March 22, 2008 All Nepal Ministers
Jump into Poll Fray By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu
As Nepal gears up for its first constituent assembly elections next
month, the nation will also see the unprecedented spectacle of the
entire cabinet of ministers vying in the joust, with the prime
minister himself leading the fray.
All the 30 ministers, including Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala,
are taking part in the April 10 elections that will lead to the
creation of a 601-member constituent assembly.
Of them, 10, including the octogenarian Koirala, Foreign Minister
Sahana Pradhan, and six junior ministers, will take part in the
proportional representation (PR) system that will choose 335
members.
The remaining 20 ministers, including three first-time Maoist
incumbents, are vying under the first past-the-post system that will
choose 240 members.
With the entire cabinet focusing on the crucial polls that will
write a new constitution of Nepal and decide the fate of its nearly
250-year-old royal family, work has virtually come to a standstill
in most of the ministries.
For instance, Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation Minister Prithvi
Subba Gurung, has triggered a raging controversy without even being
in the capital.
The communist minister, whose Communist Party of Nepal this week
announced public support for Beijing's One China policy that regards
the annexed kingdom of Tibet as being an integral part of the
communist republic, was reported by the state media as saying that
at the request of the giant northern neighbour, Nepal had banned all
expeditions to Mount Everest this summer till China took the Olympic
torch to the summit of the highest peak on earth.
The minister's reported statement triggered a controversy with
mountaineers and the climbing industry registering protests. The
growing protests forced the ministry subsequently to say that it had
not imposed any restriction.
It remains to be seen if the Himalayan blunder will cost the
minister his constituency in Lamjung in northwestern Nepal where
both the Maoists and Koirala's Nepali Congress have fielded
candidates against him.
In one constituency in eastern Nepal, a minister is fighting his
cabinet colleague with the odds stacked against him.
Koirala's partyman Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, who was state minister
for water resources, received a promotion and was made full minister
recently though Nepal is now passing through its gravest power
crisis.
With the Nepal Electricity Authority having enforced an eight-hour
power outage daily, industries are closing down and investors are
heading out towards India and other countries.
Karki will have to face public wrath over that in his Bhojpur
constituency, which could go in favour of his peer, Padam Rai,
Maoist state minister for local development.
Another minister who faces a tough fight is Education Minister
Pradip Nepal from the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist
Leninist (UML). Nepal's main rival in Kathmandu Valley is Prakash
Man Singh, a former minister and the son of a national icon.
Man Singh's father Ganesh Man Singh was the "commander" of an
earlier pro-democracy movement and one of the most respected
political leaders of Nepal.Besides his family legacy, Man Singh also
belongs to the Newar community, the first residents of Kathmandu
Valley, and Koirala's Nepali Congress party.
Besides the current ministers, two former prime ministers are in the
fray as well: Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was sacked, reinstated and
sacked again by King Gyanendra in a see-saw of events, as well as
Surya Bahadur Thapa, who too was nominated by the monarch.
Deuba's battle is not only against the Maoists and the UML but his
own party colleague as well.
Deuba, who was once Koirala's protégé but then fell out with him, is
projecting himself as Koirala's successor. That puts him in a bitter
tussle with Koirala's daughter Sujata, who, it is felt, is being
groomed by her father to assume his mantle.
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