Losing people’s trust
Last week, when Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal visited the earthquake-hit area in Bajhang District, local people, who were victims of the earthquake, chanted slogans against him. The Police deployed for the security of PM Dahal arrested some youths who lauded “Go back, murderers!”. This is an example that to what extent people have become furious against the leadership.
In the recent past, when the UML chair was on a trip to the Eastern hill districts, locals dissatisfied with the name of Koshi Province, attempted to launch an attack on him, fortunately, he was able to escape. Similarly, Koshi Province’s chief minister’s vehicle was vandalized by the demonstrators demanding the ethnic identitybased name of the Province.
We saw cow slaughtering in Dharan, also, religious confrontations in Sarlahi and Nepalgunj destroying harmony among different ethnic and religious groups. The situation became worse and the local administration had to impose a curfew in both places. As a result of the declaration of secularism, federalism and republicanism along with provoking people for their identity-based provinces by the Maoists while serving foreigners' interests, the present scenario has developed. Nepal is a country having around 100 ethnic communities. They stayed together harmoniously for centuries. The Westerners came to Nepal with the agenda of provoking ethnic communities aimed at destroying social harmony. There was unity among diversity in the country for centuries.
People struggled for a better system making them prosperous. Contradictingly, the political leaders became prosperous and commoners were compelled to go to foreign countries for dirty work as there were no employment opportunities within the country. The country’s economy is very bleak. Every year, the debt burden is increasing and specially in the past five years, the government’s debt has become double. Since the country adopted a new political system with the federal structure introducing seven provinces, the government expenditure has increased in an uncontrolled manner. Besides, the corruption control mechanism has been made very weak, politics has become a business for making money without investment. On the one hand, political parties have flourished, on the other, the industrial sector has been ruined.
Politicos having a self-centered mentality, exploited commoners by enjoying the cream of the system by themselves. We saw policy-based corruption, grabbing the valuable government land in a planned manner, making Nepali nationals Bhutanese refugees in an organized manner even with the involvement of topranking politicos in the process of sending them to the USA, manipulation of gold while making Jalahari for the Pashupatinath Temple, quintals of gold smuggling under the political protection, impunity and pardon to those criminals who were involved in a daylight murder, and many more scandals under the government protection have turned Nepal a criminals’ haven. There left no sector on which we can feel proud. Commoners’ dissatisfaction against the political leaders and their parties has been intensified very aggressively. When King Gyanendra was on a visit to Bhaktapur, a human sea appeared to greet the dethroned King. This is a gesture that the people from the Kathmandu Valley, which always played a decisive role in the success of the previous “revolutions” seem ready to launch yet another agitation against the present-day rulers. They openly and publicly asked the King to come and save the nation. Wherever the dethroned King visited, such a huge crowd of people was witnessed. If all of them come to Kathmandu and launch street agitation against the present political system and politicos in power, overnight, the system will collapse and the politicos will be compelled to flee away. If the people from Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur come down to the Kathmandu streets, it is more than enough to remove this political system which is the main cause of the deterioration of the nation on all fronts.
We are on the eve of big festivals – Dasain, Tihar, and Chhat. Generally, the post-festival season is identified as the agitation season and perhaps, we can assume, that people may come to the streets after the festival season.