More than six months into his appointment, Bhattarai’s promise is unfulfilled. Undaunted, the prime minister repeated his promise (“enough was enough!”) at a function to mark CIAA’s anniversary last Saturday. Once again, he seems to have spoken in haste as the Constitutional Council under the prime minister (tasked with deciding on the appointments) on Thursday once again failed to come to an agreement on likely candidates. At the end of the meeting of CC, which also comprises of the head of the main opposition in the parliament, the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the House, miraculously, there was an agreement: one to hold another meeting to settle the matter.
To be fair to Bhattarai, successive governments have failed to fill the appointments, mainly owing to the intransigence of the big parties: each one wants to appoint personnel according to its needs. The post of chief commissioner of CIAA is especially coveted, and for a very good reason. Each of the major political blocks—UCPN (Maoist), NC, CPN-UML and the Madhesi bloc—has plenty of political leaders in its ranks who have been implicated in various corruption cases. Now that they have seen the Special Court slap former top police officials with hefty fines and years behind bars, they must be even more spooked. Although top political leaders seem to have escaped unscathed on the infamous Sudan scam, people are still suspicious about their innocence. If there is another such high prolife case, the heat will be on both CIAA and the government not to spare political leaders associated with such crimes—not again.
With the political parties far from an agreement, the all-important posts are likely to remain vacant for some time to come. This in turn will fuel public resentment against politicians, ever ready to sacrifice clean and efficient governance to save their dirty faces. If the posts are somehow settled upon in the near future, we fear the appointments will again be made along political lines on the principle of ‘sharing the spoils’. It is hard to decide which will be worse: a hasty appointment of incompetent officials or continuing with the status quo. In either case, Bhattarai is likely to get most of the flak, for his undesired gift of gab if not for his political shortsightedness.
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