I n d e p t h    A n a l y s i s
Politics demands change soon

Kathmandu: - Things inevitably will await His Majesty’s return from London a fortnight hence by which time the course of Nepali politics will have crystallized at home. There is little chance that the Maoists will set the date for the next round of talks by then since their posture is that they are talking to the “OLD REGIME” of which the King is the kingpin. Focus thus shifts to actions of the five agitating parties who claim that a decisive agitation is underway.

 The parties who hold monopoly of political organizations have been pulling their nationwide cadre to Kathmandu for street demonstrations. Their presence in class and professional organizations give them the advantage to stir public services and the threat is to paralyze essential delivery systems in government. The academic sector which compose the vanguard of any political agitation in the country are already astir.

So much is obvious. What is not is the government reaction is the government reaction to this pre-announced movement. A safe guess is that government will resort to administrative moves to counter the agitation. The chances that alternative political sectors will be mobilized to fail the movement appear dim. Thapa’s own party is not with him and the streets will be the agitator’s monopoly if Thapa is not to unleash the police.

Perhaps to strengthen his democratic image, Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa will allow the demonstrations a limited presence and call for restraint. But this is hardly to suit the decisiveness of the agitation. Of course, no violent political movement apart from that underway by the Maoists is announced as violent. The agitating parties claim that their demonstrations will be peaceful. But it is certain that it will be violence that will provoke government reaction to expose its “undemocratic nature”.

So much is nearly certain. The guesswork will have to be on what will follow. How the Maoists will take advantage of this organized show will have to be awaited. How government will take on both fronts at this crucial juncture is what matters. It is clear that by time the King returns, Nepal’s fluid politics will have been made ripe for major change. Which way the change will be is what is anticipated.

FES Seminar on WTO regime:
SA scholars criss-cross WTO advantages and disadvantages: Issue Kathmandu Declaration

-by Niraj Aryal

Kathmandu: At a time when whole of the Nepalese Business Community and the Government are waiting for acceding to the membership in the world trade body-WTO, a South Asian regional seminar on WTO Negotiations on Trade and Services was organized, August 23-24, 2003, in Kathmandu by the New Delhi office of the FES, Fredrich Ebert Stiftung.

Still confused are the Government officials, business community and the economists of the country. What exactly Nepal is going to achieve and what we lose from the impending WTO membership is still unclear. Albeit the debate continues.

Nepali participant Dr. Deependra Kshetry from the Nepal Rastra Bank said “in each Ministerial conference of WTO discussions on trade in services takes place but the gravity always lies with the issues in which developed countries have interest”.  He said, since 1998 after Nepal applied for the membership, it has faced a lot of problems. Answering 362 different questions asked by the WTO created troubles of which most of them dealt with trade policies. According to Dr. Kshetry,  “ 31% of the questions concerned were related to TRIPS and 23% were service related, then WTO asked to open Sectors like Health, Banking etc for foreign investment but even after that they were not happy and proposed 120 different sectors for foreign investment” “ We kept on adding but even they were not happy” said   Dr. Kshetry. He said “so it’s been a matter of give and take, the road to the WTO membership”.

Nepal is all set to get the WTO membership at the next WTO conference to be shortly held in Cancun and hence there is no need to weep but instead it’s time to embrace the membership and carry bold initiatives that allows benefits to this country.

The FES sponsored seminar had no participants from Bhutan and the Maldives.

 Most of the SA participants accused the developed nations for their projectionist behavior. For example, Japan among the 7 countries who recently agreed on Nepal’s member ship on WTO with India, USA, European Union, New Zealand, Canada and Australia, has 500% of import tax on rice.

Speaking at the occasion of inauguration ceremony Dr.. Manfred Hack, Delhi Bureau Chief of the FES, said, “WTO issues are always dominated by the western countries” and stressed “ WTO has been a tool for the US and European Union to twist the arms of the smaller and least developed countries”. He further added “ world forums like WTO should always address the need of the poor people and should always adopt agendas for development of the poorer nations”. He said, “WTO is becoming a platform for political confrontation between different camps ” and added “protesting against the WTO being part of the system is always better than being out side and creating problems”.  He hoped that seminars like these would help the suffering nations to make their views listen and the Kathmandu seminar was an endeavor of the FES to exchange ideas and opinions by the intellectuals/academics and the likes on the advantages and the disadvantages of the WTO membership.

One of the participant from India said that his country was leading the third world in WTO related issues. IN his opinion, other developing countries have not taken the membership issue as a mission. Other participant from India said there is no threat to the credibility of the WTO from specific agenda items but there is a threat from the sense of marginalisation and bypassing is being strongly felt across all developing countries. They also accused the USA and Europe for looking at their commercial interest and wrapping principals around.

Dr. Pravin Sinha, FES official in Delhi, said that developing countries accounted for the four-fifth of the WTO’s membership and that the Doha Development Agenda represented a vast challenge and required governments to devise appropriate negotiating strategies and to shape long-term policy goals. “This requires, technical assistance and consultation with stakeholders to identifying national priorities.

Ms. Urmila Goyal from the FES Central Office, Bonn, wished the Kathmandu seminar a grand success.

Dev Raj Dahal, Nepal office In-charge of the FES, said that for a country like Nepal, trade is not only adapting to the globalized world but also how the benefits of exchange are structured to uplift the people at the bottom of the society.

At the end of the two-day seminar, the SA participants issued a declaration called the Kathmandu Declaration which is as follows:

“Trade unionists, employers, NGOs, Government representatives, academicians and social activists met at Kathmandu on 23-24 August, 2003 at a South Asian Regional Seminar on WTO Negotiations on Trade and Services under the aegis of FES and adopted the following statement:

Since the last couple of decades, the South Asian region has been bearing the brunt of a relentless WTO led process of globalization, privatization and liberalization. This has resulted in closure and collapse of industries, mass retrenchment of workers, spiraling unemployment and worsening of employment conditions everywhere. Simultaneously, one is witness to a process of casualisation, contractualisation and complete loss of job security of workers. The insistence of MNCs on increased freedom to hire and fire workers as a condition of investment is worrisome. Under this dispensation the structure of national economies is being reversed. While the size and magnitude of organized sector is decreasing, informal sector with its ease of exploitation seems to be the preferred mode.

This pattern of corporate globalization with its naked pursuit of profit maximization and cost cutting drivers is setting an unprecedented scene of exploitation of workers. Discontent of workers is being witnessed in country after country. Small and medium scale industries with major concentration of workforce are faced with the prospects of extinction.

We wish to reiterate that this process by reversed and urgent correctives introduced. A thorough assessment of the impacts and a holistic review is the need of the hour. We urge that national governments in the South Asian region institutionalize a process of consultation with all the social partners before embracing any further integration”.

Achtung! Facilitators facilitating war or peace?

Kathmandu: Analyzing the two-way strong-worded statements emanating from the government and the Maoist quarters in the recent days, specially after the two met a couple of days back in Hapure, what becomes more than clear is that a “war” is imminent in between the two.

The fact is that the two antagonists have been fighting each other but the scale of war is however limited one.

All that both need is to declare a sort of full-scale war which is what they haven’t done so far.

Panic is there among the population which is understandable.

What are adding fuel to the fire are the contradictory speeches being made by the so-called “facilitators”. The facilitators appear more like politicians and speaking the voices of either the government or for that matter the Maoists which they were neither permitted nor should be allowed to do so.

Analysts conclude that the facilitators have done more harms to the talks than contributing to the peace-process for which they have been honored with the post. But who is to tame these wild facilitators!

The last statement issued by Dr. Babu Ram Bhattarai claims that his insurgency would not settle for less anything than “constituent assembly”.

The government says it would not go to that extent. However, the government hastens to add that it was still ready to talk on some possible “alternatives” that is at par with what the Maoists have been demanding prior to the next round of talks with the government.

Dr. Bhattarai is adamant on his agenda and says that it is futile to attend the talks with the government in the absence of government agreeing to the constituent assembly.

The government at best, it appears, could talk on some other political schemes that is close to the Maoists bottom-line but not the constituent assembly.

This means that both the negotiating parties appear to agree to disagree with each other, as both remain adamant on their declared stances. The deadlock continues thus which might catapult into a grave situation if wisdom doesn’t prevail on both the sides.

That the Maoists will not come to the table unless they are assured that the other camp will agree to the constituent assembly schemes is sure. What is also sure is that the government might go to the extent that it might agree to the Maoists agenda making it a “conditional one”. The government has reiterated that it might listen to the Maoists agenda for the constituent assembly provided they agree to the continuation of the constitutional monarchy, democratic system and preservation of Human Rights and the likes. The fact is that the government team doesn’t have the mandate to initiate talks with the Maoists on their agenda which apparently wishes to curtail the powers of the monarchy and prefer a new constitution instead of the 1990 constitution.

“It is unthinkable as to how a monarch who enjoys considerable power and authority would agree to hand-over his powers and authority simply because the Maoists have demanded so from him”, questioned a political scientist.

He further says that the Maoists must explain the raison d’ etre of their one point agenda and that being of the constituent assembly. In effect this is what the government is also seeking clarification from the rebellions which so far they have not furnished.

Be that as it may, the political parties who oppose Maoists demand for a constituent assembly must have come to their senses when they read Dr. Bhattarai’s statement wherein he says that he would not attend the talks unless the government agreed to talk on constituent assembly.

The ground reality is that the Maoists have not abandoned the path of violence. What is also true is that the security forces too have been on one pretext or the other chasing the Maoists. The killings from both the sides continue.

The murky politics of the country will take a shape, good or bad, when the five agitating parties will stage demonstrations in Kathmandu. Much will depend on how the apparently “dissatisfied” and “angry” Maoists will take up the demonstrations of the agitating five. If they join the demonstrations organized by the agitating five would have disastrous consequences. If they don’t, the demonstrations will have practically less impact than what is being given to understand. However, the government strongly believes that the Maoists might join the agitation and hence has been charting plans in order to keep the demonstrations under its control security wise.

Nevertheless, the days ahead are not that smooth politically speaking.

What if alien forces support Koirala-Madhav combine movement?

Kathmandu: Politics is art of the possible. It is equally true is that in politics one has to tolerate even “strange bed partners”.

NC president Koirala and UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal though adhere to two diametrically opposed political ideologies but yet their lust for power has forced them to sleep together.

Koirala was the one for the ouster of whom the UML uninterruptedly brought to a grinding halt the entire proceedings of the 19th session of the parliament, to recall. It was this UML which created havoc in the country and demanded unconditional resignation of a personality whom it dubbed as the main man behind the Lauda scam. Equally true is the fact that though the UML blocked the proceedings of the parliament for all along fifty-nine days but yet it gulped the perks and the facilities provided them by the parliament secretariat for all those sad and horrible days and that too unashamedly.

The fact is that for the UML, Koirala has now become all sacrosanct and the party has elevated his ranks to the post of the commander of the ongoing movement which means that Koirala, basically an arrogant and aggressive democrat, has shifted his politics that appears very close to the Left. IN so doing, Koirala is damaging the Congress’ middle role which it had been maintaining all along the past five decades of the existence of the party. The communists must have been rejoicing this clear and visible shift in Koirala’s political stance.

However, the party headed by Koirala is feeling the brunt of his new shift in his thinking of the communists. That a powerful section of the senior congress leaders oppose Koirala’s shift to the Left from the Center gets reflected from the fact that Ms. Shailaja Acharya—one of the senior most leaders of the party but at the moment completely marginalised by Koirala and his inner coterie, has declared that she is on a ten-day long fast in order to cleanse the party from its past blunders that it committed during the past thirteen years of democratic order in the country. Ms. Acharya in so doing has openly admitted that her party has committed Himalayan blunders in the past; that her party needed to be cleansed and that her party had deviated from its original standpoints; that her party’s excessive closeness with the Left bodes ill not only for the party but for the nation as well.

Though Ms. Acharya has declared that her observance of fast for ten days has nothing to do with the agitation of the agitating five but then yet her sudden decision to go on for fast and that too for as long as ten days is bound to affect the party’s decision to wage a final struggle to force the King to yield.

In effect. Ms. Acharya’s fresh stance does indicate that the party headed by Koirala possess two differing views vis-à-vis the ongoing movement. The one that toes Koirala line and the other obviously the Shailaja line.

Shailaja’s abrupt decision to go on fasting appears, analysts guess, that she has been told to do so by some of her good old Indian friends. That she must have been told to differ with Koirala’s stance gets also confirmed by the revelation made by Dr. Sundar Mani Dixit who has said that according to reports some Nepali leaders currently engaged in the movement were told by their Indian Gurus not to wage a movement against the King. According to Dixit, the Indian leaders told their Nepali disciples that the movement might boomerang.

This means that Nepali leaders go to India to bag blessings for a cause that is purely and exclusively Nepali affair.

But those who know Koirala better say that he alone was sufficient to ruin the country politically.

How Koirala leads the movement as commander will have to be watched. What will also be watched whether Koirala becomes able to garner “neighboring foreign” support much the same way he and his party together with the Left managed to bring in foreign intervention during 1990.

If he succeeds, the movement is a success. If he does not, the rest is predictable.

Attack on Deuba denounced

Kathmandu: Whether the Maoists like it or not, they have already committed a Himalayan blunder by attacking former prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba who is concurrently the President of congress-Deuba.

Though the Maoists haven’t yet claimed responsibility for the said event, however, Deuba and many others believe that this should be an act of the insurgents.

The alleged attack on Deuba by the Maoists Monday afternoon will in all likelihood generate bad feelings towards the Maoists which in turn might erode their popularity in the country to what they claim remains in abundance.

The fresh attack on Deuba does hint that the Maoists have already concluded that their demands will not be met with unless they resorted to violent methods of the sort of the one they used and tried on Deuba.

If this is so then what could be safely concluded is that the Maoists now will not attend to the negotiating table and that they will apparently engage themselves in consolidating their armed organizations to face the onslaught from the other camp.

Sources close to the Maoists quarters say that the insurgency considers government’s dilly-dallying at the talks were just a ploy to buy time and equip its security machinery. The government too thinks that the other camp by attending to the talks half-heartedly is buying time to equip its people’s army.

Be that as it may, the attack on Deuba instead of benefiting the Maoists standpoints has unfortunately boomeranged in the sense that a good number of political parties have denounced the Maoists attack and have described the act as a heinous crime. The manner statements condemning the attack are pouring in does suggest that the popularity of the insurgency has taken a nosedive.

While the Maoists are slowly losing their popularity on the one hand, then on the other the insurgency appears to have received yet another jolt when one of its senior polit bureau member Mr. Gajurel is under Indian custody for the latter’s attempt to sneak into Europe using supposedly a fake British passport.

Is British passport that easy to procure?

Question could also be asked that if it were a British passport then the holder of the passport must have been in London and must have obtained Indian visa to enter into India while being in London. That the Maoists leaders frequently visit London apparently becomes clear when one recalls one statement released by Comrade Prachanda in which he had stated that he recently attended a conference in London and the statement was duly printed by the Nepali media some years back.

Be that as it may, the sudden arrest of Mr. Gajurel in India must have jolted the insurgency from within.

CIAA chief to be grilled

Kathmandu: Making a statement last week the Chairman of the Fulbari Resorts, Pokhara, Mr. Piyush Bahadur Amatya thanked all his colleagues in the business and the tourism sector for having exhibited solidarity to his cause.

Amatya in his statement says that the way he has received unconditional support from the leading business organizations and travel and tourism sector does hint that he had been made the victim of the errant behavior of the Irish management of the Nepal Bank Limited.

Those who have expressed their solidarity towards Amatya are FNCCI, Nepal Chambers of Commerce and Hotel Association of Nepal.

Amatya has been summoned by the CIAA for next round of interrogation today.

Meanwhile, the chief of the CIAA, Mr. S.N.Upadhyaya, the man who is grilling Mr. Amatya is himself to be grilled by the Supreme Court soon for his involvement in the shady deal while finalizing the contract of the Mahakali Irrigation project with one Chinese company. To recall, allegations are that Mr. Upadhyaya made wealth while finalizing the deal mentioned above. Notably, Mr. Upadhyaya was Secretary at the ministry of Water resources at time of the finalization of the deal.

New B’desh Ambassador in town

Kathmandu: Mr. Humayun Kabir has been designated as the People’s Republic of Bangladesh Ambassador to the court of Nepal. He will  be shortly presenting his credentials to to His Majesty King Gyanendra.

The newly accredited Bangladesh envoy prior to his Nepal assignment served at the ministry as the Director general and looked after B’desh relations with the neighboring countries.

In a press release released yesterday by the Nepal-SAARC Journalists Forum hoped to work together with the new envoy for the enhancement of Nepal-Bangladesh ties that so happily subsists in between the two SAARC member States.

Ambassador Kabir succeeds Cyril Sikder who left Nepal some two years ago.

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