Parmeshwar Devkota

As a saying goes, it never rains but it pours, Nepali people are now facing two adverse situations. People are now gripped by the fear of the novel coronavirus. After travelling all over the world and killing more than 560,000 people, the lethal virus has already hit this country with poor health facility. The virus disease has affected both villagers and urban dwellers alike.
Poor management of quarantines and an utter negligence on the part of citizens are the major factors behind the rapid transmission of the virus. Looking at the trend of the virus’s transmission, it seems that we will have to deal with it by boosting our own immunity system in the days to come.
Another prominent fear is associated with the ongoing political instability in the country. Needless to say, the top leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) are divided over power sharing. Erstwhile CPN-UML chairman KP Sharma Oli and the then Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachand had declared the unification of the two parties in May 2018. Before taking that step, the two leaders had held a series of meetings and negotiations. But the voters and well-wishers were never told on what ground they struck the unification deal.
However, the unification spread a positive message to Nepali people and helped the party muster the historic two-third majority in parliament.
In the election manifestos and their speeches delivered during the parliamentary and local elections election, the top brass had made tall commitments to building a perennial road to the northern neighbour, supplying cooking gas through pipelines to the inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley and creating economic prosperity and social stability and ending the practice of Tuin that is using pulleys to cross rivers, among others.
Though the leaders are now getting old and in fragile health condition, they have a good memory of what they had spoken from the unification declaration podium.
Leader Oli had enthusiastically said, “It's a historical day for Nepal and the nation has entered into a new era of prosperity….”
Prachand had gone one step further and echoed, “A new era of prosperity and good governance has started. And the main motive of this unification is to lead the country towards socialism and economic prosperity with social justice”.
But, the irony is that the two leaders are now divided not on ideological basis but on power sharing grounds. Now the electorates have every right to ask the following questions to the two leaders:
Who will replace the Tuins over the major rivers? What will happen about laying gas pipe-lines in the capital city?
Will the division of CPN help upgrade Nepal from least developed country and help achieve sustainable development goals?
If the leaders are not keeping their promises, they are mere ‘dealer in hope’ as Napoleon Bonaparte had said. Our best wish is that they should not fall from the eyes of the people.
Instead of being a model of Bonaparte, they should follow the advice of late Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev: ‘If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen!’
A quote of former US President Lyndon B. Johnson may also be worth mentioning here. At the State of Union Speech in 1965, Johnson said, ‘A president’s hardest task in not to do what is right but to know what is right’.