President Koirala bends!

September 29, 2004
4 MIN READ
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Kathmandu: President Koirala is the patient. He is concurrently a medical practitioner who is able to cure his own ailments.

He creates problems for himself. He later manages to escape from the mess by devising certain schemes.

For example, he spoke so many indecent words against the judiciary and later clarified that he meant no harm to the nation’s apex court and that his struggle was targeted towards the King.

A little later, now he is saying that all that he has been doing of late at Ratnapark was simply to strengthen the hands of the monarch and nothing more than that.

Koirala blows hot and cold concurrently. In the process, what he appears to have not taken note of, his own followers and the partners in the movement against regression are criticizing him. The partners in the struggle against coalition have begun talking in a subdued voice that they find themselves in a very awkward position on how to champion the cause of a political personality who is challenged by the CIAA and now become the target of the nation’s judiciary and who is de facto commander of their own movement. In a similar fashion, Koirala’s own party men appear in a pendulum on whether to support Koirala’s case at the Supreme Court or refrain from siding with their own president who has challenged the supremacy of the apex court.

At yet another level, the lay men but democratic minded ones too appear reluctant in taking the sides of a Koirala who claims to be a democratic person but yet challenges the very basic tenets on which democracy rested.

All put together, Koirala is losing his political base among his own party men and colleagues housed in other political groupings. The result is that he is creating problems for himself and expects others to come to his rescue.

Having said this, look what Koirala is planning in the days ahead.

President Koirala made a statement that he will abide by the commands of the Supreme Court instructions and would be present at the court in person. However, as is his habit, Koirala, however, put his own flimsy preconditions. The condition being that he will attend to the court provided the court allowed the media men to enter into the courtroom whose presence there would make things transparent.

An arrogant Koirala apparently tried to exhibit his supremacy by making a statement that if he is made to listen to the court dictates, the court too should listen to his commands.

The fact is that the court has summarily rejected his proposals by saying that such precedence doesn’t exist and hence question doesn’t arise to entertain Koirala’s requests. To put it mildly, the court made it amply known to Koirala and his followers that the court can’t be pressed the way Koirala wished.

Now that Koirala is all set to attend to the court’s commands, what becomes important is that finally Koirala accepts the supremacy of the judiciary. It is less significant that what Koirala says inside the court-room and how he defends his case there. What is important is that he ultimately heeds to the court’s orders and exhibits his loyalty in favor of the judicial system of the country.

Sources in the Congress-D say that Koirala’s intention to carry with him the media crew inside the court-room at time of his explanation is a desire to make his stay inside the court a historic one through the use of the media. However, the fact is that the media, if allowed by chance, is expected to report what they listen there to which they neither can maneuver nor can report in a manner that suits to their political interests.

Be that as it may, political analysts say that Koirala’s change in stance vis-à-vis the Supreme Court is by all angles a welcome move. Koirala’s abiding by the dictates of the SC would serve as a precedence which presumably would be a sort of lesson for others of the sorts of Koirala who when enraged lose their temper and accuse the judiciary as and when the latter goes against their political interests or characters.

The fact is that Koirala is yet to receive the letter sent to him by the SC instructing the former to present himself in person well within a week or so. The Nepali rule is that the person so demanded by the court has to present himself at the premises of the court within a week of the receiving of the letter. Koirala’s followers claim that the letter is yet to come to Koirala.

This is not important. What is important is that Koirala is presenting himself in person before the court.