Constitution Day

We have the best constitution on Earth and we have no one but our great leaders to thank for it.  If it weren’t for our great netas, then the Ranas would continue to build palaces all over the city wasting billions of our Rupees and then it would fall on this ‘great’ government to repair them. 

Look at Singha Durbar today. Our ‘poor’ government can’t even maintain the front gate there.  It is not Oli’s faul. Just blame the Ranas for building such palaces which are now difficult to maintain. So let us demolish them all and build new modern buildings so that our contractors, civil servants and corrupt clowns can all share the chiya kharcha from our sarkari budget. 

The new parliament building which will be completed in five or so years will cost this government more than 700 Karods but if you ask any architect to come up with a bid then he or she can do it for less than half the money. 

This ‘Oli’ sarkar is hell-bent on not only raising our taxes to feed their own hungry stomachs and souls but are also making sure that all projects make them lots of chiya kharcha because they must probably know that, we Nepali voters are not blind like some folks in the West. 

We keep changing the players just for fun and next time around, our comrades might be on the wrong side of the fence. Let us hope that our comrades will see the light soon or else we will have to put up with the King of Dadeldhura next time around.

 If it weren’t for our great netas, the House of Shah would continue to waste 60 Karods of our taxpayers money every year and leave us high and dry. We now know that Late King Birendra was too laid-back while our former King Gyanu Uncle was never really a businessman. 

If he were a business person then he would have hired consultants from Mckinsey or other consulting firms here and abroad. But what did he do? He tried to bring back the mandaleys from the 80s twenty years later. That was like trying to open a institute that teaches how to use type writers when you already have IBM PCs in town.  

And Kamal Thapa is still trying to be relevant today with his nataks. I think Gyanu Unce should just go ahead and open his own political party. Then maybe people like Kamal Thapa and all those so-called “Bring Back Monarchy’ crowd will not get their 15 minutes of talk time at Reporter’s Club.  After all, if Gyanu Uncle is the party head they still think of him as the King then they will always be at the second seat and not in the front unlike today. 

If it weren’t for our netas, Nepal would already have been a failed state and we would have 24 kingdoms and two dozen kings. But, today, we are moving towards peace and prosperity and we have hundreds of Kings who rule over us. But it seems that our netas are still scared of a former King who is now busy wearing garlands and walking around temples. 

Let the man enjoy his free time. He had his chance and he couldn’t hack it but our netas have had theirs and we are still willing to give you guys the opportunity to stay on the right track but it looks our buffoons want to invite the right-wingers back into the game again and again.

It wasn’t hundreds of our lawmakers who discussed, debated and decided to come up with our ‘new’ constitution for our ‘New’ Nepal. It was just a bunch of old fogies who decided it was time to get us a new book because the old one was out of date.  Well, we could have just amended a few things and saved us billions of Rupees but then our netas wouldn’t get their perks and benefits from the state would they?

Our Minister of Disinformation and Miscommunication Gokul Dai is not so cool and our great tabloid journalist thinks he knows more about the press than the rest of us. How can a journalist who becomes a mantri turn his back and be so arrogant and want to curtail press freedom. 

I guess Gokul Dai doesn’t need a job when he is out of power. Our ministers make enough to last seven generations. They can no longer live normal lives, go on a morning walk, buy vegetables and drink doodh chiya at the local pasal after once gets to sit on a kurchi. Then, he or she is a King or the Empress. 

Do you think our Madame President will make a cup of tea for herself and work on  on her memoir once she is out of the President’s House? She will get a free housing, vehicles, security and assistants. But Obama has to get back to the grind. That’s the difference between us and the rest of the world.

If our netas abided by our ‘best constitution then we would not be in such a mess. Our lawmakers are lawbreakers themselves. We have had our constitution since the Ranas left the building but the players used it for their own good and violated the constitution time and again. 

The ‘Oli’ regime is no better. This government has violated our constitution left and right. Our ministers act like bouncers instead of leaders. Poor Yogesh Dai. We want him to be our Justin Trudeau but the man is having a tough time not being viral on YouTube. Another Gyanendra with the extra ‘I’ in his last name is continuing to have his 15 minutes of fame.

Well, I think it will extend for another 15 weeks or even months. I think our Gyanendra Bhai, our YouTube activist needs to tone down a little bit as well. It starts to get boring if you are only bitching and whining everywhere. Now, it’s time to wake up and walk away from the camera and do your thing instead of only blabbering about what’s wrong with our netas. 

If the minister is late to board the aircraft then when he shows up, you and your fellow passengers should clap and thank him for finally letting all of you fly back to Kathmandu. Let us show our politicians, we are peaceful, submissive folks not angry frustrated folks.

This government wants us to stand up for national anthem at Pashupatinath while we cremate our loved ones. It is my constitutional right not to stand up during such times. This government does not want me to go on a picnic or party or in Gokul’s words ‘do not hang out with your girlfriend or boyfriend’. I think we need to ask Nepal Bar Association (NBA) to send their lawyers to teach a thing or two about  constitutional matters. 

It is our constitutional right not to even celebrate Constitution Day and that doesn’t make us traitors.  Our netas should be the ones to preserve, protect and defend the constitution but it is sad that they are the ones who want to attack and destroy the constitution.  Gokul Dai, please do ask your netas to not party and drink like you will drop dead tomorrow during government holidays. We all know what our loafers are up to during off days.

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com

The Mantri Dilemma

With the way things are going, Visit Nepal 2020 might not be a success because we still don’t have the adequate infrastructure to handle 2 million tourists because we seem to be quite a step behind when it comes to our airports, hotels and management of tourist sites. 

Well, of course 2 million folks are not going to show up on the same day but with one and only international airport being mismanaged by our civil servants and the pickpockets who do the baggage handling make it worse for all of us.  For most of the bideshi tourists, TIA is the gateway to Nepal and the first impression is not the best we have to offer. 

Be it our immigration department officials and their habit of picking their nose with one finger, and using Facebook on their mobile with another does not leave a good impression on our tourists.

And when it comes to airport taxis, our taxi wallahs must have learned their tips and tricks from somewhere else. We, Nepalis are supposed to be peaceful, hardworking and law-abiding citizens but our taxi wallahs are lazy bums who will break the law and physically assault you to take their cabs if they get the chance. 

Our national carrier is an embarrassment. Why not increase flights to China or Singapore or even India instead of carrying out flights to Osaka for a loss? Nepal Airlines wants to sell its 757 but so far nobody really wants pay the 7+ million dollars for it. Why not just transport the plane in pieces to Bhrikuti Mandap and then assemble it again and  then ask the manpower companies to at least pay something so that most of our migrant workers will aware about air travel before they leave for their destinations. We can also take our kids for fun and the air hostess can hand out candies to the kids for a fee as well.

Our Tourism Minister is a wonderful man. He is young and could one day become our Prime Minister if the Nepal Communist Party gets to run the show for a decade or two. He wears tie and suit and looks good in it as well. We see a little bit of Justin Trudeau in Yogesh Dai when it comes to the nose and facial structure. But it’s a different ball game when one is just another politician and one who gets to become our Mantri.

When one is a politician, you can rant against the whole world, be it your own political party that runs the show or the rest of the fools out there but once you become a Mantri, it’s a whole different ball game. Now, you cannot rant against anybody because you have a ministry to run and then you have to satisfy your cousins and cadres and the mother party as well.

And there are the civil servants who actually run the show. What’s wrong with Nepal? Let us not blame our politicians because most of them really wanted to change the system and fought against the pancheys, monarchy and the ‘corrupt’ system but once they got to sit in the Kurchi, they themselves became part of the system.

Look at Oli Ba and Prachanda. Oli spent more than 14 years in prison and was a skinny and starving fellow when he first got to taste power as our Home Minister more than two and half decades ago. And things have changed quite a bit since then.  Prachanda too wanted to change the system and look where he is today.

It seems that if we only add up the wealth our politicians and civil servants then Nepal would be the richest nation on Earth. How can a civil servant in his thirty years of service accumulate enough wealth to own a mansion in Kathmandu while his or her kids go to universities in foreign lands and then settle down there. 

Our netas have it easier because they don’t need to wait thirty years and be in position of power to make money. Yes, a mantri can make a  minimum of 100 Karods if he or she gets to stay in the kurchi of a ministry for a year. 

We all know that most of our mantris get the cut from transferring and promoting civil servants. Everything has a price in this country. If you want to be the chief of a government agency, then please prepare to pay at least 7 to 10 Karods. And we really don’t know where the money comes from but it surely goes to top civil servants and mantris. 

Yogesh Dai is different. That’s what many of us say and think so as well. But somebody must be giving him the wrong advice. Nijgadh Airport will take a decade or more and there is no point in trying to tell the world that it will be built at any cost no matter what the tree lovers say. I think Yogesh Dai should take a step back and understand that we do not need such a big airport at all. It would be better if we focused on Pokhara, Bhairahawa and Kathmandu instead.  

Who is going to fly into Nijgadh and then take an hour or two hour ride to Kathmandu when the highways are all done? Save the trees, earn the brownie points not only from us, tree lovers but from the rest of the world and we will do everything to nominate you for the Nobel Prize or any other Prize out there. That would be much better than receiving a gold medal from a Korean cult.

And when it comes to Visit Nepal 2020, I think it’s time to fire Suraj Vaidya and maybe ask one of our tourism entrepreneurs to head the committee instead. After all, we all know where the IIFAA awards idea came from. Visit Nepal 2020 does not even have a official website yet. Some travel agency owns the domain name instead. 

Nothing personal against Suraj Dai but we have barely four months to go and our concerned government agencies are not ready for anything. Nepal Tourism Board has more than 150 Karod budget and Visit Nepal 2020 has another hundred and more.  Maybe, we should just invite Rajnikanth, the Emperor of Tami Cinema, Sachin Tendulkar, the God of Cricket, Emilia Clarke, the mother of dragons and Messi, the God of Football in January 2020 to launch the Visit Nepal 2020 campaign.

Rajnikanth can help us to at least get a million tourists from South India. They are better educated, have more money to spend and will eat more rice and chicken and non-veg items than the average Indian tourists who come here, who mostly come on chartered buses and bring their own cooking gas and utensils. 

Tendulkar can play in a charity cricket game with our Nepali cricketers and we could make millions from Indian companies and we can live telecast in Indian channels and make millions more. We can invite hundreds of thousands of Sachin fans to watch the game as well. 

If we can do the same with Messi and for mother of dragons, you don’t even need foreign tourists, I think we can get a million Nepali fans and another million bideshi fans to dress up as dragons and welcome Emilia Clarke to Nepal. 

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com