So they have come to blows. It is hard to imagine the Lower House sinking lower than this. You could put a positive spin on it and take this as proof that we have a vivacious democracy where our rambunctious elected officials do not hesitate to get up close and personal. We have seen scenes like this in the Taiwanese parliament when they discuss reunification, or in the Uttar Pradesh legislature where the political kabbadi gets too lively even by Indo-Gangetic standards. And in Nepal there have been instances in the past ten years when microphones have been used as missiles, and the tables of the Honourable Members had to be turned into improvised bomb shelters as a protection against projectiles. (Since then they have done the sensible thing and bolted everything down.) But when parliament is turned into an indoor stadium for an All-Nepal World Wrestling Federation qualifiers, then you know that our honourable members are taking things a bit too far. This is not what we meant when a couple of issues ago we called for a ban on bandhs, and urged political parties to be more creative in finding alternative means of protest.
The Unified Marxist-Leninists and the smaller opposition are already in election mode, that much is clear from how fixated they are in trying to do a Joseph Estrada on Girija Prasad Koirala over his alleged involvement in the deal to lease a 767 for Royal Nepal Airlines. We are not denying that there is corruption, in fact it would surprising if someone somewhere in the tourism and civil aviation hierarchy said "No, thank you" to a juicy kickback. Believe it or not, such things used to happen in Nepal. When Royal Nepal Airlines bought two HS-748s in 1970, the negotiating team demanded that Hawker Siddeley reduce the price of the turbo-prop planes by the margin the manufacturers had set aside for the agent's commission, and we got them for a bargain. One of those planes is still flying today.
So what happened to this country that today we cannot even lease aircraft (let alone try to buy them) without the legislature and the executive coming to a standstill and politicians exhibiting their skills in the martial arts? The level of political interference in all facets of national life, including the national airline, has now become so blatant and rife that the carrier functions today more or less like an employment agency for the politicos of the day. It is also a reflection of the dearth of economic activity and investment in this country that the only company that can be squeezed dry is an already dessicated national airline. The problem is that it is not just the airline that suffers, the entire tourism industry and the national economy have been damaged by the political meddling that is at the root of the airline's mismanagement.
When the airline, after five long years of trial and error, finally managed in November to lease a wide-body aircraft, the industry heaved a sigh of relief. We still have clippings of the hotels, travel agencies and trekking outfits that published congratulatory notices in the daily papers lauding Lauda. Many thought this would be the end of the two-month waiting list to get on a flight to Delhi and the airline could at last spread its wings. Alas, it was not to be. The riots and hotel strikes sabotaged tourist arrivals, the plane started flying empty clocking up huge losses, and politicians stepped in again to score brownie points. When we watched the self-righteous grandstanding in parliament this week we could only intone: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Lauda is a storm that will blow over. The politicians will get tired when they figure out that they can only take it so far with their White Paper and Red Paper. Meanwhile, this charade of playing politics with politics drags on. The rest of the country does not matter.
