Building Bridges

As Nepali politics in its exclusionary travails of impudent organizational gains continues to breach national unity resulting in precarious national divisions bordering structural collapse, it seems it takes none less than a king to resort to building bridges for the nation’s sake. Amidst undercurrents of controversy whether former king Gyanendra should respond to an invitation at the marriage ceremony of the president’s daughter, he has chosen his personal response by attending the ceremony and by doing so assuming center stage there. This demonstration of the need to discard the exclusionary politics of contemporary Nepal will continue to be weighted in various connotations, insinuations and innuendos no doubt. But the fact that an invitee should respond to an invitation should be so controversialized cannot but merely demonstrate the schisms in Nepali society that are ever widening on flimsy grounds of political myths, charges and counter charges that have proven crass political strategy at the expense of state. As a result, the seemingly insurmountable piles of political dung that must now be sifted to re-begin the task of nation-building must be done by narrowing the gap among and between Nepalis and who better than the former monarch to begin building the bridges of national unity? For this, king Gyanendra must be congratulated for taking the leadership. Early ideological acculturation fomented by juvenile participation in unaccountable political behavior among extremely motivated groupings led by competing unscrupulous political leaders have contributed to the gradual deconstruction of a state with popular experience in national unity and development. Surprisingly, this deliberate exercise in undermining the state is being done in the name of a modernism that far exceeds logic at the prompting of claimants to international goodwill while the end result has been nothing less than the furthering of mutual suspicions and ill will to the detriment of state. Twenty- first century communications manned by self-declared champions of liberalism in connect with highly partisan goals have merely cocooned separate segments of the population in exclusive divisions that now threaten the state outright. To this community of illiberal democrats have been granted the tools of questionable constitutionalism which have time and again breached the basic concepts of constitutionalism and the rule of law. The national schisms widen and starkly threaten the very fragments of state. We are poised to mend of necessity to the state. Building bridges of awareness thus becomes vital. No change is only doom. This calls for national awareness and citizen action. A reversal to reality on the basis of which firm and overly due corrections must take place are only anticipated. Hopefully these are imminent.