By Rabi Raj Thapa

It is pathetic to live in this shadowy world of bribery and corruption. Nepali people are now getting tired of the monstrous structures of bribery and corruption, obviously, with our top septuagenarian and octogenarian political leaders!

Now they are in panic because the dragon, the Commission for Investigation on Abuse of Authority (CIAA), has finally awakened. Now it seems that the fallacy of the day of “above the law and clutches of CIAA” has finally come to an end.

Every day is not a heyday for corrupt officials and politicians that we have in Nepal these days. Take Hamid Karzai, Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, Rajapakses of Sri-Lanka, for example. Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani for 30 years. At the end, Gahni ran away from his country in a Helicopter. Now, nobody asks and nobody cares where they are and what they are doing. What is going to be the future of Sheikh Hasina, who ruled Bangladesh for two decades? Very few Bangladeshis bother her now. Why Sri Lankan Rajapakses had to run away from their palatial building to save their lives from the same people they ruled for so long? The time has come for our CIAA untouchable leaders to think seriously from now on.

Federal Nepali leaders love to reiterate that the age of “Raja ra Raiti” has gone. But Nepali people had never had that feeling except for a few political radicals. Now they do not realize that they have metamorphosed into untouchable, above the law Rajas of Loktantra and began to see Nepali people as Raiti or their obedient subjects.

There is a great difference between suspicion and fact. Federal Nepali leaders are corrupt and take commissions and bribes, which is a fact and not just a suspicion. Thanks to CIAA, which recently showed its guts to prove “nobody is above the law’ including the ministers and the prime ministers. It may be a coincidence, if not a design, that CIAA started from Madhav Nepal because he is the weakest of them all at the present moment. And the time will come for others, too. At least, let us hope!

Naturally, people in power don’t like any type of inquiry or investigation to come close to them. Now it has caught a former prime minister and a sitting Home Minister. The useless debate over Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak's resignation has paralyzed the government. The fact is that he must resign when evidence of international human trafficking going under his ministry and department has surfaced so openly. And, the same thing applies to the former prime minister, Madhav Nepal, too.

Why Nepali leaders have become so crazy about money, limousines buildings, and land so much. What do they intend to do with so much money and wealth? They can do nothing except Hide it, Clean it or Spend which has become so challenging at the moment.

Look at New Zealand’s former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, aged 47, for example. She led her country, New Zealand, as prime minister from 2017 to 2023, went through emergencies like the Christchurch massacre and also the pandemic of 2019. Then she resigned in 2023 and got married to her longtime partner, Clarke Gayford. Now she has finished writing a memoir titled “A Different Kind of Power”. In her book, she emphasized more on empathy and kindness as a leader’s solution. She reflected on what it was like to be a prime minister and lead a country through multiple crises. She opined, “There are very real issues that need to be addressed--deep financial insecurity and uncertainty in the face of a very changeable world. Politicians can come into that space either with a message of fear and blame, or they can take on the very difficult issue of finding genuine solutions.

Now is the time for Nepali senior leaders to stop the dog-fight and rat race and begin to introspect and start writing their memoir before it gets too late. Now, the sitting prime minister, the prime minister in waiting, and another former prime minister whining and scheming to topple them must give way to the new generation.