Bowing to intense public pressure, the government on Tuesday apologized for weaknesses in selecting candidates for the honors. A day later, on Wednesday, the cabinet scrapped the medals conferred on two high ranking police officials and promised to institutionalize a fairer selection process in future. It was unfair to honor police officials who were implicated in gross human rights violations during Janaandolan-II, but withdrawing medals already announced only makes a mockery of the whole selection process. Neither does this instill any confidence in the process, nor does it show any sense of fairness.
Naturally, the families of those who were martyred or injured during Janaandolan II felt insulted and betrayed by the awarding of medals to people who had a role in the suppression of that movement. One of the promises made by political leaders during Janaandolan II was that the individuals who used force against unarmed, peaceful protestors would not go unpunished. This promise was made against the backdrop of widespread complaints that individuals implicated by the Mallik Commission, formed to probe atrocities committed during the earlier Janaandolan I, went unpunished. The promise once again proved to be nothing but a farce as none of those implicated by the Rayamajhi Commission, instituted after the triumph of Janaandolan II, have been held to account. Impunity has become so entrenched in our society that it is becoming the single largest impediment to establishing a society that functions through rule of law.
Coming back to the medals, the whole practice needs to be reviewed. It cannot continue as a remnant of the feudal past where the Ranas and then the Shahs conferred medals and rewards on people who were close to them and worked to further their vested interests. Why does the state need to ritually confer medals on hundreds of people who are part of the state, or are close to it in other ways? If so many bureaucrats, security officials and others close to the state and to political parties truly deserved medals for good work, Nepali society would have been a much, much better place! Nepal is perhaps the only country that has rendered medals and martyrs (the state has declared more than 12,000 martyrs) so cheap. Let´s keep the number of Republic Day medals down to a few, maybe a dozen at maximum, so that those who receive them feel genuinely honored and those who don´t will aspire for the honor in coming years.
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