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On/Off the Record

By P.R. Pradhan

Wikipedia describes: “Kleptocracy is a government whose corrupt leaders use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population”.

What is the experience of our readers about the leaders and the government run by them?

According to recent reports, in the vested interests of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Finance Minister Janardan Sharma, the government has opened licenses for running more insurance companies at a time when around four dozen insurance companies are in operation and they are unable to get sufficient business. Sure, the PM and FM, against the policy of the insurance companies regulating bodies and for personal benefit, perhaps financial gains, have put pressure on the concerned authorities to issue new licenses.

Some leaders, including Gagan Thapa, apprise the liberal economy that the country has adopted and support the corrupt ministers who sold many valuable, strategic government undertakings employing thousands of people at a very negligible price in the name of privatization. They say a government job is not to do business. License for the private sector banks was opened and today, there are so many banks that they are not getting business for their survival. The Nepal Rastra Bank is thus insisting on a merger of those banks.

A country should not run under the personal interests and personal gains of the leaders, rather, there should be a detailed study of every decision taken by the government. Besides, there should be a long-term plan of the government on which industry or business should be authorized considering the country’s needs.

The question to those leaders advocating for the liberal economy is whether the present way of running the national economy is good and whether are they satisfied with such an economic policy. In other words, by closing the government undertakings, the government has abducted employment opportunities for the local youths and it is encouraging those potential youth labourers to go to the cheap, risky, and dirty foreign labour market.

The government has adopted an expensive political system and it needs foreign loans just to function it. Besides, the government revenue is based on the customs duty on imported goods. The reality is that Nepal’s imports have increased in an alarming manner and exports have declined. The present reality is that the foreign debt amount has become double compared to the amount that was five years ago. More seriously, the balance of payments has gone negative. It means, our foreign currency reserve has declined. Our leaders practising kleptocracy are not bothered about the negative economic indicators. They are solely concerned about how to get a commission by manipulating government policies. It is said that Finance Minister Janardan Sharma was reassigned to the job just to complete those incomplete works, including opening licenses for the new insurance companies.

Maoist Center’s chairman Pushpakamal Dahal Prachanda is staying at the luxury villa owned by a black-listed construction contractor. Dahal is not ashamed of staying at a black-listed person’s house. His party leaders — said to be the party of those poor and deprived labourers and peasants — don’t question the luxurious lifestyle of the party chairman and other leaders including Janardan Sharma, Barshaman Pun, and others.

Ministers from the Unified Socialist Party led by Madhav Kumar Nepal are openly extorting money from the government officials in the name of election. The ministerial post has become the post for extorting money from the government servicemen and also those seeking government service.

When the prime minister, ministers, and high-ranking officials, all are involved in the job of extorting money, all the government organs have been defunct.

Just an example, during the panchayat days, all the government undertakings were earning profit. Nepal Airlines was expanding its wings to Japan in the east and some destinations in the European countries. Moreover, it was planning to fly to different cities in the US. When the concerned ministers and prime ministers started to extort money from the Airlines, it almost became the airlines without aircraft. The job of the chief executive is to collect and hand over money to the ministers. Just recently, the government, through a cabinet decision, decided to terminate the executive chairman of the Airline assigned for four years. The reason was that the minister had decided to hand over the Nepal Airlines head office at a prime business location to a broker and also hand over prime land under the Airlines at TIA to the brokers. When the Airlines chief denied the minister’s order, he was sacked out.

Nepal Airlines is a government undertaking having strategic significance, especially for a landlocked country Nepal. But the leaders who are enjoying power, want to make money by discarding its strategic value.

More seriously, those leaders, who are silent on the encroachment of Nepali soil in different districts by the Indians, have rushed to amend the existing citizenship law by making it easy to obtain Nepali citizenship for foreigners.

Serious to note, without studying in detail the impact, all the political parties, except some small parties, supported the government to ink the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a grant project of the USA. The government is still seeking ways to ink the strategic partnership programme under the Indo-Pacific Strategy initiated by the USA. Nepal’s foreign policy describes non-alignment but the leaders are running behind in serving the American interests by creating suspicion for the neighbouring countries.

To conclude, neither the present system is in the interests of the nation, nor the present-day political leaders are committed to safeguarding their motherland!