In the spirit of the media manufactured optimism surrounding the election of Sher Bahadur Deuba as Nepali Congress President, I thought I would get carried away with the title of my piece too. I’m quite happy with the appointment of Mr SBD but not because I’m a supporter of his faction or an NC crony in general. I couldn’t care any less if he or any of the other pretenders to the throne had been elected to the post instead of him. I’m just glad to be rid of the media circus and wall to wall coverage of this convention and election on print, TV and social media.
It was all over the place and for weeks on end we’ve been fed the news and gossip on the internal machinations of the party, the faceoff between the establishment and Deuba factions and the end of an era as the reins are transferred from the Koirala family to others. We were treated to our first family equivalent of the Gandhi’s and Kennedy’s – without the accompanying tragedy and the polarizing opinions – contriving enough twists and turns in their positions to start their own version of the hit Kardashian show‘Keeping up with the Koiralas’.
This election overkill by the media was quite understandable given the fact that they have to sell their papers and content (not to mention employ people like me) and competing media houses will often strive to find angles on stories that might elude your average geometry teacher. This accounts for all of the stories and the relentless coverage but the big question they should have asked themselves when they were ramming all of this down our throats was: Does anyone actually care? By anyone I don’t mean those affiliated to the party who seem to be perennially jobless and with a lot of time on their hands but those of us who have a job, bills to pay, kids to feed, struggling with shortage of essentials and hard hit in our daily lives.
Does it really matter to us who takes the helm of one party or the other? After all, from the communists to the capitalists, it’s just an endless merry go round of the same old male ‘bahuns’ each one bestowed with a bigger sense of entitlement than the other.Yes, they might end up leading our country but it really doesn’t make any difference because it’s the same old with every political party, leadership and their functioning.
In the case of the Nepali Congress, it’s a case of more of the same. While Dr BRB – Be Right Back with the new Shakti – can at least parade the novelty of a new bottle, Mr Deuba is just really old wine in an even older bottle. As one of the many beneficiaries of the political musical chairs that have crippled our nation – we have changed PM’s 22 times in the last 25 years – he is known rather unflatteringly as a person who prioritizes political expediency above other things. In national terms, his election isn’t momentous, surprising or ground breaking despite what over excited newspaper columnists and analysts would have you believe.
All of these conventions and elections are just a race to the top and meaningless to me and you in the long run because there are no issues discussed nor are the candidates voted for on the basis of their positions. All that counts are your affiliations. It was the same with the student body elections of the UML a few weeks ago, where the association of the candidates was a big factor in the elections despite the ironical and frankly misleading proliferation of the words ‘free’, ‘independent’ and ‘revolutionary’ in the names of student union bodies.
|There is nothing remotely even revolutionary about these processes – just a few old men preserving the status quo. You wouldn’t stand a chance if you decided to rock the boat and be a Nepali version of Donald Trump – who for all his bigotry has managed to shake the established order in his country. It’s worth noting the honesty of the NC’s process though – there were absolutely no pretences being made of transferring power to the youth. The Grand Old Party was quite serious about literally living up to their name.
The constitution was supposed to finally put politics on the back burner and put development centre stage but that turned out to be wishful thinking. For the moment though, I’m just glad that this circus is over (although some will just not let go) and the front pages of newspapers and news on TV can actually be devoted to more relevant and pressing matters of which there are a fair few pending. The reconstruction work has yet to begin, black marketing is still alive and well, the Madhesh issue still simmers on and work still (really?) hasn’t started on the gas pipeline directly to our homes. I would really recommend keeping the confetti and fireworks for another day. We’ve still got much to do.
gunjan.u@gmail.com
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