The issue of the Army Welfare Fund has been a hot one, particularly for the past four years, after a petition on behalf of armymen sent abroad on UN peacekeeping missions was filed at the Supreme Court demanding allowances as per the agreement between the government and the UN and transparency of the Fund. This controversy has hardly done credit to the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA). Allegedly, the soldiers have received only a fraction of what was due to them, and the remaining money is said to have been deposited in the Fund ostensibly for the welfare of the servicemen and their families. One gets an idea of how difficult it is to acquire information from the government generally when even the highest court is not accorded cooperation. This tendency is indeed deplorable. In this connection, the court, citing insufficient written explanations and contradiction between the explanations of the RNA headquarters and the foreign ministry, on Monday ordered the ministry to submit all government decisions and agreements since 1975 concerning the RNA’s involvement in UN peace missions.

What is particularly galling is that the ministry has not provided the court with the required documents for the past one and a half year. For its part, the RNA had explained to the court that every case of its involvement in peace mission has separate decisions and agreements, but the ministry had supplied the court with only the 2004 agreement regarding the Burundi mission. The court issued the second order on Monday only after the attorney general’s failure to submit, as promised, the Auditor-General’s report on that day. The report has ‘gone missing’ mysteriously.

This incident raises some doubts about the intentions of those on the defensive. The report states that there is Rs.8 billion in the RNA Welfare Fund and that high-ranking RNA officials have been misusing the money illlegaly, and that the annual interest alone comes to Rs. 540 million. Any reasonable man thinks that if there were no ugly things to hide, it would only do credit to the RNA and government to be forthcoming with truth. Whatever it is, transparency in public life is a sine quo non of any democracy worth the name, all the more so for any institution run with the taxpayers’ money. Clearly, any argument of state secrecy would not work in this particular case. What should be the exact judgement is the court’s sole domain. However, the court could seek the documents direct from the UN and the A-G’s office. It could also take stern action against those who are treating the judiciary with disdain.