Must give it to the Thais for improving on the South Asian concept of the hartal. Whereas our idea of bringing the country to a halt is to deploy a couple of teenagers wielding bricks at Kalanki, the Thais have now perfected the unique concept of the airport gherao.
Wonder why our andolankaris didn't think of that yet. It is time Nepali protesters learnt not to exempt planes from forced shutdowns by lying down on the airport access road, burning tyres on the apron and enforcing a chukka jams on the runway by breaking the windshields of airliners that defy their ban.
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The ass is only half-joking when it says half-jokingly that Nepal is the freest country in the world. But we have to be much more creative if we want to maintain our lead in the face of this new competition from Thailand. It's not enough anymore to be satisfied with halting traffic on the highway for three days because textbooks haven't arrived. No longer does it suffice to shut down a cable car company by provoking its security guards to go on warpath. We can't be smug and complacent just because gas station owners go on strike demanding their right to continue committing adultery on diesel and petrol. How can we be satisfied with just tearing up the LLB exam papers because we didn't like the questions?
OK, sometimes we see flashes of brilliance, like the Dhanusa CA member who beat up some cops and then declared an indefinite bund on his home district in protest because the police dared complain. It is not enough to say we are the freest country in the world, we must vigilantly protect our freedom to do anything we like by doing anything we like all the time in all spheres of public life.
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Now that the Maoist national convention is finito, its leaders can get back to doing nothing in real earnest. That is if these darned foreign visitors stopped visiting us. There was the PRC PLA delegation, followed by Pranab Bhai and the British development minister. Then there is the Danish foreign minister, and now the Chinese foreign minister. How are we ever going to get anything done around here?
Here the Ass must butt in to ask Upendra Yadav to please stop holding hands with foreign dignitaries. OK, Pranab Bhai didn't mind cos he's a Bong and same-sex hand-holding is accepted. But last month from the time Ban ki-Moon stepped off the ramp until he got to the VVIP room, Upud wouldn't let go off Ki-Moon Kaka's hand. Someone better warn the Chinese minister not be rattled by at all the diplomatic handholding when he arrives in KTM next month.
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Meanwhile Farang Minister Yadav (who has been nursing a gripe against refusenik ambassadors for failing to show up at the airport everytime he goes anywhere with Awesome) has got his revenge by sending a directive to dips that they should think twice before meeting government and opposition leaders or the bureaucracy without first getting his official permission. This is a welcome development, and puts us in the same league as the North Koreans and Myanmarese, if anyone still had any doubts on that score.
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The infighting within the Maobaddies is now in danger of degenerating into a battle between the PLA commanders and the YCL. The reason is money. While the PLA depends on the government's cantonment budget, the YCL has fattened itself on large-scale extortion and a protection racket. The result is that the YCL is now a law on to itself and doesn't have to listen to anyone anymore.
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And the Kirati Minister of Culture and State Restructuring seems to be so ticked off he still doesn't have an office for his new ministry that he wants to make his presence felt in other ways. Last week he summoned hacks to his residence and handed them a White Paper on what he thought the new state should look like. It expanded the number of districts in Nepal from 75 to 800. That's a 500 percent improvement.
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If the Baddies can bring back Surya Bahadur Sen Oli and other royal advisers, what's to prevent them from resurrecting the monarchy? Is that why there have been no moves to turn Naryanhiti into a museum?
ass(at)nepalitimes.com
