Appointment of judges

LETTERS

The Supreme Court was moved on Sunday against the criteria passed by the Judicial Council (JC) for the appointment of judges in district and appellate courts. The petitioner has sought a stay order for the decision to proceed with judge appointments and nullification of the resolution regarding the criteria. The process for appointing judges is

unstructured and the criteria for making appointments are not defined clearly in the

constitution. So criteria and the selection and career of judges should be based on

merit.

Roshan Kumar Jha, Kathmandu School of Law

Omission

As expected, the rights group are up in arms to protest the recent promotion of Col Raju Basnet. This is quite a logical step given accusations that Col Basnet has been facing over several years. However, a major curious omission being made by these rights groups is to ignore the blanket amnesty that has been awarded (on the same day as the promotion of Mr Basnet) to the UCPN stalwarts Mr PK Dahal, Mr BR Bhattarai and Mr A Sapkota by the current cabinet headed by the UCPN. While this government has always ignored the issue of conflict of interest in making decisions directly benefiting their Communist party, they have turned a blind eye to the war-time atrocities and the due legal course the country should take to bring the perpetrators to justice. Instead, they have used their own majority cabinet to take the legal cases back against their leaders. These cases are being heard in the court and are of very serious nature. The current cabinet cannot misuse its authority to scrap such cases as it not only undermines the authority of the court, but it also makes the wounds of the violent conflict even more painful for the families who lost dear ones in the bloodbath. The rights group should rather turn their attention to this blatant step taken by the cabinet led by PM BR Bhattarai and

vehemently protest it to maintain rule of law and to appease the families who have lost their dear ones.

Sunil Sharma, Teku

Clear

I have heard that the major political parties still seem confused over whether to go for fresh polls or revive the dissolved CA to resolve the deadlock, though they had

earlier announced to have reached an understanding to go for fresh Constituent Assembly (CA) polls. It should be clear to everybody by now that the political parties after May 27 have neither people’s mandate nor capability to rescue our country from the imminent threat of doom. According to the interim constitution, the President of Nepal does have not a ceremonial job like the British Monarch. Under the present situation, the President is the only remaining executive elected by the sovereign and the supreme people of Nepal. The Interim Constitution has clearly made provision of the

supremacy of the people, not parties. The President should immediately relieve the

caretaker government by appointing a non-party government by exercising the powers entrusted to him by the people of Nepal through the interim constitution. The

President should ban strikes or street demonstrations.

Megha Nepal, via e-mail