Dateline
Kathmandu
HATE CAMPAIGN INDIA
In the wake of Indian Airliner's hijacking,
Nepalese living in Meghalaya of India are reported to have been rampaged. According to a
vernacular weekly, they have also been subjected to police firing. One is reported dead
and several others injured.
Local Indians are said to have spread a hate
campaign against the Nepalese who have been living there for decades, on the alleged
grounds of a Nepali's involvement in the hijacking of their airliner. The blatantly false
information with regard to Gajendra Tamrakar's complicity with the hijackers has led to
the current situation wherein Nepalese have been subjected to wanton beating, firing and
violence. Massive pamphleting and posterings against the Nepalese have also served to
perpetrate this sort of atrocities. Most regrettably, our government is seen to have been
least concerned. Should the Nepalese take recourse to reprisals the situation might turn
very serious. The government needs to be alert.
The Bhattarai government has been threatened more
by his detractors within the Nepali Congress than the opposition.The sustained campaign
with the sole objective of replacing Bhattarai by Girija Koirala on the part of
latter’s supporters has culminated in the former’s somewhat ‘tricky
yielding’. He is prepared to step down as suggested by party president Koirala, but
not now.
Girija was quoted as saying during the party’s
central working committee meeting, December 24, that Prime Minister Bhattarai was prepared
to step down voluntarily at the right time and an agreement to this effect was reached
between him and Bhattarai. Amidst vehement assaults on the part of Girija loyalists who
outnumber the supporters of Bhattarai both in the party central committee and the
parliamentary party, the premier had no other option but to relent. But still the way he
has chosen to buy time smacks of something conspiratorial.
Over the last six months Bhattarai has proved to be
a complete failure as a Prime Minister. The country seems to have gone directionless both
on the domestic and international fronts. His abrupt capitulation to Indian allegations in
the aftermath of Indian Airliner’s hijacking Friday, has seriously bruised our
national pride and prestige. Besides, the government has neither been successful in
containing terrorism nor in curbing rampant corruption.
Democracy can only be sustained through good
governance. In the absence of good governance democracy gets relegated to mere empty
rhetorics. Democracy is not an end in itself. It can be used as a variable to facilitate
good governance. It is only through good governance that a nation can achieve much coveted
peace and prosperity. In this context, the words of Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee
Kuan Yew are worth mentioning: “Singaporeans are not champions of human rights or
democracy, but we are very fastidious in the way in which we run our business, and on the
financial matters we are completely above board” (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1998). By
making such remarks what Lee is trying to hint at deserves to be discerned particularly by
a country like ours where more than 70 percent of the population live below poverty line. |
