Wheeling and dealing
I read your well-written update ('Deal or no deal', www.nepalitimes.com) with great interest. Although I am not an avid supporter of the Maoists, in my view they are the only legitimate party to lead Nepal: they won the elections fair and square.

Now we have a government being led by the biggest losers in the elections. How will 'New Nepal' find direction if we do not even start on a legitimate footing? The Maoists may be playing games, but they are only following the lead of GPK who loves playing chess with the entire country.

Abhishek Bhandari

People power
When you distrust the community ('Demonstrating democracy', #474), you are undermining the power of the individual. When you want government to give you a free ride, you are essentially killing that natural instinct of the individual. Perhaps one has forgotten how and what brings success in life: hard work and perseverance, which are best played out in the markets.

Anjan Panday

Soft target
I was upset by your editorial this issue (Presidential conduct, #475). Is it a sign that our media houses are now aiming at soft targets rather than trying hard to fight the scourge that is sure to destroy them when it gets its first chance?

It also reminded me of a comment historian Schumpeter made about 'liberal' French elites just before the French Revolution of 1789 in his classic 'History of economic analysis':
"French society in particular was rapidly disintegrating, but as yet felt perfectly safe. Like all disintegrating societies that don't want to face their danger, it delighted in protecting its enemies and thus provided a milieu of unique charm that will attract even those of us who sense a flavor of decay...A wave of religious, political and economic criticism that was pathetically uncritical of its own dogmatic standards swept over the intellectual centers...."

Biswo Poudel,
from www.facebook.com/nepalitimes

Rear view
* The Ass is not a comedy page, it is an editorial, which appears to the untrained eye as a gossip column.

Shankhar Ranjit

* The Ass's request to hold a climate summit on Everest (Out of power, out of mind, #475) seems to have reached the concerned authority.

A Bomjon