Astrologers who correctly predicted the election results are now doing such brisk business that appointments are booked into the new year. Nepal’s soothsayer-in-chief, Dr Fire Juice Agnirash, for example not just predicted the defeat of the Mau Baddies but also accurately foretold Chairman Awesome’s defeat in Kirtipur. He is also credited with predicting the victories of Lion Brave and Lord Ram, although I didn’t think you’d need an asstrologer for that, even the Ass could have predicted it. Emboldened by his spot-on prophecies, Dr Fire Juice has now said that the planetary alignments (which includes the arrival of Comet Ison) favour Jhusil Da as PM, but that he will “resign within a year for health reasons”.
Lion Brave, on the other hand, is said to be doing the rounds of astrophysicists to find one who will actually predict he will be PM for the 4th time. This Fire Juice fellow is good, we should hire him as a weekly columnist for this paper as a political anal-yst. Pro-Baddie op-ed analysers are still in shock, first they said there was cheating, then they accused the Army and India, after that they said there had been ballot stuffing, and now they have started blaming ‘ignorant’ voters.
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The Bracket Baddies are right, there have been massive irregularities during these elections - by their own candidates. In Siraha, Lila Nath Shrestha of the UML was ahead in 11 polling centres, but vote counting was stopped for six hours after PKD lost in Kathmandu. When it resumed, Awesome mysteriously started leading and not a single ballot in favour of Shrestha was counted in boxes from two remaining centres. There were similar goings-on in Gorkha that declared BRB the winner. The NC was also up to tricks: in Dhanusha, the president’s son appears to have distributed cash by the sackloads and Com Amrace won with his eyes closed, as it were, in Sarlahi.
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Before elections, the cash Baddies had sent investigation teams across the land to take stock of the party’s chances of victory. The intelligence they brought back was so negative that the delegation couldn’t break the bad news to Chairman Superman, fearing he might behead the messengers of bad tidings. Which is why PKD had no idea what hit him when he lost in Kirtipore. He should have listened to Comrades Horrible and Ugly who had told him all along that the party was headed to defeat. Com Top Man has said there was cheating in all other constituencies except his own, where he won.
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People who have met PKD in the past have always found him charming, a good listener, even though they have come to expect him to bend the truth. But the same people who have met him after his defeat have seen a different side of him, a leader with self-obsessive compulsive disorder. He talks about himself most of the time, as if the party has ceased to exist. And what seems to bother him most is that his crony, Sue Margi, has been secretively driving to meet Jhusil Da in his blue plated Belarus consulate car and being taken up through the back entrance. Commandante Maximus seems to be less worried about the fate of his proletarian revolution and more about his cash stash.
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You must have heard about Chief Minister Keel Raj on election day filling out his pink ballot paper and dropping it in the box. Then he waves and proceeds to walk out of the booth. Officials run an after him to say he also has to stamp the blue ballot for the First Past the Post. Apparently Justice Regmi had no idea there were two ballots.