Harming judiciary supremacy

 The Himalayan Times

17 February 2022

Harming judiciary supremacy

Nepal continues to suffer from dirty political game played by irresponsible political parties and their senior leaders for the last several years as if the country belongs to them. They dethroned the king unconstitutionally in 2062/63 when the common people did not know that the people’s movement was nothing but a foul political game played by the same group of senior leaders to serve their own political interest. 

Following the completion of three tiers of general election being held as per the constitution, the then almost two-third majority government led by K.P.Oli could not even stand for a full five-year term because of the dirty in-house political game played by his own party senior leaders. In other words, his way of running the government and the party was not palatable to his senior fellow comrades. He tried to dissolve the house twice to give lessons to his fellow comrades, which was invalidated by the Supreme Court (SC).

The five-party coalition government formed by the SC’s verdict undermining the supremacy of the parliament has performed poorly in the past six months, and it has now registered an impeachment motion against Chief Justice (CJ) Rana blaming him of failing to discharge his duties “Impeachment motion filed against chief justice” (THT, February 14, Page 1). Countering the ruling parties’ political move, the main opposition, UML, has threatened to impeach four justices of the Supreme Court “UML threatens to impeach four SC justices” (THT, February 15, Page 1), who constituted the constitutional bench with CJ for invalidating the Oli government's second move to dissolve the House of Representatives, besides ordering the appointment of Sher Bahadur Deuba as the new PM. Can we imagine how far these unproductive political dramas would go in harming the country’s supreme judiciary system?

Rai Biren Bangdel

Maharajgunj