I n d e p t h    A n a l y s i s
The streets are to heat up!

Kathmandu: Race is on for political parties to demonstrate their strength in public. The Congress Girija has already launched its tirade against the prevailing situation calling for the restoration of the parliament as the only constitutional remedy. In the process, he has made and retracted several statements regarding the monarchy in a bid to blow hot and cold to attract the extremes evident in Nepali political society. Watchers, however, are ever keen to gauge the extent of the popularity of his moves on the basis of the crowd he draws at the gatherings.

A sizeable section of the congress media obliges him with the publicity. But the feeling is the same. The bulk public at large remains casual bystanders. Those aware are not surprised at the movement of the party cadre along with Girija to demonstrate mass support.

The Deuba congress threatens to go to the public but its size will have to be limited by half its stalwarts arraigned behind the bars on corruption allegations. Nevertheless, Deuba has spoken publicly against the Royal move and intends to arouse the masses to pressure the Palace to redress the constitutional situation. His stance is that the King should go back and give him the "lost" Premiership and acquiesce to his original demand to extend his term for elections.

The UML has challenged the Palace authority to do its will and insists that it will go to the public by late December and demonstrate that it has the public in the bid to ensure that a cabinet with constitutional executive authority is formed. While it does seem to have been the loser so far in terms of gradual slide of cadre, the general belief is that the UML's position is that of a reluctant flirt with the Palace the results of which are likely to emanate by a months time. Strangely, the picture of a Madhav Nepal "'compromising"' national "interests" for sake of his shaky hold in the party and new personal alignments in the "neighborhood" emerges from within his own party.

The Maoists of course are said to have ringed the capital in a bid to demonstrate strength with maximum publicity after serious reversals in the countryside. They have declared a paralysis in the educational institutions and have shown their willingness to ignore talk offers in a posture of arrogant confidence that is likely to yield fruits in the public amidst the current chaos in government and organized politics.

The general assessment of government performance in the past two months has been surely negative and the opposition is very much aware of this. It is not surprising therefore that the pressure is on. As per time of writing the lack of mass participation in the opposition will be corrected by the incitement of the education sector. If the Maoists close the schools, congress and the UML are to close University. If the Maoists will bring school-teachers, the parliamentary parties have a sizeable number of university staff to field. Of course, the students are ready-meat and so the numbers.

Maoists sending different signals to different quarters

Kathmandu: Needless to say that if there is any force or a political party that is exploiting the current fluidity in Nepali politics in its favor, it is surely the Maoists insurgency.

The insurgency is definitely twisting the arms of the political parties including the Chand government in a manner that it wishes by sending "'contradictory" signals to all the political actors of the nation and in the process has been successful in indicating all and sundry that the insurgency is siding with them.

The one party which took Maoists insurgency's displeasure with the government as close to theirs is the Koirala congress. It is this congress which apparently considers the Maoists insurgency to be very close to their newly arrived thinking on the agenda of republicanism. The Koirala congress wishes to forget that it was this party which began a crusade against the Maoists insurgency when Koirala was the prime minister. But how it could be that the Maoists could forget all these simply because Koirala congress now differs with the Chand government? More so, the process of attacking the congressmen by the Maoists in the remote districts continues unabated. But this notwithstanding, the Koirala congress thinks that it can forge an alliance with the insurgency should the constitutional aberrations are not corrected shortly.

This is Maoists strategy perhaps to lure the congress led by Koirala till it remains friendly with the insurgency. If this does happen will definitely add to the strength of the insurgency. Hopefully, the insurgency would have felt pleased when Koirala the other day talked of congress moving the agenda of a republicanism to which the latter still sticks to.

Similarly, the insurgency has not left the UML in the cold. This gets reflected in the various statements made in the recent days by the UML stalwarts that hints that if the constitutional monarch does not mend his ways, the party might begin advocating the agenda of republicanism in Nepal. The fact is also that the UML party which has now embraced constitutional monarchy has yet to delete from its manifesto that its ultimate goal is to make Nepal a republican state. Understandably, the insurgency would wish that the UML continues this line for sake of extracting political benefits.

In the process, the insurgency has apparently hinted the UML that it would support any move initiated by the party that restricts the King from exceeding the constitutional limits.

But the fact remains that the insurgency would wish the UML support for dismantling the 1990 constitution which is what K.B.Mahara has told recently to a newspaper on the Internet.

" We continue to stick to our already declared line that favours the dismantling the 1990 constitution and the present government and having a round table conference that brings in the participation of all political forces, intellectuals, we the Maoists and the King as well that leads us to the process of dialogue and then forming an interim government", says Mahara—one of the key personality of the insurgency.

To recall, it is this personality who upon a mysterious telephone call abruptly left the room where he was having dialogues with the representatives of the Deuba government. The mysterious call remains yet a mystery.

Thus, the Maoists mysterious inklings are loaded with different meaning to different political parties.

It is up to the receiver to take their hints in a manner that possibly could be interpreted to have gone in their favor.

The insurgency's shrewdness remains par excellence in the sense that it has ever advocated a round table conference with the participation of the King's nominee in arriving at an amicable solution to their issue. The insurgency knows better that the King's nominee will oppose the idea of a republicanism at time of the said round table conference but yet wish that the King's nominee attends the said conference. This is more than a big surprise which the lay men fail to understand.

It is this political strategy of the Maoists insurgency that is compounding further the Nepali politics.

The mystery remains intact: what the Maoists really want? A referendum for ascertaining people's choice for a constituent assembly? Or simply the scrapping up of the 1990 constitution that made them to enter to the jungles? Or is it that that they wish the present system becoming defunct? And be replaced by a new system wherein their own participation is adequately secured?

Volatile politics continues to haunt Nepal's political scene

Kathmandu: Nepali politics remains stagnant. However, this should not mean that political maneuverings were not taking place behind the scenes.

In effect, the politics, be it a negative or even positive one, are at constant work with the one extreme "expecting" the other to "yield" and help restore what the political paraphernalia describes the "derailed democracy"'.

Understandably, the one extreme is led by nation's major parliamentary forces and the other by the Royal Palace.

Neither the Royal Palace nor the political parties appear to take back their already declared moves and hence the mood of "confrontation" in between the two persists.

While the Nepali congress led by Girija Prasad Koirala is blowing hot and cold concurrently against the Nepali monarchy, the UML is yet to formally decide which methods it should acquire in order to press the King to "correct" what it calls "constitutional blunders". But then yet the party has announced that very shortly it would organize mass meetings in practically all the important districts to arouse awareness among the masses and garner support against the King's moves that began from October 4 and thenceforth.

The Koirala congress got excited to the extent that Koirala himself threatened that his party could begin thinking of "republicanism" should the King prefer to go "alone" without seeking the support of the country's "democratic" parties. As the luck would have it, president Koirala a day after of that fiery statement managed some how or the other to "'correct" his Birganj speech made on 28 November.

This sudden change in Koirala's "mood" vis-à-vis the Nepali monarchy is significant in the sense that which "factors" could have forced Koirala to take his strong worded statements back? Is it the national or some extra-territorial forces which made Koirala to take his words back? Keep on guessing.

The Royal Palace is apparently listening to the "threat loaded" statements made by various political parties but has yet to take any lead in the direction that "satisfies" the "'ego" of the nations parliamentary parties who forcefully maintain that the constitutional monarch did exceed his constitutional limits and thus the monarch himself has to correct the political aberrations seen in the national politics instantly after October 4.

The Deuba congress, generally considered to be a sinking horse" in the face of the tragedy it suffered only recently and given its main powerful stalwarts awaiting penal actions, is also reluctantly planning a sort of "'protest" programs in the coming days to let its thin followers that the King in dismissing their party boss committed a constitutional blunder.

The party led by Deuba concludes that the present political uncertainty and constitutional aberrations could automatically come to a grinding halt if the King restored his "Premiership" and allowed him to conduct the elections which he could not during his last tenure in government.

A reluctant Deuba and his party opines that the party would not "submit" to the King's moves ( in other words it would not support the revival of an active monarchy) nor it would go against the "'constitutional monarchy". This plainly means that Deuba and his party would wish not to go in for a direct confrontation with the Royal Palace for understandable reasons.

However, Deuba's wish that he be made prime minister again in the present scheme of things could be considered flatly as "hoping against hope".

The RPP, for example, is busy in finding a suitable chairman for its party and the "big-fight" in between P.Rana and Dr. Lohani is said to be on for capturing the prestigious chair of the party chairman at the moment occupied by S.B.Thapa. The party will decide hopefully on the current political situation a bit later possibly when it has a new elected chairman.

Other smaller parties, mainly with Left tilt, will perhaps toe the UML line time permitting.

All put together, the politics continues to be excessively volatile and hence remains not completely out of "danger".

Cinema is an art that depicts true life

-French Ambassador Claude Ambrosini

Kathmandu: The French Ambassador to the Nepali court, Mr. Claude Ambrosini, has said that "if cinema is an art that allows each of us to escape from daily life, to dream, to be carried into another world, it is also the one that describes the true life, at times cruel, but oh!, ever so true, the one that makes us think over or become aware of reality of life".

The French diplomat made these statements at the inaugural session of the French film festival that began last week at the Russian Culture Center.

The French film festival, as declared in our previous issue, is mainly based and dedicated to the women folks whose emergence in the French cinema, according to the Ambassador, amounts to the emergence of a new generation in the French society and thus in thew French celluloid.

"'It is partly thanks to these women film producers that social matters surface again in the French films since the 1990s", added the Ambassador.

Dwelling on the films collected for the festival in Nepal, Mr. Ambrosini opined that " what the films have in common (is) that they all know about the look one has on social reality, family relation between men and women, shaking up generally accepted ideas.

The festival was jointly inaugurated by two distinguished women of the country: minister Anuradha Koirala who is an internationally renowned social worker and Ms. Karishma Manandhar who in turn is considered to be one of the best actress of the nation and has several films to her credit.

The first film that was on the screen on the inaugural day talked about a women struggling with cancer during her first pregnancy. The film drew the attention of the gathered crowd because the producer of the film herself went through this trauma in her real life.

Chand's ministers utter incoherent voice

Kathmandu: Different brains housed in the Chand government have been talking different things at different gatherings which means that the men in the government are either been told to talk differently or been neglecting the government's instructions to have coherent voices.

In the process the lay men including the local intellectuals get confused.

Confusions galore.

The communication minister Ramesh Nath Pandey maintains that the Maoists were a "nationalist" creature giving others the impression that he alone subscribed to this view and the rest considered the Maoists as anti-nationals.

Likewise, the administrator turned minister, Mr. Dharma Bahadur Thapa the other day lifted the terrorist tag which the Deuba government had put on the heads of the Maoists insurgency. He not only lifted the tag of the terrorist but also did away with the "award" scheme brought into effect by Deuba regime for the heads of the top-ranking Maoists leaders.

This he might have done so in order to please the Maoists and bring them for the talks is simply understandable. But in the process of pleasing the insurgent leaders perhaps the home minister forgot the implications that it would have on the thinking of the international community who have been supporting the Nepali government(s) unconditionally in containing the threats of the Maoists insurgency. In essence the developed West is supporting the HMG/N considering the Maoists insurgency as a terrorist outfit.

It is yet uncertain whether the minister lifted the terrorist tag from the heads of the Maoists leaders in prior consultation with the international community. If it is the other wise then the country might not receive the kind of support it needs to contain the threats emanating from the Maoists quarters.

But then yet, what is the guarantee that the government did this without the consent of the international community. After all, the international community too has been hinting the establishment to initiate the process of dialogue in order to restore peace in this beleaguered Kingdom.

"The government may have told the donor community in advance that they were to bring the insurgents to the table for talks was possible only if the terrorist tag were lifted from their heads", says one informed intellectual.

Other political scientist on condition of anonymity opines that the Maoists themselves could have set a precondition for talks and that being the lifting up of the terrorist tag.

One talkative minister in the Chand's cabinet very pleasingly made one off-the cuff remarks wherein he surprised many a brains attending a gathering when he said that the RNAC was on a grand reduction sale. The dirt price the minister declared for the sale of the RNAC's existing property is unimaginably less which has already excited many businessmen in Kathmandu.

It appears that the ministers have become reckless perhaps this is what prime minister Chand wishes.

A non-performing prime minister like Mr. Chand can't select his colleagues than what he has collected for his cabinet.

It is perhaps time that the Premier tames his cabinet colleagues.

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