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 monar...

 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 or...

 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 ...

  '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 pa...

 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 ...