There are signs that our security forces have the professional wherewithal to liberate Nepal’s democracy from the stranglehold of the brazenly corrupt
By Bihari Krishna Shrestha
NEPAL’S WESTMINSTER SYSTEM: POLITICS OF CORRUPTION
Ever since the restoration of multiparty dispensation in 1990, Nepal has been reeling under the mounting corruption of our political parties, so much so that a little over three decades down the road, just about every single politician is a corrupt man or woman in Nepal today.
The agonizing part of the story for a democratically aspiring people of the country is that these corrupt politicians could not care less about popular concern over their brazen corruption.
NC’s corruption story: For instance, the presumable GOP of Nepal, the Nepali Congress party convened one of their Mahasamiti meetings in Kathmandu in the recent past, which was participated by over a thousand delegates from all across the country.
Just at that time, its senior leader, Bal Krishna Khand, was released on bail after spending some seven months in judicial custody for accepting bribes from fake Bhutanese scammers. Everybody in that jamboree noticed the jailed Khand meekly seated in a corner.
The assembly was also aware of the media reporting then that jailed Khand’s wife and lawmaker Manju Khand and party president SB Deuba’s wife and lawmaker ArzuRana too stand implicated for accepting six crores and one and a half crores of that scam money, respectively, and were eligible for imminent arrest too, except for the kindness showered by PM Prachanda and his anti-corruption big mouth home minister Narayan Kazi Shrestha, who had transferred the investigating police officers, SSP Dr Manoj KC, SSP Daan Bahadur Karki, and AIG Shyam Gyawali to save them from arrest.
The tragedy for Nepal is that this NC party–that once under BP Koirala was at the forefront of social democratic movement internationally–has now degenerated into a mafia-like organization in which every single member is a corrupt man or woman. The big Mahasmiti meeting chose to completely ignore the elephant in the room–party corruption. Every single participant in that massive gathering felt great unease by Khand’s presence in the meeting, being unsure of how to react to him personally, a corrupt and jailed senior leader. This sense of ambivalence on their part only went on to reinforce the general impression that NC today is nothing more than the coming together of like-minded corrupt thugs almost in its entirety.
As if that was not enough already for the Nepalese, a few weeks later, a whole phalanx of NC party stalwarts, Deuba included, flew down to Dang Valley to unveil the statue of the late Khum Bahadur Khadka, who, a decade and a half ago, was convicted of corruption and jailed for more than a year.
The strangest thing of all has been that there are members who want to unseat Deuba in the party, but not even a single voice is against such an unabashed pursuit of corruption. While there are some meek, sane-thinking members in the party, they make no courageous voice against the corrupt godfathers and godmothers in the party; instead, they lie low in the hope that these corrupt chieftains may throw some crumbs towards them too. Beggarly living, but clearly must be “better” than quitting on principle!
UML’s corruption story: Just now, former Nepalese ambassador to Australia, Lucky Sherpa, has revealed (NEPALTALK.com) that she had given three crore rupees to UML chief Oli for the assignment. As things stand, this news is just a drop in the ocean. Olijee remains the most corrupt politician ever in Nepal, given the numerous scams he stands accused of, such as the Giribandhu Tea Estate, fake refuges, Widebody, etc. Unlike most other corrupt politicians, he is also the most brazen. While serving as PM during Covid days, his pet politician and health minister, Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal, had come under widespread criticism for corruption in Covid procurement, then known as OMNI scam. PM Oli in defense of his protégé, Dhakal, had simply dismissed the charge by categorically declaring that “there has been no corruption because I said it so” (in Nepali: Maile bhanepachi bhayeko chhaina“). Like in NC, no UML walla criticizes him for two reasons. Like in NC, most UML politicians are corrupt and meek. Secondly, unlike Wily, Deuba, Oli is intolerant of his critics and manages to get rid of them from the party altogether, like Bhim Rawal lately.
Maoists’ corruption story: While the slaughter of 17,000 remains the ever-present albatross on him, Maoist chair Prachand also stands accused of the biggest ever fraud of the country, defrauding the national exchequer of tens of billions in payment for non-existent Maoist combatants, more popularly known as Cantonment scam. Lately, all Maoist “Puns” seemed to be in suun (gold) smuggling business, some now in police custody, and poor home minister Rabi, with a plethora of criminally indictable felonies of his own, had to reprieve gold smuggler Maoist VP Krishna Bahadur Mahara, although his son remains in police custody.
NEPAL’S POLITICAL SYSTEM UNDER THE VICIOUS STRANGLEHOLD OF THE CORRUPT TROIKA
All three corrupt leaders have cases filed against them for their numerous acts of corruptibility. Although one or two of this troika find themselves either in government or in opposition in parliament, it is only of superficial significance, useful to mislead visiting foreign officials, such as the visiting American dignitaries often on a mission to woo Nepal against China, who routinely calls Nepal “vibrant democracy”.
To escape legal action against them, this corrupt troika has managed to appoint their “yes’ men in important positions such as the anti-corruption watchdog, CIAA, where the current incumbent is considered to be UML chief’s protégé. So, while these three corrupt politicians have also been the most brazenly corrupt historically, they, with the strength of their money and muscle power, have also managed to get themselves reelected with resounding majorities again and again, thus keeping the leadership landscape of Nepal totally unchanged despite elections.
NEPAL LACKS FOREIGN FRIENDS FOR HELP WITH DEMOCRACY
While America is one superpower with the promotion of democracy as one of its major foreign policy goals, it, as indicated above, is not honest with itself when it comes to dealing with a small country like Nepal, which it applauds as a ‘vibrant democracy,” as mentioned earlier.
Another major democracy in our neighbourhood is India, but it too remains the victim of overwhelming undemocratic elements, with a vast proportion of its parliamentarians having active criminal cases against them. The failure of Indian democracy is best gauged by the fact that even after three-fourths of a century of democracy, India remains, in international academic parlance, ‘home to world poverty”, and, lately, the “hungriest country” in South Asia. Besides, as recently observed by author C Bajpayee “India is not unique among democratic states in placing pragmatism above principle in the conduct of its foreign policy.” This indeed has been very much evidenced in its aiding and abetting of decade-long Maoist terrorism and attempted dismemberment of Nepal in 2007 by having Nepal’s first-generation Indian immigrant Madhesi leaders declare ‘Independent Madhesh”.
NEPAL IS LEFT TO ITS OWN DEVICES FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORM AND RECENT SIGNS ARE THAT IT HAS THE POTENTIAL
The above discussion shows that while Nepal’s democracy needs a major overhaul, it has only itself to rely on for the purpose. There is going to be no America–or European Union in the case of European states–to help us improve our corruption-afflicted democracy.
Some recent developments indicate that we do seem to have the potential to do the job. For instance, under the fake Bhutanese refugee scam, hundreds of unsuspecting victims were being defrauded of millions of rupees each under the scheming and blessings of the then Oli government. Complaints were piling up for action against the fraudsters in the CIB office in Kathmandu. But the police, in complete denial of their professional obligation to society, were not acting on them, thus betraying the impression of being more like the personal slaves of these corrupt politicians and officials.
But at one point, the new chief of Kathmandu CIB, SSP Dr. Manoj KC sensed that there was a window of opportunity for him to act professionally when there would be no superior authority to order him to do otherwise. While the existing IG had retired, the new one was still to be sworn in. As the media report goes, during these couple of hours, he apprehended the home-ministry-supported scammers, took their statements, and unleashed the cases on their irreversible legal course that, under another professionally-inspired policeman, SSP Dan Bahadur Karki, saw more officials, including the home secretary, apprehended and placed in judicial custody.
By any definition, SSP Manoj KC established himself as a model for professional policing in the country for a long time to come.
Then, there was another professional policeman, AIG Shyam Gyawali, who not only got the case moving forward but also taught the corrupt former home minister and NC stalwart, Bal Krishna Khand, the lesson of his life. Once Khand was implicated in the Fake Refugee scam, he personally led a contingent of the police force and arrested him in the wee hours of the morning from his residence, forcing him to spend more than half a year in custody and then release him on bail as a ruined human being. This is a big lesson for corrupt politicians: once Nepal Police chooses to act professionally–like the UK’s Scotland Yard that brought down British PM Boris Johnson–their fate too will be like that of corrupt NC stalwart and former home minister BK Khand.
To conclude, there is much our security forces can do to bring our democracy back on proper track. Besides, there are other examples around the world in which its security forces, mainly the army, intervened for accountability and order in their democracy. While it was the military in Zimbabwe that forced dictator Robert Mugabe out of office some six years ago, in America, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Chiefs of General Staff, acted over President Trump to assure China that Trump alone cannot unleash nuclear devastation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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