Will someone please give Parmananda the Veep something to do before he goes and does something silly again? Over Tihar, the office of the president of vice summoned the press for a tea party and told them he was bored stiff. But no one could think of anything for him to do. So, just to be noticed, this week the vice-prez went to the Reporter's Club to demand that he be given the same chores as the president: inaugurate schools, launch books and visit flood victims.

After that he promptly threatened to resign if the government didn't take him seriously. Don't think anyone would notice even if he did. He met Prez Yadav the other day to see if he could wangle a book launch somewhere. Although both the presidents may be from the Tarai, however, one is a Jha and the other is a Yadav and their mutual animosity runs deep. Besides, Yadav is said to take a dim view of his deputy's recent outspokenness.

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There is an old practice that if a government can't solve a problem it forms a committee and outsources it. At the rate our coalition is forming committees, pretty soon we will need a mother of all committees to keep track of what all the committees are doing. Why not just dissolve the government and rule the country by committee?

Setting up a committee is also a great way for the political parties in government to neutralise troublesome party colleagues. PKD is getting rather irritated by Comrade Vaidya's constant whining, so he kicked him upstairs to the UML-Maoist Joint Coordination Committee. That seems to have given Jhallu Bau the idea to get Makunay off his hair by appointing him also to the committee.

But how a baddie hardliner who can't even stand Comrade Terrific will work with someone he has in the past reviled as a "revisionist royal lackey mongrel" remains to be seen. Will the infighting in the coalition stop just because they now have committees to sort out the pesky details of day-to-day government, constitution writing procedures and army integration?

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Probably not. Which must be why they have formed yet another committee tasked with ironing out the intractable details of army integration. This committee was supposed to be set up within 15 days of the formation of the government, and it took nearly three months. And we have to thank Ki-Moon Kaka for that, because if it hadn't been for him even this committee wouldn't have been formed.

Things had got stuck because the baddies not only wanted Comrades Cloudy and Prabhakaran as members but one of them also leader of the five-member committee,and the kangresis would have none of that. So Bum Dev got to lead that committee, and till presstime on Thursday Terrific was still trying to get through to Girjau to see if he could use his charm to get the NC to send a member.

PKD knows that GPK hates SBD so much that the Old Fox would just love to cut a deal with the baddies on army assimilation behind Lionheart's back and pull the rug from under his kangresi nemesis. I know, it's totally crazy.

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The pressure on PKD from his coalition partners to recall kangresi-nominee ambassadors seems to have got too much to bear. Being Manmohan Singh's student and having organised high-level meetings in Delhi for his prime minister last month wasn't enough to save Durgesh the Man his job.

Dr Suresh in DC got the sack despite having hosted the finance minister in the embassy guest room so BRB could save his WB/IMF DSA. Rumours are that the baddies want to appoint a sympathiser who is a Fulbright abscondee and contributor to a Moonie paper as the next ambassador to the US. In which case the Forum may get to chose someone for India and we may have a UML ambassador in Berlin.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com