The latest from the Bolsheviks at Balkhu is that the Unified Communist Party of Nepal Marxist- Leninist wants to lose Comrades Karl and Vladimir from its suffix, and even drop the hammer and sickle as its official symbolism. The party had tried to do the same back in the early 1990s mainly to assuage the Americans that they were not real commies because the Soviet Union had just imploded and the Berlin Wall had come down. But the pragmatic comrades were over-ruled by the dogmatic ones and the hammer and sickle stayed as did the acronym, CPN-UML.
Now, to differentiate itself from the Maobaddies, the UML is trying one more time to banish the two tools of workers and peasants. The makeover is long overdue and coincides with the UML commissioning one of Nepal’s better known architects to design a new HQ. Just as well because the edifice at Balkhu has always looked like a cross between a crematorium and a mausoleum.
There is, however, a hot debate raging in UML circles about what to replace the hammer and sickle with. If the Ass may be so bold, it would like to present a shortlist of possible new party symbols that would more accurately represent what the UML party now stands for:
Another komunista looking for a new symbol is Comrade Red Flag, who is getting more and more disenchanted with the mother of all parties and its Chairman-for-life. BRB has been hinting aloud that he either wants to raise goats or start a new party, whichever comes first. The Third Force idea isn’t getting much traction, though, because the prospective Young Turks from the other parties want him to first divorce his ex-First Lady who they think will be a liability. Still, BRB is already preparing the ground to exit his party or re-enter academia. He was at KU last week lecturing management students and quoting Comrade Picasso, and didn’t utter the ‘M’ word even once. And now he’s got TU to invite him in as visiting faculty and eventually get tenure, just in case politics doesn’t work out. BRB has been venting his frustration that he didn’t get the credit he deserved for having contributed to the dissolution of the last CA and said, and I quote: “I did all the work but
Baburam is Thandaram”. Guy should’ve been a poet. Seeing the rise in frequency of his tweets,
@brb_laldhwoj appears to have a lot of time in his hands (or shall we say fingers) these days. Doc did make a faux pas tho when he tweeted about Mahathir Mohamad being invited by @FNCCI and @GOI. It was only after his followers ridiculed him that he deleted the tweet and quietly replaced it with @GON. However, the most remarkable visual involving BRB this week was of the Ideologue-in-Chief of the Mau Mau demonstrating outside the CDO in Bharatpur office against police investigating the murder of Krishna Adhikari by his henchmen back in 2004. Guess who his bodyguards were: police.
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CA Chair Nembang is sick of people calling him a wimp, so he is cracking the whip. He issued an edict banning cell phone use in the chambers. Why not just jam the signal? To be really taken seriously, however, he should also issue a ban on dozing off, spitting pan, nose picking and chair- throwing.
UML's Shankar Pokharel's response to BRB's tweet