Very impotent office

The election to the post of the first vice president (VP), let alone the president, of the Republic of Nepal was not an easy one as our recent experience suggests. No one knew it better than VP-elect Parmananda Jha. Before the election, the name of the post itself was sufficient to excite the candidates. In that process, very few seemed to care about the nature of the job and the responsibility that the office holder had to carry overtime. After the election, Jha must have realized that his job was not different from the one described by the first VP of the US, John Adams. He described his job as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived”. More than a century after Adams, John Nance Garner, the first VP under Roosevelt, dismissed the job “as not worth a pitcher of warm piss”. In the words of Jha too, “Except working as the head of state in the absence of the president, the constitution has not given any role to the VP”. In that sense, the responsibility of Nepal’s VP is still less than that of the US, where the VP has at least to chair the meeting of the Senate.



It is no surprise that Jha’s comment sounded very harsh. First of all, it is a temporary post for a limited period of a government whose main job is to frame the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nepal. Secondly, the responsibility of his boss, the president, is only ceremonial, unlike the US president, and, he, therefore, cannot provide him any task to keep him busy.



The VP-elect, talking to selected media persons at his office in Bahadur Bhawan, said that “Time has come to give more responsibility to the president and the VP. My opinion is that all things should go to the president through me. I have talked to the president in this regard.” We do not know the response of the president but a detailed study of his talk with the media showed that he had no respect for public money. Jha was trying to create another layer of bureaucracy with tax money by creating a post of co-president. Thankfully, nobody listened to him.



The public took Jha very lightly due to his use of language in the swearing-in ceremony at Shital Niwas. He could not even find a residence in Kathmandu as the public socially boycotted him. It must have made him furious but he did not show any such signs in public.



He proposed to increase the size of his office staff. According to news published in The Himalayan Times on Aug 21, 2008, “Jha urged the government to appoint press, political and foreign advisors to him. The Vice-President also called the government to provide funds to him so that he can provide relief to the helpless people, who frequent his office every day”. Jha also asked the Constituent Assembly (CA) to make arrangements for his participation in CA sessions. The government was careful not to waste a single rupee to fulfill the demand of a person for whom one can only show pity.



As time passed by, Jha became more vocal than the members of the civil society before the Janaandolan. He criticized the performances of the government in areas where there were differences of opinions, as expected, among the political parties.



The VP’s job was to serve, according to the constitution itself, as nothing but a spare tire of the president. Period! He had no daily work and could relax as long as the president was in the country and in good health.



Jha, however, was a tireless lobbyist. He was putting pressure on the administration and asking for money to distribute to persons who visited him frequently, including the persons from the media, perhaps to build up his public image. He had also mentioned in public meetings that he was giving his own money to media persons, though he did not disclose their names. Perhaps, he was not speaking the truth after all.



Jha has no class. He used to give lectures, for example, for half an hour in perfect Nepali in public to explain that he could not speak Nepali to take oath in that language. What a blunder it was to elect him to the second-highest position of the country!

Related story

Kathmandu Road Division Office summons KMC mayor Balen to appea...