On Tuesday, at a private breakfast meeting with about a dozen members of the Nepali diaspora, Mrs Hisila Yami joked she was here simply “as the Prime Minister’s Madame” and smiled broadly to everyone’s delight. [break]
The Nepali premier’s week has been dotted with several high profile meetings already: Juan Evo Morales Ayma (President of Bolivia), Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla (Foreign Minister of Cuba), Eric Solheim (Minister for Environment and International Development of Norway), Navanethem Pillay (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), Mahinda Rajapaksa (President of Sri Lanka), and Lyonchhen Jigme Y. Thinley (prime minister of Bhutan).
By press time, meetings with Indian prime minister of India Manmohan Singh, and the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had also been scheduled.
“Protocol permits a prime minister to meet other officials even if they may not be his counterpart, but as long they are the head of the delegation,” Amrit Bahadur Rai, an official at the Nepal Mission, explained.
In between official meetings, the prime minister will also participate in two major public engagements on Friday.
The first will be a scholarly discussion on the topic of ‘Relevance of Marxism in the 21st Century’ at The New School university in New York, followed by an event with the Nepali community later that evening. He will address the General Assembly on Saturday.
On Wednesday afternoon the Ambassador’s office quickly filled for a small press meet organized by the Permanent Mission of Nepal to the United Nations.
The prime minister causally opened the meet by speaking broadly about his trip in generic terms. And much like his party’s Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal had said as the prime minister in UNGA 2008, prime minister Bhattarai also expressed confidence in the current government’s commitment to finish the constitution writing process and, “bring the peace process to a logical conclusion.”
Those will also be his primary priority, he explained, and emphasized the fact that he has been the prime minister for only three weeks now.
For the Nepali audience, there was nothing new to say about his government’s role and interests in relation to Nepali politics and the constitution writing process.
The Conspiracy Theories
Several questions hammered on the theme of the prime minister’s loyalty toward India, forcing him to be uncomfortably defensive.
A reporter questioned the intentions of the prime minister’s scheduled meeting with his Indian counterpart.
Another argued that the new price cap the prime minister instituted for purchase of government vehicles was in fact a move that enabled only Indian vehicles to qualify for purchase.
The prime minister explained that riding the Nepali manufactured Mustang was to encourage Nepali industries and manufacturing and create job growth in the country.
He added that his government is working hard to immediately address issues of dealing with worker’s unions that have forced the closure of several of Nepal’s larger factories.
One reporter, somewhat oddly, even asked for an explanation on the PM’s choice to come to New York before making an official visit to India, and if there was a subliminal message in that. The reporter seemingly did not consider the annual dates of the UNGA meet and the date on which Dr Bhattarai became the prime minister.
“It is ridiculous to question the nationalism of the Maoist party,” the PM said several times. “Our party has always defended it and fought for it.”
It wasn’t just India that was in the spotlight. Pointing out his meeting with the head of the Norwegian delegation, several reporters wondered if the new leader favored Norway for major projects in Nepal in exchange for foreign aid (nobody noted Norway’s role or relationship with the party since the conflict years, or in Nepal’s hydro power sector).
In the Comfort Zone:
There were moments that enabled the prime minister to launch into a discourse shaped by his political ideology. On the largely controversial issue of Palestine’s bid for Statehood at this year’s UNGA, he was confident about Nepal’s position. “We will support Palestine’s bid. It has always supported its cause,” he declared.
A reporter wondered why Nepal is such a poor country despite all the rich resources, and what it would take to develop Nepal.
“Nepal is not poor because we lack natural resources, we are poor because of our socio-political structures,” he quickly replied before going on to explain how it needs to change, and is in fact changing and given the opportunity, he and his party are ready to lead the nation into a path of economic development that would take Nepal to a new economic bracket at least within15 years.
A reporter also asked, somewhat oblivious to the reporting that has already been done on this subject, if the Nepali delegation had flown to New York in economic class “where there is no leg space or space to study” because it couldn’t afford to or because it was not allowed to, implying if the experience was somewhat embarrassing for Nepal.
“Neither!” the prime minister said. “It was a choice I made in order to set an example,” he explained.
Editor in Chief:
There were at least two moments where the prime minister played editor to the reporters after listening for a while and seemingly being unable to continue hearing them repeat the mistake over and over.
When one reporter talked about his experience in reporting on the UN and his knowledge of how the UN brackets country’s economic growth and status repeatedly said “LCD,” as in Liquid Crystal Display, several times, the prime minister abruptly mumbled “LDC,” as in Least Developed Countries. The reporter promptly corrected himself.
When the topic of the prime minister’s choice of vehicle was raised by another reporter, he kept referring to it as a “Pajero” made in Nepal. “It’s not a Pajero, it’s a Mustang,” the prime minister interjected wryly.
A Big Weekend Ahead:
On Friday afternoon, prime minister Bhattarai will find himself in a fairly unique platform as the keynote speaker at The New School’s public event “What is the Relevance of Marxism in the 21st Century? A Nepali Experience.”
There, the prime minister will engage in a discourse about the subject with respected scholars like Andrew Arato, Sanjay Reddy, Pratha Chatterjee and Mary de Chen.
The event, hosted by India China Institute, will also be webcast live and questions will be accepted online through India China Institute’s Facebook page, as well as its Twitter account @india_china. Nepal Unites is promoting the webcast to its supporters while Cornell University is hosting a screening in the university upstate.
In 2008, India China Institute also hosted a similar event with then prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and over the years has hosted several high level Nepali events with not just Nepali leaders but also international scholars.
On Friday evening the prime minister will meet with the larger Nepali community at a public event organized in Astoria, Queens, by the Nepal Mission.
The prime minister will address the UNGA on Saturday and is scheduled to return to Nepal soon afterward.
At home, he will have to resume the challenging task of trying to deliver to the Nepali people everything that he has talked about to the world this past week.
You can follow the author on Twitter @kashishds and email him at kashish@350nepal.org
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