Misguided stakes

Even as the Legislature Parliament stands stalled, the UCPN (Maoist) is adamant on the fulfillment of its demands including discussions on the President’s move regarding the then CoAS. The major ruling parties, the CPN (UML) and Nepali Congress (NC), have no green signal for anything to

do with this particular Maoist demand. The obvious consequence has been that the urgent business

of the House are languishing in uncertainty. The foremost among them, as has been repeatedly highlighted, is the passage of the budget for the current

fiscal year. In such a scenario, the UCPN (M)

has launched the second phase of the much criticised protest programme. If the boycotting of the cabinet ministers’ programme was one thing, the present protests have become more disruptive. The Maoists have gone a step further by obstructing the works at the municipalities and VDCs, and the like all over the country. These go only to reflect the sheer indifference that the largest party in the Constituent Assembly has for the convenience and relief of the people in general. No words suffice to be critical of such disruptive acts that only undermine the whole peace process that the country had embarked upon seemingly in earnestness. But, when a party in the political stream tries to put in jeopardy all the achievement, it is rather unfortunate.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has a point when he throws the gauntlet for the Maoists to prove their mettle in forming the government by garnering the requisite number of supporters in the House. It all has fallen on deaf ears as the Maoists, through a show of force, want the present UML-led government to make way for it to ascend to power. It is a very queer logic that the government which has the majority support in the House is asked to resign. Whatever the other reasons maybe, the whole intent of UCPN (M) seems to be to get hold of the reins of the government. This, however, scents of some grievous objectives, which would not be in line with the democratic set up that has been well-entrenched in the country. To add strength to this suspicion, the activities of the Maoists do not seem

to be in line with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Interim Constitution, where the

whole emphasis is on consensus. If consensus, the bulwark of the republican set up till the new constitution is drafted and promulgated, is sidelined it would be a political catastrophe that would not be in the interest of any democratic political force, including the Maoists themselves.

The ace that the UCPN (M) thinks it has dealt in the form of the protests will only make the life of the common people, who represent the Maoists’ buzzword of “civilian supremacy”, in dire straits. If one thinks of competitive politics, by all means this is not the time to indulge in such until the statute, the drafting of which is already constrained by time, comes into force paving the way for the general elections. Conjecturing the noughts in their favour, the UCPN (M) may have improvised the protests along with their brand of mudslinging at the ruling parties. However, while doing so, they do not consider consensus as impossible. A clever mixture, indeed.

Be prepared

One pilgrim died in a stampede, another drowned and scores of others were injured at Barachhetra Monday night. This sort of tragedy often occurs during large religious melas and gatherings. However, this tragedy could have been averted had the organizers looking after the welfare of the pilgrims been properly prepared. In this case, it is clear that insufficient security personnel had been mobilized to look after around 300,000 pilgrims. The organizing committee at Barachhetra has tried to evade blame for the tragic incident by saying that they had not expected such a huge turnout of pilgrims which was four fold more than they had expected. Still, they have to take the responsibility.

Again, most of the victims were women, children and the elderly and the rescue teams were hampered in their work by the huge crowd. In future, enough infrastructure should be there and the organizers should be prepared for all eventualities. The accommodation arrangements for the pilgrims were also lacking as many of them had to spend the nights under the open sky. Let this type of lapse on the part of the organizers not be repeated