Things falling apart in Nepal
KATHMANDU: With only 19 days left for the government of Nepal to unveil a new constitution or face dissolution, the ruling alliance is now seeking to amend the interim constitution and extend the time frame again, despite a Supreme Court order last month that the deadline cannot be prolonged endlessly.
Education and sports minister Ganga Lal Tuladhar, who is also the spokesman of the communist-led government, told the state-run Gorkhapatra daily on Friday that the process has already begun to extend the August 31 deadline for promulgating the new statute to November 30. The revelation, coming after Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal's pledge in Parliament this week that he would resign Saturday if the peace process still remained in the doldrums, now showsn it up to be an elaborate hoax on the nation.
With Khanal's resignation anticipated on Saturday, the opposition Nepali Congress had already begun staking its claim on the new government. Opposition chief Sushil Koirala met Khanal on Friday morning, saying his party should assume the reins since the other two major parties, the Maoists and the communists, had already tried to form an all-party coalition but failed.
Meanwhile, the protracted jockeying for power has left its impact on the peace process and the new constitution with the latter not ready even after the lawmakers drafting it gave themselves an additional 15 months after failing to accomplish the feat within the originally stipulated two years. Going by the past record, it is likely that even if the interim constitution is amended to give Parliament three more months to complete the task, it will not be done. The move to extend the deadline for a third time despite a Supreme Court stricture against it also shows the readiness of the parties to flout the judiciary.
The fallout of the stalled peace process has already started. With the government still unable to discharge the maoists' nearly 20,000-strong guerrilla army, there is growing discontent among the brigades. On Friday, former child soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, who had been discharged on the UN's insistence, went on the warpath, calling a strike in Kathmandu to draw attention to their plight. The 4008 discharged combatants have been left in the lurch by both their party and the government with no state plans for their rehabilitation. The former fighters have now called a Nepal bandh on August 20.
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