Clear message from the European Union members

We have a government. We don’t have a government. We have a constitution. We don’t have a constitution. We have a constitutional monarchy. We don’t have a constitutional monarchy. We have a Prime Minister and a cabinet. We don’t have a prime minister and a cabinet. We have a constitutional process. We don’t have a constitutional process. We have a democratic system. We don’t have a democratic system. We have political parties. We don’t have that. We have a population that is serious to their own problems. We don’t have that sort of population. We are a corrupt lot. We are not. We have Anti-corruption authorities. We don’t have that mush guts that need to be in such an authority. We have amassed astronomical amount of wealth through Lauda, Dhamija and China South West scandals. We haven’t done so as alleged by population and the anti-corruption authorities. We consider we are the pillars of the democratic system. Concurrently we are being told that we have corrupted the entire system.

These allegations and the counter allegations, whether true or not, but have already assumed the dimension of pertinent questions for both the population within and without. The answers must be found right here in this country and that too we must respond to these allegations at the earliest so that the "impotent", "meaningless" civil society and the population could be satisfied.

The fact is also that we are not in a position to provide plausible and justifiable answers to these questions for we know that if we acted on the plea of the justice-seeking population, we would expose ourselves and the lay men finally would see our faces covered by the "democratic" mask(s). We will not do that in the name of democracy. Rather we would continue to exploit the spoils of the system mercilessly as we did before and will as usual give it a name: in the name of democracy we committed fouls and will do so ad infinitum in the name of democracy.

Thapa, the known conspiratorial political brain has assumed the powers of the chief of the executive of the government recently. As is known to all, his political maneuverability remains par excellence and that too unmatched. But yet he has so far been unable to distract the attention of the five agitating parties from an agitation that perhaps the agitators themselves don’t know as to why they have jumped into a fray that will lead them to no where. What they were fighting for is any body’s guess considering their previous "glorious" past. Some of our professional colleagues in Kathmandu have rightly said that their agitation or for that matter the people’s movement has been like a process wherein the people haven’t participated for reasons best known to the people and the champions of the said movement. Herein lies the message to the agitators.

Be that as it may, Premier Thapa must now ponder over the content of the message and the underlying message therein the Kathmandu based European Union members gave to the Nepalese prime minister recently. The message released later by the current president of the EU, Finland, states in part: "The EU notably hopes that it will be possible to push forward and sustain peace process initiated by the cease-fire agreement of January 29 and at the same time to broaden the cabinet so that it becomes an inclusive and representative administration, which governs with full executive power and can prepare elections".

The message is clear to all and sundry. The EU, firstly, suggests Thapa to work hard and bring the agitating parties into his cabinet in order to make it a representative one. This concurrently means that at the moment Thapa’s cabinet is not a representative one. The EU message, secondly, hints at the fact that the ongoing peace process has got to be sustained at any cost. The third message is crystal clear. The EU sends signals to all, including the agitating parties that they too should now talk of holding of the elections and do the needful. The underlying message here is that unless the country goes for the elections, the derailed system and the constitution can’t be brought back to the original tracks. This also hints that the EU wishes the early holding of the elections so that the country once again could be called a real democracy whose corollary would be that they were at the moment faced with a unique situation in this country: whether to call Nepal a democratic system or otherwise. This is so because Nepal at the moment lacks certain basic elements that are considered essential for a democracy but the EU is forced to consider it a democracy simply because the King is citing the clauses and the articles of 1990 constitution as and when he is effecting certain minor or even major changes in the political arena.

The statement assumes much significance when one is told that the EU members based in Kathmandu have met the King in the recent days and weeks and perhaps might have ventilated their reservations about the prevailing situation in the country. Hopefully, the EU members could have also suggested the monarch to contribute from his side to contain the situation so that the mainstream political parties too become a part of the "representative administration" which is what is lacking in the given context in the country.

The message is clear and perhaps deserves deep consideration by the Prime minister and the agitating big-5 plus the monarch as well.

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