Kathmandu: The controversy over the Army standpoint that its inclusion in the government’s integrated development program continues. This is so much so that the government lobby and its workers continue to hype the theory that the Army’s reluctance exposes the links between the far right and the Maoists’. In so many ways the Maoists’ gain ground as the breach between the government and the opposition widens while the only “capable” war institution continues to insist that its mobilization will not be effective until a consensus is built in the political sector on the issue of mobilization.
It is this stalemate that paralyses the country as such. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala is widely viewed as a lame-duck Prime Minister. Especially after the judiciary ruled that the citizenship bill was against constitution, the opposition’s demand for a resignation on his part on moral grounds has strengthened. The matter of the Lauda air decisions by the anti-corruption authorities where his former minister Tarini Dutt Chataut has had to hand over his passport has raised the questions of moral compulsion to a new pitch still. These issues appear not to have affected Girija babu’s standpoint that he will not resign until the anti-corruption authorities involve him in the deal directly. Indeed, the Prime Minister maintains that the opposition is “undemocratic” because a majority in the house must throw him out. Of course, Mr. Koirala has his parliamentary majority.
The question of moral responsibility appears to have appealed at the popular level. The Lauda air deal and the depletion of the country’s flag carrier as proven publicly by the anti-corruption investigation make Girija babu’s insistence on staying in his post as out of tune approach to democracy as such. When the minister talks publicly that the deal was made on the approval of the Girija cabinet, the distance the Prime Minister seeks to keep between the airliner and his government has not been saleable in the public. It is not just the opposition street campaign that is exposing the Prime Minister. The government media itself can’t but help report the investigation proceedings or the Supreme Court decisions.
It is this lame-duck status that has virtually paralyzed the administration now. With the opposition stepping up its street campaign, and the administration not functioning, the Maoist challenge and the non-starter status of the government’s program to counter it further jeopardize the state of the nation. The streets have at times thus been taken over by gangs and the bureaucracy is a free-for-all in the absence of the will to work. In these circumstances, curiously enough, those in the Maoists’ affected areas now claim that there is a higher stability, predictability and authority than in the capital itself.