By NP Upadhyaya -
Unusual events that are loaded with political connotations have happened in the recent days, weeks and months.
These events have by far have gone unnoticed or even if one has taken note of then he or she may not have gone deep into the underneath meaning contained in the events that have taken place in the Nepali soil and at times far beyond our well defined borders.
Our own leaders who preferred to follow Shyam Saran for the “grand” so called political change of the not so distant past have forced the countrymen to think that their own participation for the so called great change have all gone to the dogs.
The rag-bag-bobby-tail of the recent past, read the leaders manning today’s new but depressed Nepal, have looted the national treasury under this or that pretext and in a merciless manner sided with the expansionist regime in the South which has vowed to swallow this ever independent and sovereign ancient nation once and for all.
The “mission” to gulp Nepal is talked to be in progress. Our own paid domestic agents are being used for this Lendhup phenomenon.
The domestic servants have taken up their task honestly, we have been told. Hopefully the paid agents shall perform their assigned duties well in selling this country to their preferred regime.
The present day leaders steering the country too appear to have been aiding the Southern expansionist rule as per the agenda of the last Change. This is really unfortunate in that our own men have been serving the monster willingly.
Back home, the national politics has taken a new turn with the sudden coming of together of the three Koiralas’ in Biratnagar thus hinting that henceforth the three Koiralas shall work as a single force and shall establish the lost legacy of the Koiralas’ in the Nepali Congress party that late BP Koirala had nurtured.
Naturally the coming together of the three Koiralas must not have come as good news to Party President Sher Bahadur Deuba or to the ruling party led by Prime Minister KP Oli who each day is losing his prestige and popularity. His coalition partner, Prachanda, is awaiting an opportunity wherein he could pounce upon the sitting PM KP Oli for understandable reasons.
PM Oli has wore the clothe of a dictator, say his detractors.
In the mean time, the event that has attracted the attention of the political pundits across the nation if the “pre planned” meet of the former Nepal King Gyanendra with one of the active political persona of the Nepali Congress, Mr. Prakash Man Singh on November 12, 2018.
The meet of Mr. Singh with the Nepal King Gyanendra in Soaltee Hotel had been designed by a well wisher of the Nepali monarchy and that of the Nepali Congress.
In what has been talked as a sudden meet of the two, the two instead met each other at a luncheon and exchanged the current political scenario in a free and frank manner.
Mr. Singh met the former monarch as if he was meeting a sitting sovereign. The needed discipline was maintained from both the sides at time of the “arranged” meet. This is remarkable.
Interestingly, the two met on the day when Ms. Sujata Koirala had thrown a lavish luncheon in honor of those who were not in the Sher Bahadur Deuba panel of the Nepali Congress.
It is this panel that now concludes that Mr. Deuba has caused immense loss to the party and that in order to give a new lease of life to the already ailing Nepali Congress, Deuba must be relieved from the current post.
Deuba has read writings on the wall as he is not fool not to understand the looming political disaster.
But how to unseat Deuba? Is what has forced the Koiralas’ to go in search of a formula which not only relieved the party from the Deuba burden but also regains the lost popularity of the NC party that it has remained for quite good decades in the past.
To recall, the sitting General Secretary of the NC, Dr. Shashank Koirala had already ventilated his concern that the NC lost its old stamina only because the party had abandoned some of the basic fundamentals wherein the party have had built its edifice.
Dr. Koirala in an oblique manner had hinted that his party’s slide began right with the adherence of the secular order instead of the old Hindu premise. This meant that Dr. Koirala in an undeclared manner wanted to hint that the NC must not have said good bye to the Monarchical institution under the whims of some alien forces.
The fresh meet of Prakash Man Singh with Nepal King Gyanendra must not have been a sudden collision at the Soaltee Hotel but the get together was a sponsored one designed to bring in the ousted Monarchy closer with the ailing Nepali Congress.
Some brilliant brains must have converged together, hopefully.
If it is so then Dr. Shashank Koirala’s May, 2017, quote in his face book status that “when wicked unite then the wise men must associate themselves has come to true.
So should this then mean that the NC is now under no illusion and has been taking steps which bring in closer the democratic forces scattered in the nation at a common point from wherein the democratic forces, including the ousted monarchy, could face the formidable challenge posed to the former by the latter with the sudden merger of the Maoists center in the UML ocean? Perhaps yes.
NC’s fresh moves coincide with the determination of the former Royal Panchas to go together by dissolving three separate parties into one which is what has been taken as the clandestine efforts made by the now ousted monarch.
The Shyam Saran tortured King of Nepal initiated the move to bring in the Panchas together from Jhapa district last year around this time.
The three RPPs perhaps, if things go smoothly, will unite in a month or so which is expected to take a formal shape much ahead of the India’s UP Chief Minister Aditya Nath Yogi’s arrival in Nepal to attend to some religious celebrations to be held in Janakpur, Nepal.
While these developments are being observed, what is more than meets the eye is the hatred being expressed against the sitting President Mrs. Bidya Devi Bhandari whose “ambitions” are said to have gone up to the extent that the national population, barring the ruling parties of course, have converged in denouncing her and making grand satire of the “New Queen” ( Mrs. Bhandari) that she has almost become or intends to turn into.
Is she, Mrs. Bhandari, the queen? Fortunately not.
The common men now take President Bhandari as an economic burden on the nation whose increasing ambitions have far exceeded to what had been talked of the sitting monarch when the institution was in place, if one were to recall. The result is that by default, the absence of the now ousted monarchy is being felt seriously by the common men.
King Gyanendra’s political stature has gone up but it is definitely by default.
In a way, the political and the economic follies being committed by the present day political animals in series is being taken as plus points for the forgotten monarch.
The former monarch has been enjoying all these positive gestures for free.
To be candid, the ousted monarch is gaining, as stated earlier, by default. The UP Chief Minister’s arrival in Nepal in a month or so shall add to his political strength, it is talked.
The political slide, better call it the hatred that has developed inside the country towards the ruling leaders, is sufficient to hint that sooner than latter a sort of political blizzard is already in the making which may sweep the present day leaders to the place where they should have been-that is, sorry to say, the garbage container.
While Nepal is talked to have tilted towards China, but in effect Indian monopoly has increased. People say that the men who were granted shelter in Delhi by the Indian regime have been now told to steer the nation then New Delhi’s say can’t be dismissed. In a way, the Indian monopoly has institutionalized also because various provinces at their own will have begun seeking helps from the Indian regime which is what had been the inner desire of the Goliath since long. To recall, the idea of federal order is an alien brain which has been imposed on Nepal by Nepal’s “traditional” neighbor.
PM Oli, talked to have become authoritarian in the recent days, is inching closer to Delhi as he inched in the past. No illusion China should have. Oli was and is a man of Delhi, claim high placed sources.
Let’s now talk of the South Asian politics.
Installing a pro India set up in the Maldives, the India regime has been creating constitutional troubles in the Island nation-Sri Lanka.
Baby Bhutan’s silent cry is against India which better late than never has come to its senses as the baby knew that the Indian “debt trap” shall soon gulp the nation once and for all.
The Indian foreign secretary is currently in Bhutan assuring the baby for more financial aid. This is how the baby is falling into the India manufactured debt trap. The baby is in deep slumber.
Very freshly in Beijing, November 17, 2018, the Chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute (PCI) and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed has said that there is a shift in the global economic and political power from the West to the East, and China’s peaceful rise and amazing development is an important inspiration for developing Countries.
Mr. Hussain has been saying this since long. He made such statements right here in Nepal, as this scribe recalls.
While addressing the 4th CPEC Media Forum in Beijing, Mushahid Hussain said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has now spawned a greater South Asia comprising South Asia, Central Asia, China, Iran and Afghanistan driven by economy and energy. He said that the BRI is opening the door to a new World with China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as its success story since it is the flagship & pilot project of the BRI.
What was more than important and ear pleasing is Mr. Hussain’s announcement that a “Greater South Asia” was in the making which shall include China and some very powerful Central Asian Countries. It is these countries which have pleasingly joined the Chinese initiative which has taken deep roots in Pakistan through the CPEC projects. Mr. Hussain prefers Iran also to be included in the Greater South Asian scheme. If so and if that materializes time permitting then that would surely cut the wings of the Indian regime which has been opposing the CPRC tooth and nail.
The 4th CPEC Media Forum was jointly organized by the China Economic Net (CEN) and the PCI in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad.
Mr. Hussain, if the Pakistan Prime Minister and his cabinet members so desire, appoint him as ambassador at large and send him to several countries wherein he can sell the idea of the Greater South Asian theory.
Mr. Hussain is basically a media man. He worked for the MUSLIM daily in the early 1980s.
The purpose of the forum was to disseminate factual information on CPEC, and also to devise a joint Pakistan-China strategy to counter negative perceptions that are generated by vested interests and detractors in the region.
India and some sponsored media in the West disseminate fake news about CPEC. Nepal media is not an exception.
During the 4th CPEC media forum, Pakistan’s Ambassador to China Masood Khalid while making his opening remarks centered his talks on the stance of the new government on CPEC, after the conclusion of the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to China. During that visit both countries, said Ambassador Masood, have expressed satisfaction with progress of CPEC, both sides are committed to agree to complete the ongoing projects of CPEC, as well as create employment, enhance people’s welfare and promote industrial development. The two sides also agreed to promote the construction of CPEC in the future by taking it to the next phase which will be decided at the upcoming meeting of the Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) of CPEC in Beijing next month, and both sides also agreed to create a social economic development working group apart from a political working group through the two Foreign Ministries.” The Ambassador based in Beijing also emphasized the role of media in disseminating accurate information on CPEC and said that there should be more media interaction between the two countries. “We need to guard BRI and CPEC against the growing negativity of its detractors”, the Pak envoy concluded.
To recall as back as in 2016, Pakistan began exploring the possibility of creating a greater South Asian economic alliance to counter India’s controlling hold on the eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), diplomatic observers in Washington said. A parliamentary delegation from Pakistan, which was then in New York, gave birth to the notion of greater South Asia during its five-day visit to Washington last week.
Elaborating the benevolent idea primarily pitched by Pakistan in 2016, Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed had said then that, “A greater South Asia is already emerging,” in one of his interactions with the media held in Washington.
The Senator Mushahid could be the best messenger who could sell this idea to a larger audience from east to west and North to South.
“This greater South Asia includes China, Iran and the neighboring Central Asian republics”, Mr. Hussain had mentioned in his Washington interaction which he once again repeated in his Beijing meet this time.
In the mean time the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has asked the United States to conduct the assessment of its failure in Afghanistan instead of making Pakistan a scapegoat.
In a prompt response to the US President Donald Trump’s anti-Pakistan tough comments, Imran Khan took to the twitter on Monday and said that record needs to be put straight on Donald Trump’s tirade against Pakistan.
Listening to President Trump’s rough and tough remarks on Pakistan, a day after the Pentagon defended Pakistan’s vital role in maintaining peace in South Asia and said Islamabad remains a ‘critical partner’ in the region.
In an interview to a television news channel on Sunday, Trump said that Islamabad was not doing “a damn thing” for the US, a ‘false assertion’, which was strongly countered by Prime Minister Imran Khan and political leadership instantly.
“The US and Pakistan have a strong mutual interests in the region. As you know, they are critical (and) vital to the South Asia strategy and including the facilitation of a peace process that would lead to a stable and peaceful Afghanistan,” Col Rob Manning, Director of Defense Press Operations, told reporters during an off-camera news conference, reveal international media sources.
“They remain a critical partner in our South Asia strategy and there’s been no change to our military-to-military relationship with Pakistan,” Manning said, responding to question about the series of tweets by President Trump and his interview to Fox News that Pakistan has done nothing for the United States.
“I do not have any announcement on any change to the military to military relationship we have with Pakistan,” Manning said, when asked that his answers reflect that the Pentagon differs with the views of President Trump on Pakistan. That’s all.