuver.
  Call them fringe at our own peril.

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  Maila Baje 10:04 am on 2013/03/24 Permalink | Reply  

  Congratulations, Dr. Bhattarai 

  

  An incorrigible critic of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, Maila Baje should have found it easy to join the legions in acclaiming his departure from the premiership. In all candor, yours truly remains in angst of sorts.
  It really doesn’t feel nice hearing Dr. Bhattarai demonized by many as the worst premier Nepal has had since 2006, if not in its entire history. The former prime minister, for his part, can take solace in the reality that such sentiments have surrounded each of his predecessors.
  There was a lot during Dr. Bhattarai’s 18 months and 18 days in office that riled Maila Baje: The BIPPA agreement with India, the mismanagement of then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit, the sneaky meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the non-aligned conference in Teheran, the Tribhuvan International Airport development program and some of the prime minister’s own pronouncements on the scope and extent of Nepalis’ ability to determine their fate. Collectively, these have tarnished a tenure that had begun amid such hope.
  The individual lapses of Dr. Bhattarai’s government cannot be ignored. But there are also other things that must not be overlooked: the nature of the ruling coalition, the circumstances of the times and a propaganda barrage targeted against one of its most skillful practitioners all played a part in defining the man’s legacy. Yet Dr. Bhattarai, in Maila Baje’s appraisal, has dismounted the tiger keeping much of himself intact.
  Dr. Bhattarai could have avoided some grief by trying to play down the people’s expectations. But that would have been an inherently unpolitical thing to do, especially given the general acrimony already preceding his ascension. The price, of course, was the precipitousness with which his persona plummeted.
  Having railed so hard against almost everyone who steered the ship of state since modern Nepal’s founding, Dr. Bhattarai confronted many challenges that were common to kings, oligarchs, and non-Maoist commoners alike. And as one of the keenest observers of Nepal’s geopolitical precariousness, Dr. Bhattarai could not have been oblivious of this historical continuity.
  In a lengthy interview following his departure, he seemed to indicate awareness of the challenges involved in governing – as opposed to castigating those who did govern – the country. This was particularly evident in his defense of the nomination of former chief secretary Lokman Singh Karki to head the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority. Describing him as an efficient administrator, Dr. Bhattarai sought to play down the nature of the system Karki worked for and even the mode of Karki’s entrance into the civil service (through peremptory royal fiat).
  As premier, Dr. Bhattarai could have taken a bolder step. A major gesture that he – and only he – could have made was to have met with former king Gyanendra in full public glare as part of a desire to understand the kinds of regional and international pulls and pressures Nepali leaders have had to face in seeking to exercise the country’s sovereign rights.
  Furthermore, by meeting with former prime minister Marich Man Singh Shrestha, a first-hand witness to the geopolitical pressures of the 1990s – no less a factor in the collapse of the partyless Panchayat system than the people’s aspirations for freedom – he could have affirmed a true sense of purposeful national reconciliation.
  Nepal, after all, may have become new, but those with roots in and reminiscences of the old variant are likely to be around for a while desirous to be of use and deserve to be treated as equal citizens. The relevance and appropriateness of what they might have to say vis-à-vis the country’s march forward could be the subject of a separate debate. Yet the simple affirmation that we are all in this together would certainly have helped the country’s long-term prospects.
  History will certainly be more dispassionate in its judgment of what Dr. Bhattarai did or didn’t do as prime minister. Yet this much can be safely said: He set himself apart from his predecessors by leaving office successfully portraying himself as someone who at least tried to do in his own way what he thought was right in the given circumstances, yet also ready to cede the ultimate conclusion to the rest of us. And for that feat alone, Dr. Bhattarai deserves our congratulations.

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