Satirist Manoj Gajurel has been a hit this Gai Jatra season with his accurate impersonations of a pot-bellied Pushpa Kamal Dahal and a jowly King Gyanendra in shades. Manoj doesn't look as awesome as Prachanda, it has to be said, and his rendition of the Supremo's interviews lack a certain gravitas. But the Sri Punch comes across ditto. So much so, and we're not making this up, that a policeman on security duty backstage at the auditorium in Pokhara this week gave His (pretend) Majesty a snappy salute. Everyone thought the policeman was a part of the act until it turned out the poor cop actually thought Manoj was the real McCoy.
The king is in the news a lot these days. He must love it. Not a day goes by without some paper or other writing about his assets, bank accounts and property and who is one day going to inherit it all.
Meanwhile, His (erstwhile) Majesty is sitting out the monsoon at his Nagarjun getaway and keeping a certain distance from it all. After his motorcade got stuck in traffic in the Lajimpat while driving down to receive credentials from the Turkish ambassador, these days the king tries to avoid rush hour. If he must get to the city on an errand, he hops on his Super Puma (newly-refurbished after routine maintenance in Singapore) as he did when roads were blocked during fuel riots last weekend.
The Rayamajhi Commission wants to summon the king to ask him a few questions about his alleged role in suppressing the pro-democracy movement in April. The rate at which the police chief, the army chief, the intelligence chief, and the deputy-chairmen of the royal regime have all passed the buck to their boss, it does look like the king has some explaining to do.
But the members of the Commission are reportedly torn between whether to issue written summons to the king to appear in Lalitpur (and risk having him get stuck in traffic again at Bagmati Pool due to some julus or the other) or Commission members all fly out to Nagarjun in the royal chopper to take king's deposition. It's a toughie.
But trust the journalist member of the commission, Harihar Birahi, to come up with the most pragmatic solution. He told the BBC Nepali Service that the Commission could shoot the king some questions by email, and the king could answer by just pressing the reply button.
But word has just come from former royal sources that King Gyanendra may actually agree to go up to Pulchok to answer questions after all. He is apparently banking on running that high-profile media gauntlet at Harihar Bhaban looking very wronged and all, and hoping that it will help restore his image. It may actually work because Nepalis love underdogs.
On Friday the Commission asked the chief royal palace secretary Pashupati Bhakta Maharjan to drop by for a prelim chat to suss out the king's frame of mind. Depending on what Maharjan said, members will decide on when, how and wherefore to go about sending for the king. The commission is also reportedly looking at fall-back options in case the king decides not to come. Idea: how about video conferencing?
All this while the Maoists are holed up in Kamidanda in Kabhre, having their central committee meeting with 35 of their 37 members attending. The missing two (Rabindra Shrestha and Mani Thapa) were expelled from the party. Our sources tell us on the satphone of a lot of bloodshed going on because the comrades are being eaten alive by leeches. This is making them see red and the plenum is reportedly tilting towards the Oktober Kranti option.
Far away from the bloodsuckers in Uppsala in Sweden, Suresh Ale Magar and five comrades were lucky enough to be attending a peace seminar. Government delegates included Arjun Narsingh KC, Chitralekha Yadav, Sarita Giri and Prakash Mahat got to replenish their Star Alliance Gold Cards. Even the new UN special rep for Nepal, Ian Martin, stopped by on his way back from New York. The organisers, an alluringly named Silk Road Studies Project, thought a change of scenery would make both sides feel at ease in the tranquil Swedish university town, but it seems the positions of the government and the Maoists were as intractable as ever. Next time try Urlabari, not Uppsala.
Just as a Technical Team from the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives arrived in Banke to do an on-site assessment and decide whether to declare the far-west a Drought Affected Zone the entire western tarai was submerged in floods. For once, it wasn't the fault of the seven-party alliance government. Drought- and flood-affected Nepalis should gherao Pashupati and stage a sit-in until God meets their demand to start being a little more considerate.
