Not to be tolerated

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

The decision of the incumbent caretaker government led by Dr. Babruram Bhattarai (BRB) to provide lifelong perks and benefits and other facilities to VIPs including former prime ministers, Chief Justices, former speakers and home ministers from the state coffer has drawn people’s concern. What good reasons forced him to take such unpopular and unwise decision at a time when he himself is merely a caretaker Prime Minister? Why he decided to attack the state coffer when the country is economically bleeding with much money incurred on the recently dead Constitution Assembly (CA)? Was he thinking for himself after he becomes ex-PM? Was not it the indication of poor mentality of such a learned man? It was not surprising to see Mohan Baidya faction staging protests against the government’s decision as reported in “Misuse of state coffers” (THT, June 12, Page 2) and threatening to continue their protests if the government did not roll back its June 10 decision.

But, the opposition parties, who were opposing every political decision of BRB led government and are supposed to be in the forefront to strongly oppose the government’s decision, have surprisingly kept mum. It is not easy to understand Nepal’s opposition parties’ political

system. Looking at BRB’s political background who fought for 10 year long people’s war to liberate the nation and its people from social, economical and political hegemony of so called

feudalists and capitalists, the general public had great expectation from him that he would be the ideal PM for new Nepal. But, he completely failed to fulfil the people’s expectations and made Nepal more worse.

Maximum hours of load shedding, doubledigit inflation, shortages of cooking gas, no-piped water, deteriorating law and order situation and existing impunity system are the common

indicators of his ten month long premiership. Time is running out fast for him to improve his blurred political image in the coming days.

Rai Biren Bangdel, Maharajgunj, Kathmandu

Final

The people stand as supreme and not parliament.

Ratification by the people would be final and there would be no necessity to go to the

parliament for voting again. The referendum should take place in another four months and it should be doubly used to elect the parliament too. The draft should be ready in two months from now. We should not spend public money again and again for elections. If the ratification does not get a green signal by the people, the election for the next parliament would be automatically regarded as void. The election for the parliament should be conducted according to the draft-constitution being tested through the referendum. The President should immediately call a very broadly based Round-Table Conference aimed at the referendum on an expert-drafted republican draft-constitution. Experts could be a team of international experts and Nepalese experts. At present no political party of Nepal is big or small in the eyes of law. So, the conference should be represented by all the parties as equal partners.

Megha Nepal, Kathmandu