Nepali Times Completes Six Parliament on Wednesday
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#306 14 - 20 July 2006 18 pages Rs 30 ILLUSION: Singha Darbar reflected in a monsoon puddle 6 years while the budget was being presented to the nearby Nepali Times completes six parliament on Wednesday. years this week. We reprint a selection of editorials since 2002 on p2-3. From this issue we have also tinkered with the typeface of our headlines and changed some graphic elements, without tampering with the basic layout which has remained the same for six years. The sans serif font is Verdana, which is curvy and more pleasing to the eye than the previous Garamond. The Franklin Gothic has been replaced with the more elegant and precise Palatino. Other than that, we haven’t changed anything. Nepali Times is still the lively, timely and reliable paper our readers have come to expect every Friday. KIRAN PANDAY Weekly Internet Poll # 306 Q. Should Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala now resign and make way for a successor? An interim budget by an Total votes: 6,839 interim government Mirage during an interim peace Weekly Internet Poll # 307. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Q. Do you think the budget adequately KIRAN NEPAL there weren’t any. At a time when Parameswor Mahaseth of Salt Gurung, said his party was for reflects the country’s priorities? we needed a transformatory Trading Ltd agreed: “If they can nationalising private property and inance Minister Ram Sharan budget we got one that is do a 12-point agreement on assets of big capitalists. Mahat presented his incremental.” politics, why can’t there be a “We put the cart before the Fgovernment’s budget for the Other speakers at the six-point agreement for the horse,” said Radhesh Pant of Bank coming year but in trying to Himalmedia Roundtable on the economy?” of Kathmandu. “A consensus on please everyone he seems to have Economy on Wednesday agreed. But Chandi Dhakal of FNCCI which way we should go should ended up pleasing no one. “It looks like the minister looked felt it would have been have been reached before the He has increased VDC grants at tv commercials and decided unrealistic to expect the finance budget, not after.” to Rs1 million which should which products to tax,” said minister to have come up with Industrialist Rajendra Khetan spur local development. The Binod Chaudhari of CNI. anything better. “There may be said the constitution should military budget and palace Speakers felt that if the seven no bandas and blockades but guarantee every Nepali two meals a allowance have been slashed. But parties and the Maoists could things are worse in the day, primary health and Mahat presupposed too much: agree on a joint political agenda industries,” he said. “Extortion education. “Rapid that there will be durable peace, for a constituent assembly, they is intense, the export sector is industrialisation is the only way investment will pour in, revenue could have easily agreed on a on its knees, things are worse to deliver that,” said Khetan, “this will be up and donors will come common economic program. than before.” budget should have shown us how with sacks of cash. Then the “We have seen in post- Indeed, businessmen don’t to get there.” Maoists put a dampener on the conflict countries that the know what to make of the Former NPC vice-chairman day by saying they were never people’s expectations are so high contradictory statements from Shankar Sharma saw a way out. consulted. that if economic issues aren’t the Maoists. Pushpa Kamal “Instead of getting bogged down The trouble is the budget just addressed properly the whole Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai on what they don’t agree on, the doesn’t reflect the monumental peace process can fail,” said met FNCCI delegates this week government and the Maoists can political transformation of the economist Biswombar Pyakhurel. and assured them they are not concentrate on what they agree on, country after April. “I was “We should have had a budget against private enterprise. But like the Jumla Highway, the need expecting some surprises,” said with a vivid vision for the future. the very next day the head of the to generate 500 megawatts in four planner Yubaraj Khatiwada, “but I didn’t see any.” Maoist economic cell, Deb years, on health and education.” z 2 EDITORIAL 14 - 20 JULY 2006 #306 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Chief Editor: Kunda Dixit Desk Editor: Marty Logan Design: Kiran Maharjan Web: Bhushan Shilpakar Vicepresident Corporate Affairs: Sneh Sayami Advertising: Sambhu Guragain [email protected] Subscription: [email protected] Hatiban, Godavari Road, Lalitpur [email protected], GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu Tel: 5543333-6, Fax: 5521013 www.nepalitimes.com Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hatiban: 5547018 History keeps his week in 2000, when the first issue of Nepali regressing by a decade. Meanwhile, even when they are Dipendra too is by now reduced to ashes by the banks of Times came out we were still cautiously optimistic faced with the prospect of systemic erasure, our political the Bagmati. It now rests on the survivor, Gyanendra, to about the future and idealistic about the media’s role parties haven’t stopped playing games. There they go, make up for his brother’s absence. Tin protecting democracy. It’s been a rollercoaster six years. bickering over power which will give them the However, all will not be smooth for the newly anointed We have seen freedom squandered, usurped and returned. opportunity to top up their war chests for next year’s local king. To begin with, Gyanendra will have to win the We have seen a massacre of ruling royals that was unprecedented in human history, a bloody war, a military elections. After the last bout of blood-letting in Rukumkot confidence of the people on two counts: first, he will have coup engineered by a king and his ignominious downfall. and Rumaule, you would have thought they would have to convince conspiracy-obsessed citizens that the kingship Re-reading the editorials in this space, we sound naïve learnt their lessons and agreed on some fundamentals. But was thrust upon him. Second, there is the matter of his and prescient, hopeful and cynical, exhortative and no, it was too much to expect from these visionless, self- son, Paras. With his reputation for lawless behaviour, the preachy. We have dispensed unsolicited advice, and centered ostriches. fact that Paras could be crown prince is unbearable for repeated ourselves tiresomely. We have excerpted below many Nepalis, who are additionally suspicious because some editorials from the past six years, and they show #46 the young man remained unscathed in Friday night’s that the more things change in Nepal the more they remain 7-14 June 2001 slaughter. This will be a tough one for King Gyanendra: he the same. “I may die, let my nation live on” may well have to choose between the people and his son. This is a line by the late King Mahendra that was turned King Gyanendra must support the elected government #1 into a patriotic song. Words particularly prescient in a and parliament to find a peaceful solution to this raging 19 July-25 July 2000 week when two kings died in a carnage that nearly wiped problem, and our squabbling elected leaders must support A sign of the times out Nepal’s entire royal family. Yet (and this will come as him. They must remember that they need to first save the Newspapers…do more than hold a mirror to society. They a surprise to those who see only the shroud of death that country. If the nation ceases to exist, they will have become the mirror itself. Journalism is called history in a presently covers the country) the institutions of nothing to fight over. hurry. It is also culture, sociology, anthropology, democracy have held. Confusion prevails among philology, and philosophy in a hurry. Nepali Times will commoners about this mass murder of their royals. This #50 aspire to be a true reflection of our times—a journal to was an aloof, but respected clan in a country of multiple 6 -12 July 2001 record the life and times of Nepalis in the decades ahead. ethnicities, castes, faiths and languages. Shi shi qiu shi There is a belief that literature is generally King Birendra was correct to a fault, as the political This Karl Marx aphorism translated into poetic Mandarin not read, and journalism is often unreadable. parties in power came and went in a welter of crises. It is was Mao Zedong’s favourite: “Seek truth from facts”. This newspaper will be different; it will seek to the precedent that he set over the last decade of his reign Politics is a fleeting thing. The good guys don’t seem so be informal, lively, clear and direct. Liveliness that strengthened the foundations of our democracy. He good after a while, and the bad guys in retrospect look like is serious business, it should not be confused with had made it easy for his son Dipendra to follow, but they were acting in enlightened self-interest. Just like there frivolity. Don't be fooled by the tabloid format, this is also a serious paper that tackles serious issues head-on, as this issue perhaps proves. A newspaper needs a set of values to sustain itself. In a society cursed with extreme inequality, some of those values are fairly obvious: to speak for the last, the lost and the least. We will be fair, and we will protect our independence intensely. This is a modern newspaper for a new Nepal.