Airports are in the news these days. No, am not talking about the potholes on the runway. It is about the controversy over Chairman Awesomeful taking his Land Cruiser into the domestic airport and being driven right up to his Buddha Air flight to Bhairawa the other day. The police on duty started flipping through the instruction manual on who is and who isn’t allowed to the tarmac and apparently neither an ex-guerrilla chieftain nor an ex-PM are on the list. As heir apparently to be the first Executive President of the Federal Syndicated Republic of Nepal, PKD thinks he has certain entitlements. The APF cops at Bhairawa, however, didn’t think so and they stopped the carcade from advancing beyond Checkpoint Charlie. The Chairman’s ego was bruised badly and he pulled rank to call the Home Minister who called Police-in-Chief Rana. Obviously the VIP Room isn’t good enough for this Very Impossible Person.
PICS: DIWAKAR CHHETRI
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This brings to mind the antics of someone who PKD has said was his “mentor”: the late GPK (hmm, hadn’t used those initials in a while in this column). This was 2004, Gyanendra had bolted himself to the throne and was hunkering down for a long war. Girjau was getting impatient about being kept in the doghouse by His Majesty KingG and his pro-democracy protests on the streets weren’t gaining any traction. One day, the royal police stopped GPK from taking his car to the plane during one of his frequent flights to Biratnagar. Girjau blew a gasket. And to teach Kingji a lesson, he declared a bund and unleashed the full force of his hired goons: vandalising anything that moved at the Baneswor intersection. GPK was just following his old habit of holding the country hostage whenever he was angry at someone. This glorious tradition has been handed down to the Taruno Dull who closed down Chitwan last month because the police dared to arrest some of their hooligans who beat up a bunch of Indian pilgrims. But GPK also imparted knowhow about this unique method of democratic extremism to PKD which he (Lotus Flower) has perfected as a form of non-violent terrorism.
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And so on to The Dear Leader, who, now that the revolution is nearly over, has the habit of behaving as if life is one great costume party. Recently he donned Armed Police fatigues as he shadowed Comrade Daddy and no action was ever taken for having broken strict rules about abuse of the uniform. This week, just to make sure that The World’s Greatest Dad wasn’t stopped again by some upstart airport cop from taking his car to the plane, Commandante Prakash was on the tarmac even before the plane arrived with a walkie talkie.
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All kinds of rumours floating around about why PKD is looking the other way to allow the police investigation into the Krishna Adhikari murder: because it is BRB and Com Yummy whose Gorkha Brigade was involved in the crime. “Out, out, damn spot,” the erstwhile First Lady seems to be saying. Publicly, however, nothing unites PKD and BRB more than the common threat of being called into account for wartime excesses. Not only for trying to protect their own cadre, but for rewarding and promoting their former enemies in the police and army responsible for crimes against human beings.
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The most dramatic U-turn of this elections campaign so far must go to @BRB_laaldhwoj for his surprising abandonment of the demand for federal units based on single-ethnicity. Alert readers will remember that this was the main plank of the revolution for which Dr’sab was ideologue-in-chief. This was the ‘non-negotiable’ Baddie demand that led to the demise of the last CA. And now, what do we see? BRB slyly dropped the demand by the wayside hoping no one noticed.
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The Cash Baddies fanned out across the country this month to assess the party’s chances at the polls and they are taking their confidential reports directly to the CM at HQ. The prognosis is not good. PKD used to call public opinion polls biased, but now it’s his own trusted comrades telling him that the party has lost its edge. How to get the polls postponed by hook or by crook (but mostly by crooks) and put the blame squarely on Baidya Baba’s door? No sooner had PKD stepped down as Chief Mechanic and handed over to Jhusil Da, he changed his statement to say no way elections won’t be held in November. Editor’s note: Lotus Flower always means exactly the opposite of what he says.
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Heard at the veggie market: “Onions are so expensive we will now need US dollars to buy them.”