HELLO NEPAL

The Himalayan Times 24 May 2018 Government’s priorities Finally, the Nepal Communist Party has come into existence following the unification of the UML and the CNP-Maoist few days ago. It took almost eight months to merge their parties giving a huge relief to their voters. There were many speculations whether these parties having two different political principles would indeed merge to become a single party. Now, some political analysts simply claim that the purpose of their merger was nothing but to be in power for long after learning the lessons from the past. However, whatever the merger means, it seems to be politically positive development when it comes to political stability needed for giving continuity to ongoing development programmes and bringing economical and social changes in the country. Following the tradition of presenting the policies and programmes prepared by the government in the past, President Bidya D. Bhandari on Monday unveiled the left gov...

The Kathmandu Post 22 May 2018 HEAVEN OR HELL? After the completion of three tiers of elections, it is hoped that Nepal has been moving forward leaving behind the political uncertainty and instability. It has started leaping forward in the path of peace and prosperity as claimed by the senior leaders of big parties in the recent days. Common people have started crossing fingers keeping high hopes of seeing a developed and prosperous Nepal. They have started dreaming of their children not suffering from hunger and thirst in the days to come. They also hope that none of their kids need to go beyond Nepal for employment, as promised by the left alliance during the elections. Now, it was so encouraging to hear from PM Oli, who also co-chairs of the newly formed Nepal Communist Party (NCP), that Nepal will turn into “a heaven” in the next 10 years (“Nepal will be heaven in 10 years, says PM” May 20, Page 1). What fantastic news this is for the country and its people. Howeve...

The Himalayan Times 17 May 2018 Scrap pork barrel fund In the past, governments led by big parties did not leave anything to please lawmakers -from duty free vehicles to foreign junkets to flat under the Constituency Development Programme (CDP) and Constituency Infrastructure Special Programme (CISP). Duty free vehicles were sold to business people at much higher price. Millions of rupees were spent for foreign trips in the name of observations trips. Major portion of the CDP funds were haphazardly spent for their cadres and it was never properly accounted for. Had these funds been properly spent for the development projects, they would have received public support. Now, the country has entered the federal structure. Federal Minster Yubaraj Khatiwada is doing homework for the preparation of next year’s national budget. In the meantime, lawmakers have started exerting pressure on him to continue with the CDP and CISP under which each lawmaker gets Rs 5 million and Rs ...