KATHMANDU, August 8: Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the chairman of the CPN (Maoist Center) while inaugurating the Nepal Festival 2022 on Saturday during his visit to Japan claimed to have met the late former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe several times.
Dahal is on a visit to Japan at the invitation of the Nepali People’s Progressive Platform Japan under the foreign department of his party. He claimed that he had met Abe two-three times when the former Japanese Prime Minister visited Nepal and asserted that he had a good relationship with him. In the same program, Dahal also claimed that his visit would play an important role in taking Nepal-Japan relations to new heights.
The first claim made by Dahal that he had met Abe is completely wrong which he himself has corrected. Dahal, who has been the prime minister twice and the chairman of a ruling party, professed that Abe had visited Nepal several times while the truth is that Abe has not visited Nepal even once.
On the other hand, Dahal’s Japan visit is not an official one but it has taken place at the invitation of his party’s sister organization. No meeting with high government officials has been pre-scheduled during his visit. Therefore, his claim of Japan-Nepal relations reaching new heights with his visit to Japan and meeting with the Nepali community at the invitation of an organization close to his party seems to be far from reality.
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Dahal, who also had left for a three-day visit to India on July 15, emphasized that he would meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the visit. However, he could not meet Modi during the visit. Dahal, even till the end of the tour, claimed that a meeting with Modi had been scheduled and that it was canceled at the eleventh hour. When Dahal returned to Nepal, the Indian news media, quoting sources from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, published news that a meeting between Modi and Dahal had not been scheduled and that there were no possibilities of such a meeting.
Dahal often gives expressions based on his mood rather than the facts while participating in various programs. However, when such expressions turn out to be different from the facts, his statements become counterproductive.
Political analyst Hari Roka says that political party leaders of Nepal deviate from the facts as they lack studying habits and are inclined to speak according to the situation without researching any issue. “It seems that people who have been Prime Minister or in any position of responsibility a couple of times do not have any regard for the impact of what they say,” Roka said. He stressed that not only the Prime Minister or other people in important positions, but people, in general, should speak with facts.
Accounts of hypocrisy
Dahal, who started an armed struggle three decades ago after submitting a 40-point demand to the then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba saying that the latter could not bring change to the country, would not have come to the peace process and become Deuba’s charioteer as soon as the demands were fulfilled had there been no difference between what he says and what he does.
The Maoist armed conflict began by declaring the then government and the Nepali Congress as class enemies, but the latter has now become the facilitator of change for leader Dahal. The armed conflict, which began to establish the hegemony of the proletariat, cost the country not only human losses but financial damages as well. While Dahal has been hovering around power for almost two decades, the class that supported him in the armed war is struggling with poverty. Dahal, on the other hand, has been uplifted to a higher class. Even though there is a stark difference between Dahal’s promises to the poor and his behavior after coming to power, Dahal has not stopped lying that he will work to establish the rights of the poor.
From challenging the very republican character of the country established at his own initiative with statements that upheld parties supporting monarchy to calling Swami Ramdev a scientist and a revolutionary who himself once referred to as a conservative and a traditionalist, giving contradicting expressions is not something new to Dahal.
In September last year, Suresh Wagle, while speaking on the occasion of Memorial Day, said that if Dahal wanted to be like the UML, he would have dissolved the Maoist party. While Dahal, who took the path of war saying that change from UML was not possible, united with the same party in 2017 and was ready to accept UML Chairman Oli as the country’s Prime Minister. In this way, the public trust in Dahal has been weakening as the leader is not being able to form a concord between his words and actions.
