By Yug Bahadur Almost all political parties are simply like clubs where opportunists and fakes rule the roost. The sad part is that even the new parties that had given some sort of hope to the people are showing similar trends. One need not look further than the way the leaders of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) are showing their true colours. Of course, some individuals in the party may be real reformists, but the majority seem to be totally opportunists who are now prominent in that group. About the older parties, it would be wasting our breath to say this culture where they have not only cultivated communalism and nepotism but also damaged all sectors of the country where we live. It is such selfish and visionless thought of our leaders which has dragged this country to this miserable situation when thousands are fleeing from their homeland and others are suffering from different types of hardships. Probably, we have invited such a situation ourselves and the cunning leaders have taken full benefit of the foolishness of the majority of citizens. As a person who has been associated with the media for a long time, I feel disheartened to see how even many journalists who are totally involved in politics are more of a person who is a political cadre rather than someone who should give the right information to the people. I fully agree, like I have said many times before, each individual in a free country has the right to have some political beliefs, but this does not mean they have to be ardent cadres of one political party or the other, forgetting their professional duties. So while talking of responsibilities and rights, we must also look at the devastation that was created by heavy rainfall all over the country last week. Both the government which was ill-prepared and also the people who only seek their rights are to be blamed. But the loss of huge numbers of lives has already happened, still, we are seeing people shirking from their duties and trying to blame only one or the other for this tragic event which could have been much more lessened by proper planning and preparation. In the many seasons that I have lived in Kathmandu, I have heard of some individuals losing their lives during the Monsoon period, but this time it was definitely frightening to hear that more people had died in Kathmandu Valley than in other places. I know of an incident which happened a long time ago when a farmer was swept away in the neighborhood that I live in, by a small culvert which he had crossed easily in the morning, but which had turned into a flooded river due to rains in the hillsides and thus it had drowned him some miles away. As a young person who constantly played in this very river, I was shocked and at the same time also realized the ferocity of this small rivulet when rains occurred during the Monsoon season. Now, we are hearing how many people have lost their lives and also how much property has been damaged due to the heavy rains we saw some days back. Till the time of writing this article, it was officially reported that two hundred people had died and some were still missing. Considering the information which we already have and also the access to the support system, such reports seemed totally absurd. Here, again I would like to repeat that the responsibility of the government and other decision-makers is not only to make announcements of the weather or for the authorities to give 'directions' to officials and not care about the ground realities but to be better prepared in implementing what they have said. As said before, it is also not correct for people who have encroached on river banks to ask only for their rights and build structures which challenge the path of rivers. We can easily ask who made the decision to build structures and also sell lands in these areas. These officials must be held totally accountable and also termed as guilty for making many people fool and now also making many families who have felt the tragedy of losing their near and dear ones and at the same time seeing the destruction of their hard-earned property. Even in a formal government report, it has been verified that most incidences of corruption have taken place in these offices which deal in land transactions and construction of houses. I personally have experienced such incidents and even lost a huge chunk of land because I didn't bribe the officials in the right places. But I have no regrets, as I feel justice will be given by God to innocent people like us and punishment will come in different forms for the wrongdoers. Even if they live longer, they will always be tortured by their conscience which will make their life more miserable. The so-called 'thug' in the cooperative scandal GB Rai may have swindled a huge amount of money for his own purpose, but do you imagine what sort of life he is living in right now, when he is being hounded by the government and also the poor people who deposited their hard-earned money in the cooperatives he operated? If nothing else, we can be certain that he cannot sleep well and rest in a peaceful manner though he is alive. Now to come back to the theme on which we started of how a precedence has been set in 'passing the buck' from one to another, it can be surely anticipated that blame will be given to one or the other for the tragic incidents we had to bear with during the past several days, specially, when the festive season is just a few days away. While the parties in the opposition will attack the parties in power, the others will also question why these very parties did not do more concrete work to solve this situation when experts had already warned of the worse situation the nation would face this rainy season. The sad thing is, many people have lost their lives and hundreds of others have lost their properties. So instead of blaming each other, it would be more reassuring to see all the parties and the so-called NGOs, working together to learn from the present disaster and seek measures to face such wrath of nature in the future. That is what we can advise them for now, but if their eyes don't open even at this point, the population will certainly rise against these greedy, fake and opportunist leaders in the near future. So work for the people at this difficult moment or soon it may be too late to protect themselves or their parties.