By P.R. Pradhan

Not only we, but, the very political leaders are alleging their own political colleagues for being involved in corruption and commission. Just recently, Narayankaji Shrestha, home minister in the previous government alleged that the present government is making all its efforts in protecting the corrupt people. He remarked that the previous government collapsed when those corrupt people were punished, and overnight the present coalition government was formed. The formation of the present coalition government of the major two parties is intended to protect the corrupt people and dismiss the scandals they are involved in, Shrestha said.

None other than Baburam Bhattarai blamed his colleague Pushpakamal Dahal for misusing billions of rupees allotted for the PLAs’ compensation during the settlement of PLAs under the comprehensive peace agreement.

In the recent past, Nepali Congress’ senior leader Sekhar Koirala publicly said that the present coalition government will continue until the next general election. He argued that if NC will quit the government, the majority of the parliamentarians would be jailed in different scandals.

If we pick up headlines in different media, it is enough to know how corruption and commission have thrived in “loktantra”! People, thus, say the present “loktantra” as “loottantra” (kleptocracy).

In fact, kleptocracy is the fundamental characteristic of the present model of democracy. Just to recall the Panchayat day arguments that the partyless Panchayat system was suitable for the Nepali environment as the nation’s revenue sources were unable to bear the burden of a multiparty democracy. To a greater extent, we believe, this argument is true, however, we cannot go back to a partyless system now. In 1990, the nation restored multiparty democracy along with introducing open and rampant corruption practices. The corruption practices took an organized form and overnight political leaders unable even to buy shoes and walking on slippers became multibillionaires. In 2006, another political change took place. The 2006 political change introduced an interim constitution suspending the institution of monarchy. Later in 2015, another constitution was introduced replacing the Hindu kingdom with a secular federal republic system creating employment for around forty thousand elected people’s representatives along with seven expensive provinces. The mission of all those involved in politics is to earn money by manipulating the government treasury. Political parties expanded their wings in all sectors, which destroyed all the government structures. Today, Tribhuvan University is dysfunctional due to the clash between different student organizations affiliated with different political parties. Also, there are the teachers' associations and employees’ associations in the university. Now, the university has turned into a factory producing political leaders.

The civil service has also been destroyed after the government allowed the government service holders to open their organizations affiliated with different political parties.     

The concept of political sharing in the posts in the constitutional bodies destroyed important organizations that needed to play an impartial role, such as the court and corruption-controlling organs, among others.

The government is spending taxpayers’ money just for those political employees without any positive result. The infrastructural sector has been neglected due to the increased expenditure in managing the party leaders and their workers.

Now, the political system we have adopted is unable to move forward the nation towards development. When educated and uneducated people see no future in the country, they are going abroad to secure their future.

Foreign agents have occupied the decision-making positions and they don’t work for the greater interests of the country. For example, the government had given the Budhigandaki multipurpose project to a Chinese company to construct it. Later, the government decided to suspend the agreement with the Chinese party saying that it would construct the project by itself. An investment model was also prepared for the construction of the project. The file, for final consent, was sent to the Finance Ministry from the Water Resources Ministry. The Finance Ministry has kept the file pending for more than a year as India is planning to capture this multipurpose project. One after another government in Nepal handed over one after another river to India just to remain in power. Having such a mentality, we cannot expect any good and patriotic decisions from the leaders in the government and also in the opposition. We cannot expect a good result or say making a prosperous Nepal from the present political system, which is for managing the political leaders and serving foreign powers only.