Should or shouldn’t

The Himalayan Times

31 August 2017

Should or shouldn’t

It was difficult for the common people to understand whether Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba should have made remarks about the recent constitution amendment bill, that could not get through the parliament, during a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi held in New Delhi. However, he tried to defend his position in the Parliament by saying that it was not unusual to apprise the national and international community of a country’s agenda “PM defends his position in Parliament (THT, Aug. 29, Page 1). The PM further assured the House that he had not struck any deal with anyone regarding implementation of the constitution. If so was the case, why should someone try to make such a fuss about it?

The UML boss K.P. Oli, before his departure to Bangkok for his regular health check-up, came down heavily on the PM about this issue citing that it was great mistake made by the PM to speak about the issue that was already settled by Parliament. Likewise, CPN-M Centre Chief Pushpa K. Dahal also expressed his dissatisfaction over the PM’s remarks about the constitution amendment bill during his India visit “Dahal slams PM’s remarks on statute amendment, Koshi barrage” (THT, Aug. 29, Page 4). Looking closely at the event of these political issues, one wonders as to what political issues should be raised or not during the official visit of head of the government needs to be detailed out and agreed upon among the ruling parties and the opposition rather than playing blame games.

 It also seems that there should some norms to be developed to clarify about the terms “successful visit”. So far, all the prime ministers, whoever had paid state visits to neighbouring countries, had claimed that their visits were successful. Accordingly, PM Deuba’s claim over his recent visit to India was successful needs to be properly analysed by political and diplomatic experts and their findings should be conveyed to the people. Taking a huge number of officials in such state visit costs a lot to the state coffers which represents the people’s tax paid money. Who is responsible to evaluate the outcome of such entourage accompanying the PM during state visit?

Rai Biren Bangdel

Maharajgunj