Kathmandu: President Girija Prasad Koirala preferred not be in the valley while US Secretary of State Colin Powell was here.

President Koirala chose to lambaste at the alleged failure of his own party government in protecting the lives of the common men more so of their own partymen at time of the emergency.

Koirala wished to join the chorus of the main opposition who now jointly demands the end to the state of emergency in the country at the earliest.

President Koirala in doing so is explicitly not supporting his own party-government what was expected of him.

The ruling set under Sher Bahadur Deuba should really be in a puzzle in ascertaining who is what and more so who were his friends and that too in a party that elevated him to the position of the nation’s Prime Minister.

The fact is that neither President Koirala is happy with Deuba becoming the Prime Minister nor he has digested the army’s unhindered mobilization in containing the threats of the Maoists insurgents.

The fact is that he would have been happy if things could have happened during his Prime Ministership. However, the fact is that he could not muster the needed support from Nepal’s major political forces to what the military perhaps hinted him during his stewardship of the nation some six months back.

His lambasting at his own government that it was unable to protect its citizens in the remote areas is in essence a truth. The fact is that the Maoists appear to have changed their strategies of late. Instead of facing the Royal Nepal Army, comparatively a giant force indeed, in the districts, the Maoists have now begun terrorizing the common civilians. In the process, the insurgents have made their targets to the congressmen in the districts to the utter surprise of many intellectuals in the country. Why the Maoists chose the congress workers is really a mystery.

However, this is not all. The Maoists have of late made their targets to the men belonging to other political camps as well.

So if Girija Prasad Koirala exhibits his attachment for his workers more so when they were brutally killed by the insurgents should not come as a surprise for any one. As a guardian of the party this is what he should do and is perhaps doing.

However, in criticizing the government of its utter failure in protecting the lives of innocent civilians and that too at time of the emergency, President Koirala apparently must not utter any word(s) that weaken the morale of the military men now in action against the insurgents. Koirala must understand the fact that the military force is the single dedicated and loyal entity in the country on which the nation possesses total faith. Any unwanted comment against this honest unit would boomerang.

However, this is not to say that the military should be left to act on its own. The military is perhaps acting as per the guidance of the government of the day. It is perhaps all the more conscious in protecting as many innocent lives it could at time of its attack against the Maoists insurgents.

Regarding the end of the emergency, the national population too wishes that it came to an end. But then if one were to believe the fresh utterances of the nation’s Prime Minister made in Pokhara the other day what becomes clear is that the state of emergency in the country will take yet another similar period.

Prime Minister Deuba’s determination to go ahead with the state of emergency has come close on the heels of the visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s statement made in Kathmandu wherein he too wished the emergency to be a short one. How the US will take this continuation will have to be watched.

What this means to the nation and its already crumbling economy is any body’s guess. The imposition of the state of emergency has already become a very expensive affair indeed and that the government has no resources to sustain the continued mobilization of the army becomes amply clear from the very imposition of further taxes on the people through the use of royal ordinance.

A democratic government imposing taxes on the already squeezed population through the use of backdoor is very difficult to understand indeed.

Be that as it may, instead of taxing the deaf-dumb population of the nation, the government under Deuba should have squeezed some big and top ten currently housed in his own cabinet and could have raided the houses of some noted criminal like politicians who could change their fate well within ten years of this democratic rule.

Taxing further the already taxed citizens would mean asking for blood from the ill-fated citizens of this country whose single fault had been that they took birth in this Himalayan Kingdom.