It’s a good thing that our ministers are not afraid to disclose their personal assets anymore. The bad thing is that they seem to have more than we could have ever imagined. The poorest politician in town is our Dr Saheb, who happens to have only 400,000 in the bank.[break]
Our PM may be poor and at first, he did inspire us with his frugal spending habits but all the members of his national football team seem to be ridiculously wealthy.
And we hear about our ‘wealthy’ ministers asking for bribes from government employees for plum postings.
After all, it’s hard to keep up with the inflation and the rising dollar and what not. And you do need to have a positive cash flow to keep up with your regal spending habits.
Our ministers tell us that they all come from very wealthy families and received land, gold and animals as dowries. They should thank the stars above for being born in the ‘dowry era’ for it is now legally banned. But this is Nepal, we also banned smoking in public places and we can see how effectively it has been implemented by our concerned authorities.
Our netas finally decided to form the State Restructuring Commission (SRC) after haggling over the names but they still can’t agree on who gets to head the commission.
I think someone needs to remind them that SRC is not like them government public enterprises where you send an 8th grader to head the airlines corporation or appoint your own siblings to the board of various state agencies.
We really thought that the ‘Afno Manchey’ policy would change after we turned Republic. Either we were very naïve or we are always too trusting of our great netas.
We have seen alcoholics, junkies and even petty thieves turn their lives around after rehabilitation and become role models. Maybe it’s about time we offered the rehabilitation package to our netas since none of our comrade combatants seem to be interested in it.
At least for once, our so-called leaders can do us a favor by appointing independent experts to these commissions instead of trying to find their own cadres and cousins.
Nepotism still rules, corruption is still rampant than ever and misuse of authority and official privileges have reached such extreme heights that ordinary citizens might have to take anti-depressants just to make it to the next day.
When will meritocracy finally arrive in Nepal? That would be a wishful thinking but we must not lose hope and hopefully it might arrive at the same time Haley’s comet.
Less than a week to go and our ‘constitution’ writers will once again extend the CA’s term for another six months. I think our netas begged for forgiveness for their past mistakes and promised us that the previous extension would be the last one.
And now they will try to justify another extension by claiming how close they are to wrapping things up. Another extension, another six months of dilly-dallying and then this natak might go on forever until we lose track and the country never wakes up from the coma but instead turns into a permanent vegetative state.
I think we should all occupy the railings outside BICC for the next six months and heckle our politicians to get the job done or hire taxis and drive around their houses and remind them every morning with loud speakers.
The Prez and even the chairperson has shown us their (lack of ) courage to remind or reprimand to get our netas to overcome their differences and find a common ground.
I think we should stop waving our flags, placards and wear t-shirts with amusing slogans. We should occupy the Ring Road leading to the airport and prevent our politicians from leaving the country for the next six months to attend useless conferences or meet their foreign handlers.
We have yet to see a politician who has the moral courage to do the right thing. Dr Saheb really impressed us with his ‘shock & awe’ antics but now he tells us that he has compromised his principles for peace and constitution as he looks the other way while his cabinet members go on a corruption rampage.
The looting spree continues, impunity continues to prevail and by the time they find a person to head the State Restructuring Commission, we might not even have a state!
Guffadi blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com
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