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Kathmandu Saturday February 03, 2001 Magh 21, 2057.
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Vox Populi
Politicians may not like it, HMG Nepal may send a protest note to Washington,
and sycophants of the Prime Minister and of the Nepali Congress party may go in for street
protests (maybe a bandh!), but a big thank you from us ordinary Nepalese, whose voice the
government has stopped hearing, to the American ambassador Mr Ralph Frank for having had
the guts to speak the absolute truth in front of all the powers that matter today in
Nepal. Yes we are absolutely at the mercy of corrupt politicians and administrators, who
have taken us in the past ten years down a slide from which our nation will not be able to
recover for at least thirty years, at a generous estimate.The rampant corruption, the
total disregard for the people’s good and only self enrichment on an astronomical
scale by people who were elected for the good of the people and the country, is what
identifies us in the eyes of the world today, in this age of swift communication
technology. The total disregard of the poor, of the even mildly remote areas of the
country, and the absence of even a semblance of security and good governance is what has
bred in us a deep hatred for our rulers,a distrust of democracy as it stands today, and
the desire to see this group of the corrupt disappear from public life, somehow(I
don’t know how!).
Thank you too, Mr R P Boyd (letter of 1st Feb) for saying that the place
(Nepal) "is run by either the mad or the bad or the sad,or a mixture of them".
While personally I would vote for the first two descriptions, I don’t mind the third
as well!
I hope the U S government does not deal harshly with it’s
Ambassador for what he has said, but will consider Vox Populi too, if it ever
comes to taking a decision against Mr Frank.
Dr Sundar Mani Dixit M D
Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur |
