Political Commentary
By P.R. Pradhan
The hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were surrendering to the Covid-19 pandemic; Covid patients were denied from admitting to the hospitals due to lack of beds; medical doctors were helpless as patients were dying due to the lack of oxygen; the Remdesiver medicine priced at five thousand rupees needed for the Covid patient was being sold at 50 thousand rupees in the black market. The epidemic devastation outside the capital city was very worst than in Kathmandu. In such a chaotic situation, the ruling party and the opposition parties were engaged in the tussle for capturing the PM’s chair.
Caretaker Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was holding one after another meeting with his colleagues and leaders from different political parties to save the PM’s chair for himself. Opposition leaders Sher Bahadur Deuba, Pushpakamal Dahal Prachanda, Upendra Yadav and Baburam Bhattarai were developing different strategies to topple down the government led by Oli.
The first plan of Deuba and Prachanda was to bring the dissident faction in the Janata Samajbadi Party led by Mahantha Thakur and Rajendra Mahato in the anti-Oli camp. When this plan was failed, Deuba-Prachanda tried their best to seek support from the Madhav Nepal faction in the ruling party UML. Nepal and JN Khanal had assured Deuba and Prachanda that his camp would tender resignation en masse by 4 pm Thursday. Deuba and Prachanda were confident that the Nepal camp would come to rescue them even by splitting the ruling party. The Parliamentary Secretariat was kept in a ready position to receive the resignation of about 28 MPs in the Nepal camp.
PM Oli, knowing such a strategy of the opposition parties, was trying to defuse the Nepal camp’s plan. Thursday morning, Oli had phoned Nepal and sent Bishnu Poudel to meet Madhav Nepal at the latter’s residence to convey Oli’s message. The meeting between Nepal and Poudel was concluded by setting the meeting venue between Oli and Nepal.
The two UML leaders held four-hour-long talks at Captain Rameshwar Thapa’s residence in Budhanilkantha, Kathmandu. The meeting was concluded with the decision to form a task force to end the existing dispute between the two camps in the UML. Along with the decision of constitution of the task force, the Nepal camp suspended the plan of tendering resignation en masse making fool to the Deuba-Prachanda front.
Who won and who lost?
Not odd, the present political battle in Kathmandu was a fight between the ruling party and the old establishment, designers of the 12-point agreement in Delhi.
Prachanda, Yadav, Bhattarai, Ramchandra Poudel, Krishna Shitaula, Gagan Thapa, among others were acting on behalf of the designers of the 12-point Delhi agreement, whereas, Oli, Mahantha Thakur, Rajendra Mahato were representing the ruling BJP in Delhi. Anyway, both the fronts were attempting to give an “India comfortable” government in Kathmandu.
Finally, to expose Oli and Nepal, the venue for talks was chosen at businessman Rameshwor Thapa’s residence in Budhanilkantha.
Thapa, the owner of the Simrik Air who is also running a media house, was the person who had escorted RAW chief Samant Goel when he had arrived in Kathmandu and held a one-on-one midnight meeting with PM Oli. It is clear to understand Delhi’s message.
After all, the Nepali people have defeated the battle.
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