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telelogo4.jpg (7056 bytes)   Kathmandu,Wednesday, 20 August 2003

S E C O N D   I M P R E S S I O N


What if Koirala renounces politics?

Some one rightly said at a party last week that unless the present day almost "redundant and defunct" leaders of the congress party do not retire or were forced to retire, the country’s politics would continue to be the same. The person who predicted this million-dollar truth also revealed that the recent utterances of President Girija Prasad Koirala that he would soon retire from national politics could be considered to be one of the best and ear-pleasing statements ever made by the political creature who has since 1990 taken to ransom the entire country.

Koirala—a person who definitely has a history of democratic struggle and a personality who concurrently is known as to have waged democratic struggles in the past only to mercilessly rule the nation through his illogical and unjustifiable whims, has done more harm than good to the nation.

Koirala’s fresh declaration that he would soon renounce politics must not be taken in its face value. Those who know him from close quarters say that what Koirala says, he doesn’t do and what he doesn’t say, he does that. Thanks that Koirala has been maintaining this habit since decades and decades and his voters wish that he continued to keep up the traditions, which he has himself manufactured for himself. Politics and political system set a role for the politicians. However, an unbending and excessively arrogant Koirala is not a person who should abide by the established rules. Instead, it should be Koirala and his family members who should set the rules and that the rules should follow but not Koirala. He is a personality who changes his views and ideas as the seasons’ change. One fine morning he would declare that

since the nation needed his political expertise for some time more and that he was excessively pressurized by his voters and his herdsmen in the party and he could not displease them all and hence he has decided to continue to be in politics for some time more as per the wishes of his voters and the cadres. This way he will be in politics till his last breath.

The fact is that the nation will respect and honor him and his immense political contributions if he instantly quits politics. Sooner he renounces politics, the better. The nation is overwhelmed with his political contributions and hence would very much wish to preserve the fine and nice memories till the national population survived.

I see plenty of benefits if Koirala quits politics:

Firstly, the country will see the inaugural of the entrance and the taking over of the largest democratic party by the second generation leaders which has already become a must; Secondly, Koirala’s exit would pave the way for the entrance of more pragmatic and less arrogant leaders in the party; thirdly, his exit will make the party democratic which it is not at the moment; fourthly, his ouster, pleasingly or otherwise, would mean the discontinuation of a sort of familial rule of the Koirala’ of the Nepali congress party; fifthly, Koirala’s smooth going out of the party will send right and sound signals within and within for it should be this country alone wherein old and tired and defunct septuagenarians rule the roost and that his quitting would mean that Nepal’s largest democratic party now would see the reason for revamping the party in a manner that it is still lacking; sixthly, his exit would also mean that scams of the Lauda and the Dhamija dimensions would cease to exist or reoccur; seventhly; his renouncement might reduce the possibility of the intervention of known and declared foreign power(s) in Nepal’s internal affairs; Koirala’s exit might ease the burden of the nation’s apex court in that it would not have to declare time and again an agreement a treaty in effect; and finally his ouster from the party would not let down personalities like Shri Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and Sher Bahadur Deuba and that his ouster will in all probability reduce the chances of further splits in the party.

Ask what Koirala meant to late Ganesh Man Singh and the yet living sage like personality, Krisghna Prasad Bhattarai and the cowboy sort of congress man—Sher Bahadur Deuba. Who else knows better Koirala than the personalities mentioned above who have felt the "impact" and the "bang" of Koirala at different intervals of Nepal’s political history more specially after 1990.

Presumably, how could Deuba forget his government being pulled by his own president’s overt and covert actions; how could Shri Bhattarai erase the sad and bad scenes when his government too had been forcefully pulled down by Koirala and weeping Bhattarai tendered his resignation; how could Bhattarai forget that it was none less than Koirala who openly engineered the defeat of Shri Bhattarai during the 1994 by-elections.

This is not all.

The disadvantages too were there if Koirala quits politics.

Firstly, the King will sleep in peace for there would be none to challenge his authority. Secondly, the entire Koirala family who now heavily depend on his political image, which is real, will come to their senses and time permitting might behave as equals. This clan presumably considers themselves as more than equals. Thirdly, the media will have no scoop to analyze, as it is this Koirala who more often than not provides materials that the Nepali media require to write and ponder over.


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