None of you who watched on tv the Suzie Jost vs Moonlight Lohani squabble in the Public Accounts Committee in parliament the other day now has any reason to complain about our politics. This was audiovisual entertainment at its very best. "Am I your secretary? Am I your PA," thundered Lohani. The reference was to SuzyQ's assistant, who has admitted to selling Nepali passports to Afghans. Now that parliament has got into the act you can bet your left ass that we are not going to have MRPs by the ICAO April deadline.

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Every political party in this country is split between a disgruntled faction and a gruntled faction, so it is now going to be even more difficult to resolve the political deadlock. You may, for example, get the Baddies and the Kangresis to smoke the peace pipe, but the very next day the gruntled faction in the NC is going to practice wushu on the GP & Dotter faction, or vice versa. The Old Fox, it is now apparent, is harassing the UML-led govt so he can get the Baddies to get him to power. But it's not true Girjau wants the prime minister's chair. He actually wants the prime minister's bed.

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When the king went off on state visits in a royal cavalcade the whole city used to grind to a halt, and it used to be a national holiday. We hear the cabinet (for old time's sake) nearly passed an edict to declare the president's departure date a holiday and order a 18-gun salute, but Shit All Nibas vetoed the idea. Radio Nepal has restarted the Panchayati tradition of informing listeners in its morning news bulletins that PM Nepal has felicitated the King of Tonga on his auspicious birthday.

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The parallels with Animal Farm are getting a bit uncanny. The whiff of Farmer Jones is strongest with Chairman Awesomeness who has gone from atheist to agnostic to a full-blown fundo. First, he visits jyotisis in Sunsari who put the fear of god into him by warning him that his Saturn is totally off whack. To placate the planets, they advised him to worship a she-water buffalo, which he promptly does. Quizzed about this by local reporters, Fearsome's soundbite is our quote of the week: "I have discovered that astrology is very scientific. This country needs a fusion of spiritualism and materialism."

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Nepal's leaders have always fallen over themselves to seek the blessings of Indian godmen. Which is why Prez Ram Baron helicoptered to Haridwar to touch the feet of Pilot Baba. And when Chandra Swami came to Kathmandu for Shivaratri, it wasn't suprising that the ex-king, ex-PMs and the current PM all trooped off to the Everest Hotel to have their futures foretold. What was a little surprising was that Comrade Fabulous was among them, but a lot more surprising was what that he confessed to Chandra Swami: "Baba, it was a mistake to declare Nepal a secular state, and we haven't done enough homework on federalism." Now he tells us.

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Nepal's problems can be summarised in a nutshell: Our socialists are anti-social and our communists are communal.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com