Spread the love

By Sunil KC

It looks increasingly evident that Prachanda’s frantic effort to break the present coalition is leading to nowhere. As soon as he saw some fissures in the UML-NC coalition, after some Congressmen began expressing in public their dissatisfactions about the functioning of the government, and about the ordinance regarding some amendments in the constitution to be deferred well after the parliamentary elections in 2027, he tried to hit hard to widen the crack. At rallies during his tours to different parts of the country, he even imitated a rhyme about the fall of the government like it is falling right today or tomorrow.

After he was unceremoniously dumped by Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress six months ago, Prachanda, lamented in public that he was betrayed both by the UML and the Nepali Congress, and to save his face, he began saying publicly that his focus this time would not be on the government, but to strengthening the party’s base at the grassroots level for the next election. But, true to his character, he always has one foot raised to step on the government in any kind of alliance. His statements almost every day signal his yearning for power. Prachanda also tried to band together smaller parties and factions in a show of force saying he has the support of around 80 members in the 275-seat parliament. That is far too short to bring down this government, and he is trying to woo the Nepali Congress, his erstwhile partner in the government. There are even reports of him proposing Sher Bahadur Deuba head a new government with him if that helps.

But much to his dismay, in the last seven days, the UML, NC leaderships have worked to cement the crack. Last week, Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba called senior leaders of the party at his parliamentary party office and instructed them to keep mum and that any expression in public against the coalition and its functioning would not be tolerated. It looks apparent that Deuba is not willing to take the bait of Prachanda at least for now. Another thing is that Deuba has a compulsion to keep carrying Oli to thwart any possible investigations into alleged scandals and corruption. This is true with Oli as well. Thus, Deuba and Oli are now friends by necessity. That means the UML-NC coalition will be here to stay until the next election, but wait, until something drastic happens. And that drastic can come at any time and in any form. That is how Nepalese politics has been operating for more than three decades.

However, about the other partner of the current coalition, the CPN-UML, Prime Minister KP Oli is fighting to keep the party’s base intact after the expulsion of Dr. Bhim Rawal, an influential party leader in the far west region, and the disciplinary actions against several others. In protest, about five dozen party workers of various ranks in the far west region resigned from the party accusing Oli of his despotic action and control of the party. The UML may see an avalanche of desertion from the party in other parts of the country as well. Enraged by his expulsion, Dr. Rawal has disowned communist ideology and has started a national awareness campaign that may come down heavily upon the UML in the coming election weakening the party’s base especially in the far west region. In addition, Oli’s effort to bring in Bamdev Gautam, UML’s veteran who is now in almost oblivion, into the party failed due to opposition of second-tier leaders like the current general secretary of the party Shanker Pokharel. With Gautam’s entry, those second-tier leaders would be pushed to the fringe.

Meanwhile, the alleged fraud case of Ravi Lamichhane has continued to be much talked about. Lamichhane has been released on bail by courts in three districts – Kaski, Kathmandu and Rupandehi – but with a hefty amount totalling 22.5 million rupees. He still has pending cases in two more districts. But the mishandling of his case by the government has unwittingly turned Lamichhane, who by the way has a chequered past for misusing his passport and his citizenship, into some kind of a symbol of defiance against the pervasive corruption and misuse of power by all the three main political parties. The government advocates pleading hard to keep Lamichhane in custody for the whole period until the case is finalized is taken by many lawyers, his supporters and also common people as politically motivated. They say Lamichhane was neither the owner nor board member or shareholder of those cooperatives and there is no concrete evidence of him misappropriating the funds of those cooperatives. That is why there are additional charges of money laundering and organized crime. They argue that if there were any indictable evidence against Lamichhane, he would already be in jail and that too for an extended period. At the most, he should have been charged under the Company Act for misusing the fund of Gorkha Media, where he was the managing director, they argue.

But for those tens of thousands of people, many of whom had deposited their life’s savings in cooperatives and now have lost all of them due to fraud and embezzlement, the government’s sole focus on Lamichhane is perplexing. The total cooperative fraud in the country is estimated to be whopping 86 billion rupees, and even if Lamichhane is proven guilty, his share of fraud would amount to a tiny fraction, less than one percent. Thus, the question is, why is the government fighting hard to keep Lamichhane in jail? The answer might be in an inadvertent slip-off from Dinesh Tripathy, one of the advocates pleading on behalf of the government when he said to court in Pokhara that if Lamichhane is released on bail, it might pose a threat to the present coalition government. Still, Lamichhane was released on bail. For this, they have even filed a complaint in the judicial council against the judge for giving him bail.

The majority of those alleged in misappropriating cooperatives’ money belong to the Nepali Congress and the UML, also of the Maoist party, but the government has completely shut its eyes off on investigating those cases. So, for those people as long as these three parties keep on holding the reins of the government there is very little, if any, chance of them getting their money back.