Conspiracy moves by government

December 24, 2003
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Kathmandu: The sudden rekindling of the students’ problem needs to be watched. Sui Regice charges long dormant in the Nepali political context were suddenly revived to nab key leaders of all three major student organizations. The three were taken into custody from a T.U. seminar in the presence of Key University authorities after organizing a rabble rousing street demonstration.

Why the students leaders were arrested in this manner, kept in custody after presentation at court and charged in the manner they have been at this critical juncture in Nepali politics deserves serious attention also in the height of its effects.

For one thing, the month long agitation “against repression” has been lent support by the now effectively united student agitation demanding the release of those arrested. For another, the arrest is provocation, and has been, to tempt arrest on more Sui Regice grounds. Whether or not, government and its administration have the capability of rounding up the streets have been amply demonstrated by those going scot-free despite courting arrests echoing the slogans that provoked arrest in the very first place.

Although a message to our politicians that their cadres be made subject to the constitution as well as long overdue, the timing and the Sui Regice charges become suspect.

For one thing it has given back a dormant agitation its cadre. For another, it has tempted what is now a student movement that is united a ruse to court arrest by purposively dirtying the monarchy. Why now?

Specially when the leaders of the agitating parties are accusing none but the monarchy for regression and pressuring the institution to buckle under demands that suit their interpretation of the constitution, the notion that their declared student leaders are operating in tandem and launching a tirade directly at the monarchy on their own is hardly practical. More so the notion that the arrests will stop their tirade would seem equally impractical considering the possibility of a campaign courting mass arrests and the government’s limited capability to counter this politically on the streets without the use of administrative tools. Equally significant is the fact that none other than the pronounced leader of the agitation Girija Prasad Koirala declared that the coming agitation would be one where he was unable to zip the mouths of the demonstrators.

Thus come real questions. What message to whom is the government directing by making the arrests? Is it the students? Is it directed t their political mentors? Or is a government on the actually aiming elsewhere through the reaction that predictable to a lay person from a ricochet?