Kamala Sarup: Stable Government To Promote Economy

Nepal's moves toward a market economy are well entrenched, but no politician wants to abolish subsidies. Foreign and security policies are rarely election issues. The best way to bring the economy back to normalcy is by being sensitive to resolve the crises. Thus, last year the country's economy officially grew 1.9% the lowest growth rate in a decade. We have a question whether the new government can make economic and other policies with a reasonable shelf life. Political parties of the nation should practice transparency, accountability and give due respect to internal economy.

Past governments failed to give peace and have failed to give security. The focus has to be on ending the violence no matter what political process is taking place. Violence activities are taking place due to the poverty and illiteracy and the attraction for temporary benefits due to poverty, unemployment and unequal human rights. Proper and equal provision of rights of employment's and human rights will definitely reduce this curse.

Each leaders should go to public with the ideas of poverty alleviation, education, employment, and make people understand how they can solve the problems so it will bring solution to purposeful election and democracy. Over spending on election will only help corruption and generation of unaccounted money.

A clean party must come to power to change Nepal. Nepalese want peace, co-operation, acceptance in Nepal. If the violence and fighting ends, all problems will be solved. Nepal needs a stable government that is accountable.

After the election in 1994, no single party was able to get the necessary 103 seats to achieve a majority in Nepal's 205-seat lower house. As a result there were at least six minority and coalition unstable governments. However, the NC won a simple majority in the last general election, though now, that House has been dissolved.

The past three general elections in 1991, 1994 and 1999-were held peacefully, but because of the violence the local elections have not been held on time. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all the concerned leaders to raise the confidence of the Nepalese people and they should be able to ensure that every voter is really free from fear while going to the polls.

Once politicians are in power, they all do the same thing - line their pockets while the country struggles. You can look how Nepal is today economically and socially. Violence and violence everywhere. The existing constitution says that elections are the only way the people can find out whether the people have been empowered with sovereignty.

Corruption must be ended

The recent arrest of the political leaders should be an eye opener and a warning to all political leaders and high level bureaucrats. Unless exemplary action is taken against erring individuals, it is impossible to think of any positive change taking place in the country.

Virtually all the senior ministers who have held portfolios of Finance, Home, General Administration, and Tourism and Civil Aviation Ministries have been directly involved in corruption and commission deals one way or the other even in political appointment and promotion. Corruption concerning mobile telephone sets has been reported as the largest case of corruption after the advent of democracy. The other one associated with Lauda Air has also been one of the highly publicized cases so far. Nepal is considered one of the most corrupt countries, and demand for bribes at every step of the development has become a major threat to a sound economic and social development that is so urgent in that country.

Corruption by political leaders at the decision making levels is because of their greed to earn more money and they don't look anymore at the benefit of the people. They should think about the poor roads, inadequate drinking water supply in villages, absence of proper buildings for schools in the rural areas, teacher's salaries who sometimes don't get paid, lack of hospitals, bridges, around the country.

New Government has to build a mass movement in which all can join so that corruption in politics, politicians and public life can end. A widespread national movement is needed to cleanse the system.

Nepali people, had struggled for democracy and multi party system in 1990, but all the political parties have violated the constitution. They have not been able to maintain peace, safeguard the lives of Nepalese people, and control the violence, killings and corruption in accordance with the multi party system and democratic norms.

All the political parties had assured the people that development and security would be guaranteed so Nepalese People had hopes of development and security but discrimination started to take place right from the beginning.

Corruption started increasing at all levels. The principal obstacle to the country's growth is the corruption among leaders in general and among the politicians. We should not forget that bribery, and corruption in all its forms, is now a major cause of poverty and backwardness in Nepal.

The blame for the corruption in Nepal lies in the lack of transparency in the rules of governance, extremely cumbersome official procedures, excessive and unregulated discretionary power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats and a lax judiciary. Anybody who's been in power has used such power for his own gains.

Honest political leadership, an efficient tax collection mechanism, macro-economic policies would be a step in the right direction to eradicate corruption. Qualified and clean political leadership is required to understand and implement such policies.

(Kamala Sarup is editor of http://peacejournalism.com/)

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