Screw New Nepal: Give Me Next Nepal!

This is by far the most angry, ego-maniac piece I have written for the paper. Hell, I even challenge Sujata Koirala to a duel.

It would be interesting if that woman chose to reply. I doubt it. She has no moral ground in this case, and virtually everybody else has the right to a superior moral stance.

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To Vote

The word Mat, of Sanskrit origin, means a little more than an opinion, even if it be a studied, considered one. Matdan is therefore not a good word to use while asking this foundational question: what does it mean to vote? The word vote, of Latin origin, is no less a part of Nepali vocabulary than the words mat or matdan. The word vote originally meant to make a solemn vow towards effecting change. An opinion is hardly even an indication of the will to act; but to make a vow, especially by a people mindful to keep its word, is a meaningful act. It indicates the will to change the reality in which the population daily subsists, which is the only reason politics can, and should, exist.

Nepali politics in the past month has been dominated by three losers: Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, and in the past few days, Sujata Koirala. How is Pushpa Kapam Dahal a loser? He has often assumed a mantle not given to him by the vote of Nepali people. He first declared himself the “first-future-president” of our republic, so untenable and ridiculous even in its linguistic gaucherie. He then took a series of decisions for which he had no support among those who didn't vote for him: the most basic requirement while considering the daily functioning of a coalition government. This arrogance cost him his over-expensive bed at Baluwatar. For assuming to have the votes of people who didn't really vote for him, he is a loser.

Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala, on the other hand, are losers because they lost elections. Plain and simple. Only the politically minded, who have become so used to seeing wisdom in the intricacies of political designs that they no longer see what is plain and simple, can find complicated excuses for why Sujata Koirala can be a good force in politics. For some strange reason, especially among the educated and informed, the value of the simplest gestures has been lost. It has become buried under so much analysis and considerations and informed opinion that the basis, the foundations upon which they must strain to balance in order to make their convoluted arguments, seem alien and cumbersome to them. The idea that the citizen's right to a meaningful survival comes before legal hair-spitting about clauses in a holey constitution doesn't occur to people with the luxury to buy newspapers and subscribe to weeklies printed on glossy paper. The fact that when a village along the border gets displaced after repeated assault and rape—be it by the Seema Surakshya Bal or local dacoits—it is a bigger national tragedy than the need for “civilian supremacy” ad defined by a political party escapes all privileged minds. What civilian supremacy—on, in the contrary camp, the letters of the law—are you debating over when your civilians are being raped and forced to flee? The victims were mostly displaced because of the civil war. I bet you that the SSB is not being directed by politicians in Dehli, but by local politicians and landowners, likely on both sides of the border.

Madhav Kumar Nepal has weaseled his way to power. Good for him. He doesn't have my respect for the simple fact that he has become the head clown of the professional group that laughs at the face of the idea that the ordinary, average citizen's primary vote is of any significance. But, to the man's credit is a long life in the service of the nation, a career unsullied by allegations of corruption. At least he has the respect and support of politicians elected by the people. But Sujata Koirala? She, too, lost the elections, which to me, in no ambiguous terms, means that the people of a certain area, to whom she begged for their support, in order that she could be their servant, to hear and carry their voice to the CA, refused her that grace, that responsibility. There is opposition within her own party against her appointment as the Foreign Minister—my representative to the world! She doesn't have the support of people who did win in the elections, who do have the permission to represent a part of the population. Yet, she is the face representing me to other nations. For the record—Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, you don't have this citizen's permission to represent him, because you couldn't secure the permission of his fellow citizens to represent them when you did grovel before them. They rejected you as unworthy. Again—plain, and simple. Sujata Koirala, go ahead, laugh at me. If you have the guts, tell me on this page, in this paper, how I am wrong, and how you have the moral—not legal, but moral—right to represent me.

If to vote means to make a promise rather than express a simple opinion, this cabinet of ministers makes a mockery of the citizen's vow to change the physical world in which he lives. It doesn't matter to me that the person I voted for doesn't represent me in the CA. What matters is that I am represented by a person who has the mandate of the people from the constituency in which I live. As an individual who believes in the foundational tenets of democracy—that all are equal and are worth one vote each upon reaching a certain age; that the majority gets to do whatever the hell it wants, but the biggest moral responsibility of the majority is to offer up its life to defend all reasonable rights of the minority; and that it is the responsibility of each citizen in the nation to respect, protect and uphold the laws of the land as written by worthy individuals delegated to the task through a process whose bedrock is the secret ballot—I cannot tolerate the idea that individuals who failed the basic test of the secret ballot get to represent me above and beyond the man I didn't vote for but who still won the elections. If to vote is to promise to act towards a goal, I am angry that Madhav Kumar Nepal and Sujata Koirala make a mockery of my vote, my promise to act towards a different, better landscape—physical, moral, psychic: political.

Screw New Nepal if it is going to be a parade of power-hungry manipulators who insult my vote. I am for Next Nepal, whatever comes out of the ashes of this fiasco. People of Nepal—mourn, because Sujata Koirala just strangled your New Nepal. If the woman can so shamelessly use her father, an old man who has hovered so close to death for so long, and conspire to take away from him the legacy for which he has fought since his childhood, what pity do you think she has for you?