EDITORIAL
Where is the government heading, we cannot guess as seven parties in the government are heading towards seven directions and the remaining partners in the ruling alliance are on their own journey. Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal expanded his cabinet on 16 April for the eighth time since he assumed the post of chief executive on 25 December 2022, yet the government is incomplete. Maybe, if things will move smoothly, let’s hope, PM Dahal will become successful in giving the final shape to his cabinet after the by-elections on 23 April.
What are the priorities of the government, we don’t know. We see summits of problems everywhere. Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah denied collecting garbage from President’s Office in Sittal Niwas, the government secretariat Singhadurwar, PM’s quarter, and the Ministers’ quarter. Already, it has been more than a week, yet, the government is unable to resolve this garbage problem. Mayor Shah, the representative of the new generation of Kathmanduites, faced non-cooperation from the government in his mission for evacuating valuable public land occupied by the squatters around Kathmandu. Shah is for preserving and protecting the cultural heritages of Kathmandu but he is facing hurdles at every step as there is dirty politics everywhere.
More seriously, the nation’s economic scenario is very bleak. The government mechanism is unable to collect the target revenue and prepare to take loans to meet the general sector government expenditure. The newly appointed finance minister is busy preparing the budget for the new fiscal year but how to manage the development sector fund, he is confused. Our open border with India has become a haven for criminals, terrorists and smugglers. The previous government – although, partners are the same – encouraged smuggling traffic to manage election funds. Then prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was found distributing five thousand rupees to each voter openly.
The Auditor General’s report speaks a lot about how corruption and irregularities limited within Singhadurwar reached the provinces and local levels. Perhaps, Maoist Center chair Pushpakamal Dahal was right to say that since the adoption of the loktantra, Singhdurwar has reached every village. Unfortunately, along with Singhadurwar, corruption and irregularities have also reached the villages. Perhaps, this is the beauty of loktantra. The alarming issue is that if we continue to beautify this loktantra, popularly known as loot-tantra, our final destination would be the dissolution of this sovereign nation.
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