News, Views From Nepal

 Yuba Nath Lamsal Results of the November 20 general election are out. No single party has secured a clear majority to run the country on its own strength. The kind of outcome the election has produced is no surprise to all. A hung parliament had been a foregone conclusion even before the polls. The Nepali Congress (NC) has emerged as the largest party in the House of Representatives (HoR), whereas the CPN-UML has secured the second position. The CPN-Maoist Centre is a distant third. A brand new party Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has come up as the fourth force which is a great surprise for many. However, RSP’s sudden emergence has been greater surprise and also a threat to the main and established parties as they had earlier underestimated this party and misunderstood the mood of the voters. The other distinct feature of the election is the slight rise of the traditional Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) that demands to turn the clock of history back to the old monarchic

 Yuba Nath Lamsal In the global geopolitical theatre, Europe has always played a central role throughout history. The history of Europe is the history of wars.  European geography was shaped by wars right from the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta to World War II. The present European political constellation is the making of the Second World War fought between two groups of international powers in which the Allies — a group of countries including mainly the United States, Russia and Britain — badly beat the Axis of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan. Germany was divided, Japan was demilitarized and Europe’s map was redrawn splitting the entire continent into American sphere of influence and the region of Russian dominance giving rise to bi-polar world order. The disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 brought about a tectonic shift in the global geopolitical map in general and the geopolitics of Europe in particular with the world order turn

 By Yuba Nath Lamsal The world recently saw some turns of events in the political landscape which are likely to have far-reaching impact in the global order. The change of guards in the 10 Downing Street, general elections in Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Brazil and the United States will definitely have their consequences both at home and abroad in multi-fold ways. Politics in Europe and North America has almost an identical trend. So were the election outcomes. However, the political trend in Latin American countries often tends to go a little different way and the election in Brazil is its manifestation.  Britons’ woes London continues to suffer aftereffects of the Brexit since Britons chose to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum. The far-rightist conservatives were particularly behind the Brexit bandwagon and they called the shots. Their principal argument was that Britain surrendered its sovereignty and interests in the name of European

  'Bad officials are elected by good citizens who don’t vote' Yuba Nath Lamsal  Modern democracy begins with the ballot box. There can be no democracy without elections, and free and fair elections are not possible in the absence of democracy. Democracy and elections are inseparable. An election is thus the heart and soul of a democratic system.  The 2022 general election in Nepal is just round the corner – barely three weeks from now. The election fever is picking up momentum. As French political philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville says ‘people get the government they deserve’, the November 20 election is the acid test for the Nepali voters as to what type of government they seek to have for another five years. Voting is the power of the people like former American President Abraham Lincoln said, “the ballot is more powerful than the bullet". It is through the ballot papers individual citizens hand over their sovereign power to a particular par

 Yuba Nath Lamsal Over the last one week, all eyes were on Beijing to see the turns of events in the China’s grand political event to be held once in every five years. The 20th national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) kicked off on October 16 and concluded on October 22 re-electing President Xi Jinping as general secretary of the CPC for unprecedented third tenure, signifying that he would continue to lead China at least for another five years.  The national congress consisting of 2,300 delegates from across the People’s Republic China elected 205 central committee members and 171 alternate members. Apart from it, the powerful politburo standing committee has been reshuffled in which four veterans have retired from politics and the new and younger ones have been replaced them. The politburo standing committee members to retire are Premier Le Keqiang, National People’s Congress chairman Li Zhansu, People’s Political Consultative Conference chairman

  November elections will witness a ferocious battle not among individual parties but between two rival alliances Yuba Nath Lamsal Nepal at present has witnessed a sharp political polarisation giving rise widespread general impression that the politics is becoming unpredictable. Given the turns of events unfolding in our political landscape over the last couple of years, one cannot predict the direction and course our politics is heading towards. While political parties are key actors in a multi-party system the general people see the political parties and their leaders as the least trust-worthy and least credible. The more the politics becomes polarized, the more the society becomes fractured. Over polarization leads to over radicalization which may be fatal to democracy. The soul of democracy is tolerance and plurality. In a divided society coupled with radicalized politics, plurality and tolerance find the least space. Superstructure vs s

 Yuba Nath Lamsal It’s been over a year since Taliban reigned in Kabul after withdrawal of the NATO troops. Afghanistan’s elected president fled the country in a helicopter even without giving a hint to his own staffs and advisors. Afghanistan fell in another dark cycle of chaos. All institutions built over two decades collapsed and failed to function. Afghan security forces, which consisted of over 3, 00,000 strong men at least in papers, did not fire even a single shot when a few thousands Taliban fighters swooped on Kabul and took control of all strategic installations including the President Palace.  It was the second triumph of the Taliban. They had taken control of Afghanistan in 1992 after the fall of Moscow-backed communist government of Mohammad Najibullah. Taliban were evicted from power in 2001 by joint military operation of NATO forces under US command following the September 11 terrorist attacks in America planned and executed by the Al Qaeda terror

  Published in ' Afghanistan: Way Forward', a book published by Consortium of South Asian Think Tanks (COSATT) and Political Dialogue Asia Programme, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) https://www.cosatt.org/uploads/news/file/AFGHANISTAN%20THE%20WAY%20FORWARD_compressed_20221010071030.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0WaN_WfK_na1ZARsDVT1wOTE8eCN3CpXJa8B6Z_ciY6WxAYO_8ldgpTE0 Yuba Nath Lamsal United States pulled out its last contingent of troops from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, ending the two decade-long what Washington called the war on terror. Analysts and historians often like to draw parallels between America’s war in Afghanistan and Vietnam in terms of the protracted nature and the eventual outcome. Unlike other wars, the United States returned from Vietnam and Afghanistan in disgrace paving the way for its nemeses to come to power.   In Vietnam, Washington fought hard to prevent communists seizing power but after 20 years of the hard fight the United States had to withdraw from Vi