A few Nepalis were badly injured in a deadly attack in Kabul on July 2. Not long ago, hundreds of Nepali pilgrims were stranded and reported missing in Uttarakhand. Every day, Nepali workers are subject to harassment and deportation in the Gulf and Malaysia. Our President Ram Baran Yadav was getting treated in a Tokyo hospital for a week yet no one either from the Japanese cabinet, Imperial Household, their parliament or from their Foreign Ministry visited the President to inquire about his health.
All this shows the declining health of Nepal’s foreign affairs, resulting in the gross neglect of Nepal by foreign powers. Our embassies abroad are not performing at all; they seem to have no eagerness to carry out even basic duties. Nepal government decided to open new missions in far-flung places like Brazil, Canada, Kuwait, South Africa, UAE and Oman a few years ago but the justification for spending crores of tax-payer money has not been demonstrated. One cannot see any rationale for these new missions. The CIAA must look into why these missions were created and the amount of money wasted in the subsequent years. [break]
The debate over whether a career ambassador is better suited to head a mission or a political appointee has more enthusiasm to carry out his responsibilities would not have occurred had our embassies been functioning well. Both the political appointees and the career ambassadors are the chip of the same block. The result is embarrassment after embarrassment for Nepal in the international arena such as the defeat in the UN Security Council seat and the UN Presidency. Time has come for us to overhaul the foreign ministry structure in the changed context and make it better suited to complex realities of contemporary world.
There is no doubt that our embassies abroad are under-staffed, under-paid and most of the times without any clear direction from the ministry back home. Reports and letters sent by ambassadors are not answered for weeks, even months. Till last month, Nepal did not even have a national day. Our diplomats enjoyed the receptions hosted by other embassies but did not bother to invite others on their own.
Ministry bureaucrats feel that it is their birth right to get posting after posting yet they have not shown any credible result of how their repeated postings have benefitted national interest. Most of the time, they are interested only in the education of their children in foreign colleges, saving their salary to buy property back home. They are ever on a lookout for better jobs while serving for Nepal, as it happened in the case of our Permanent Representative to the UN in New York who resigned from his position half way through.
At last year’s General Assembly meet, Nepal limped with just a Deputy Permanent Representative. None of the last four foreign secretaries has completed his four years of service as head of the ministry; each chose to get a posting in the midst of their service. In spite of this carelessness, the ministry still claims a lion’s share of ambassadorial appointments.
It must not be forgotten that Sri Lanka not only sends maximum number of political appointees but even journalists and other professionals as counselors and first secretaries. They have been very effective in promoting Sri Lanka’s interests and in attracting tourists, which crossed the million mark in 2012. In comparison, total arrivals to Nepal for Jan-May 2013 was a meager 2,41,000. It might be noted here that the insurgency in Nepal ended three years earlier than Sri Lanka.
Positions are now vacant for missions in New Delhi, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Colombo, Cairo and New York whereas London and Washington DC are also going to be vacant soon. The high level mechanism headed by top leaders of the four major parties must make sure that the most deserving, articulate, well known figures get these jobs with a clear-cut mandate to work for the betterment of Nepal’s ailing international prestige.
Distinction must not be made on whether he/she is a serving bureaucrat or from the private sector as long as the person shows demonstrative quality to serve the motherland. It is also Nepal’s turn to appoint the new SAARC Secretary General. Over the years, SAARC Secretariat has had to work more closely with INGOs, NGOs, chambers of commerce, civil society than with the governments. Appointing a retiring joint secretary of Nepal government to the SAARC will do great injustice to this regional organization of which Nepal is a founder and whose secretariat has been suitably placed in Kathmandu.
For their part, the political parties must evaluate the poor performance of the ambassadors they sent from their quota. The ambassadors in Seoul, Qatar and some other countries have such bad repute in host countries that a repetition of their tenures could irreparably mar the country’s image.
The author is a dental surgeon based in Memphis, US
sushil_sharma2007@hotmail.com
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