Editorial
So much is being allowed for speculation that analysts are occupied by supposed purposes of the prime minister’s wife tripping to New Delhi on a supposed visit to an ailing brother or the chief of army staff’s trip there or on the Prime Minister himself being called to visit the Indian Prime Minister’s home state of Gujerat. Remarkably whatever authentic murmurs there are belittle the politics while beliefs and the lack of transparency up top only encourage the speculation at this crucial juncture. The lay Nepali can only denounce the absence of trust in the politics of the country and brace themselves against an apocalypse that everyone agrees is around the corner. The groundswell of opinion against the American MCC matters the least in the context of the bulk leadership in parliament committed to the contract and the stark reality of the street opposition is aware that they may be the least deterrent to the contract being approved by parliament as required. After all, the anti-Mhakali hordes could do little to prevent the parliament from approving the treaty to the dismay of the country. Revealingly these are the same leaders that escape unscathed to continue to steer the country to, now, the MCC stage.
Obsession with foreign policy – Nepal-India, China or the United States — diverts public attention from the fact that the same leadership has been endorsed by political parties who refuse to see sense in the criticism of the MCC. The demonstrated grip this leadership has over the political parties and the off and on-trend cartelling among these parties can ignore the streets altogether. This is even so because the streets may merely be interpreted as alternative positioning in preparation for the now inevitable elections. The streets as yet ignore the fact that a system change alone can change the direction of a foreign policy bent on feeding on partisan politics. There is a trust deficit in the country no doubt. But this can only be removed by the streets being coherent in their purposes and that coherence is absent in the context of the MCC-centric opposition and not system change, especially when the system is geared it seems to opt for the MCC.
Self-preservation is actually a political motive in a fluid country where politics is a prime factor in fluidity. It is as if foreign policy runs the country to give it direction. The direction is wayward and public concentration must be relocated to the mundane, namely, national politics which insists on maintaining the wayward course. Unless we shift the nation back to center stage, runaway policies will only accentuate the gap. Political issues must be national in content and intent and the MCC is surely not. The sources of the MCC are extraneous to national interest while the disinterest in selling it to the sceptical public only endangers the longstanding premises of Nepali national interest which foreign policy must pursue. A system unable to recognize this, if unable to correct itself, must be junked altogether. The streets have yet to be one for this purpose. The vacuum is in the leadership. And politics does not remain in limbo. There is something amiss.
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