People and King united in action: This time against the corrupt politicians

lingden's rpp must use all its ammunition to undo the national wrongs

When former King Gyanendra recently returned from his foreign sojourn, the Tribhuvan Airport was packed with his supporters who had gone there to give him a very hearty welcome. There is no one politician today who can match that popularity. While, by all indications, King Gyanendra is the most popular and politically significant person in the country today, there are specific political expectations associated with this heartwarming show of support. He in his own strength represents a very valuable political capital for the country and given his former kingdom's sordid situation, now is the time to put that capital to use for the sake of his country and his people.

RPP's daring agenda for the upcoming election While the upcoming general election, the second after unstudied and forced federalization in the country, is estimated to be held sometime in the month of Mangsir, or just around 120 days from now, RPP under its new president, Rajendra Lingden, is the only party that has geared itself to contest it with an agenda that daringly aim at redrawing the nation's political architecture. In specific terms, its election agenda comprises the abolition of "provinces" that effectively undoes the mindless federalization; directly electing the prime minister; return of monarchy with the role of the "guardian"; parliament fully composed of proportional representatives; and most importantly, end to corruption.

New RPP president

Rajendra Lingden's must use all possible ammunition

While the RPP itself is composed historically of the hardcore former largely corrupt Panchas, this new agenda belongs more to the party's new president, Rajendra Lingden, who, a Janajati, has so far been able to prevail in setting its new priorities and reinventing the party to some extent. However, its less-thanstellar performance in the local bodies' election -- win in just a few palikas (municipalities) -- has already cast a shadow of doubt on his invincibility. So, as the English proverb goes, he must make hay while the sun is still shining. That is, Lingden must use all his ammunition to secure a respectable result in the upcoming election and seal his grip on the party for more struggles to come.

The federalization catastrophe: Unmitigated corruption and total anarchy

Given the most unbecoming experiences of the last five years of republicanism and federalization in the country, RPP's agenda certainly resonates with the people. To be specific, the people are sick and tired of federalization that was forced on the nation without any studies and has delivered nothing in particular even as the number of elected officials unduly burgeoned all across the nation doing nothing significant in particular but costing the exchequer of this impoverished country unaffordable billions.

While, as per the provisions of the Interim Constitution the draft constitution was shared with the people on a nationwide poll but its findings -- which had overwhelmingly rejected federalization and secularization in particular -- were never consulted and incorporated in the final version of the constitution. Most major parties had colluded to ramrod its passage against express provisions of the Interim Constitution to the contrary.

In the last five years of this unconstitutional constitution has been that every single federalized unit from the centre down to the palikas has been reduced to being hotbeds of unmitigated corruption. While the annual reports of the country's auditorgeneral have been replete with cases of irregularities, the anticorruption watchdog, the CIAA, is stacked with complaints of corruption in the palikas, prompting in sheer exasperation its former chief, Nabin Ghimire, to remark once that the constitution seemed to have devolved authority as well as corruption simultaneously to the local level.

The palikas in particular have been conceptually flawed due to the folly committed by the Bala Nanda Poudel, headed State Restructuring Commission. While Nepal is widely applauded around the world for its spectacular success in rebuilding its forest wealth through the nationwide network of user-owned and usermanaged Forest User Groups, now numbering 22,000 across the country, their success was rooted in the fact that when the users themselves owned and managed their own affairs, transparency and accountability were assured and intended development happened in the community. So the nation's need was to further decentralize the 3500 VDCs and municipalities that were in existence then to the grassroots. But the Poudel committee was apparently completely oblivious of this sociological reality. Instead, they drastically reduced the number of local bodies to just 753 or one-fifth of what had existed.

This had two immensely negative consequences for local governance. Firstly, it aggravated the physical distance between the electors and the elected officials by five times, thus severely compromising the compulsion for them to be transparent and accountable to the former.

Secondly, due to the reduction in number, the sum of resources available to the palikas has proportionately and dramatically magnified, amounting to scores of crores a year, thus attracting the attention and interest of the professional money makers, the contractors who had access and resources to buy nominations for cash from various party bosses and then, buy votes in the polls. Soon after the palika election five years ago, the Contractors Association of Nepal formally announced that more than half of the palikas were headed by its sitting members. However, it is at the centre of Kathmandu, that corruption cases of epic proportions are committed with total impunity. Going by the media reports, all the bosses of all the major parties, NC, UML, MC and so on are headed by historically the most corrupt politicians known to Nepal. While they pretend like separate parties, essentially, they are more like the mafia and collude in most major cases of corruption such as the Wide Body Scam under which billions were reported to have changed hands in kickbacks.

While the Maoists are alleged to have the blood of 18,000 people in their hands, the parties have colluded to indefinitely procrastinate the transitional Justice process that was supposed to be done six months after they had joined the peace process more than a decade and a half ago. It is rather astounding to realize that thousands of their victims belonged to the two major parties, the NC and UML, and tragically, these parties could not care less today. Then we have the Madhesi leaders, mostly first generation Indian immigrants, who have always behaved more like India's proverbial Trojan Horses. While, for instance, they had conspired with India's RAW and held a meeting in Patna, India, in 2008 to have Nepal's tarai secede by declaring "Independent Madhesh'', these same treasonous politicians had also aided India when the latter blockaded Nepal in 2015. However, most other political leaders too remain expressly servile to the Indian establishment, a country that otherwise has remained hell-bent on compromising the landlocked nation's sovereignty in its bid to "Sikkimize" or "Bhutanize" Nepal ever since it was granted independence by the Brits in 1947.

As if to tell the world that Nepal is rapidly descending into a failed state, these very corrupt politicians, Maoist insurrectionists and treasonous Madhesis remain at the helm and engage with total impunity in more of these egregious and deliberate acts of corruption and mismanagement. For instance, the Maoist finance minister, Janardan Sharma, was just recently forced to resign for allowing business house employees to write the tax rates in the nation's budget. What is worse, the politicians in the governing coalition are now creating all possible hurdles to prevent the parliamentary committee from doing proper investigation. Plainly put, what obtains in the country today is anarchy through and through. RPP's distinctive election agenda demands all-out grassroots mobilization While the nation is poised for the next round of the costly election, it is a foregone conclusion that these same crooks would be returned like many times earlier. The only election agenda, as mentioned above, that stands out is that of Rajendra Lingden's RPP. But its recent activities like submitting an anticorruption memorandum to PM Deuba--knowing full well that he would throw it into a dustbin the next moment-or organizing a torch rally in Kathmandu against corruption amount to nothing more than business as usual. That will only result in disappointing results in elections like in the recent palika elections. Frankly, RPP needs to adopt a highly unconventional, Obamatype, mobilization all the way down to the assurances

While King Gyanendra is relied upon by the people to rescue them at some point, he remains an unknown quantity, even as the corrupt and treasonous brigade of the country takes him to task regularly for his abortive takeover of the reins of power in 2005, although more as a diversionary tactic from their own sustained betrayal of the nation. Nonetheless, it is time to tell the nation and his detractors what kind of rule he would deliver upon his restoration as the country's monarch again. The RPP itself has decided to restore him as the nation's "guardian" whose dictionary meaning has it that he would be in a "position to protect and defend" the nation. Since it is going to be unpalatable for King Gyanendra to voluntarily make a statement on his own, given its agenda, the RPP should formally request the former monarch to join in the change-making process by making a declaration of his own about how he would contribute to genuinely rebuilding democracy in Nepal. It