Nepal not to become a failed State

January 28, 2004
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-King Gyanendra

Kathmandu: The King speaks his mind.

The King has done so through an interview with the Time Magazine recently which apparently does hint that King Gyanendra as the custodian of the constitution would not settle for less than teaching a lesson to the erring political actors of the present day Nepal.

“The King of Nepal was interviewed by Alex Perry, South Asia Bureau Chief of TIME Magazine”

The King in the course of the interview implies that it is not the system as such which has failed in this country but instead it were the political actors who contributed to the failure of the system.

“Much of the ill we have suffered is not because of the democratic political system, it’s because of the actors in the system”.

This does hint that the King remains sure that whatever political aberrations have cropped up in the system of late and the feeling that the system itself has failed in the country were all the creation of the actors who took the control of the system beginning early 1990s.

On yet another front, the King dismisses that he was an autocrat as some would say.

“If some people don’t understand me, if there is mistrust and a crisis of confidence, let’s do something about it”, is what King responds.

In other words, the King implies to say that at best the people and the actors of today’s Nepali politics have misunderstood him. In the same vein, he however, invites the actors to come closer and do away with the misunderstanding regarding him. This means that the King is open to talk on those lines with any one whosoever alleges him to be an autocrat.

Similarly, the King once again lambastes at the political parties and says that the political leadership of Nepal should abandon thinking of their own personality but instead think of the people and the nation.

“I wish the political leadership speak more often about the people, not of their own betterment”, is what expects the King from political actors.

The King sumarrily rejects the theory of the political parties that a constitutional monarch should remain in political confinement. Instead, the King, would wish to expose himself to his people who would like to listen to him.

” The people of Nepal want to see their King, they want to hear from him”, is what King Gyanendra says in the interview.

This clearly means that the King will not only visit districts and meet the people but would also talk to them as and when he so desires.

King Gyanendra’s assertion has come at a time when his impending public felicitations in Nepalganj are shortly due this month.

On another plain, the King is all in favor of defending the Nepali army. He says that barring some “accidental” accidents, the Nepali army could not be alleged to have committed human rights abuses.

“’And which country does not have friendly fire? Which does not have accidents?, this is how the King who is also the Supreme Commander of the Army defends the security agency.

The King disagrees to the theory that Nepal is on the verge of being dubbed as a failed state. He firmly believes that “it’s not happening that way as is being taken by some. Elaborating further, the King does admit that there is a political vacuum indeed in the country.

Talking on the rise of the Maoists insurgency, the King yet again wraps the political parties and says that “previous governments did not have the foresight to address poverty or they addressed it in such an inhuman way that those areas developed into hot spots we have today.

In saying so the King does accept that the insurgency could have been come up because of poverty and that should the governments of the past tackled the issue in a humanely manner, the insurgency would not have developed in a dimension what it is today.

Here again the King says that the governments that came after 1990 lacked the needed foresight.

In the end of the interview, the King, nevertheless, admits that “he should not have any active responsibilities in government which means that he will not cross the limits of a constitutional monarch but would simultaneously remain a constructive monarch come what may.

“The future of Nepal, yes! Lies in constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy”, the King repeats his commitments for a democratic system in the country.

How the political parties react to King’s interview will have to be watched.