Less than 24 hours after a historic agreement that has paved way for statute drafting by May 27, several groups have declared protest programs condemning it. Although the Akhanda Far West struggle committee has taken back its protest program, the Tharuhat activists continued to clash with security forces in Dhangadi on Wednesday. Upendra Yadav led MJF-Nepal burnt effigy of Deputy Prime Minister Bijay Kumar Gachadar and copies of the agreement in eastern Terai calling it anti Madhes and the umbrella organisation of indigenous groups NEFIN has declared its own protest programs including strikes and torch rallies throughout the country.

On Tuesday, the parties had struck a deal on crucial issues of governance form and state restructuring following which CPN-UML has also joined the national unity government but at the same time Madhesi front has threatened to pull out in protest of the deal. Among others, the deal has failed to appease the Janajatis and the Dalits who have also agreed to resist attempts to quash their demands and push forward a collective agendas inside and outside the CA. .

Besides popular protests, the agreement has also created a confusion among commoners with leaders already making contradictory claims in the media. The Nepali Congress and the UML have gone on record to say that the executive powers would lie on the parliamentary elected Prime Minister but in todays central committee meeting of the UCPN-M, leaders have assured their cadres that a directly elected President will have more powers than the prime minister. Both cannot be true, but whoever has misinterpreted the agreement obviously is not happy.

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Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai reached Siraha’s Aurahi VDC on Wednesday which was struck by tragedy that has engulfed six wards of the VDC burning down over 3000 houses and destroying property whose worth is yet to be ascertained. The village was ravaged by  the biggest fire country has seen in recent times that has left over 10,000 people homeless.

During the visit, Bhattarai was overwhelmed by thousands of men, women and children whose only remaining possession now was the pair of clothes on their body.  He immediately announced Rs 31,000 relief package to each family for immediate rehabilitation. Prime Minister was accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Ishwor Pokharel, Home Minister Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar, and Minister for Information and Communications Raj Kishor Yadav.

According to district administration Siraha, fire brigades from Lahan and nearby districts Dhanusha and Saptari have been trying to put out the fire but it was still out of their control until late in the afternoon on Wednesday.

After news of the fire spread, dozens of organizations and individuals from Kathmandu and nearby towns of Biratnagar, Ithari, Rajbiraj and Lahan have come forward to help. The Maoist cadres from Siraha district have taken the lead in helping arrange temporary shelters for the families while organizations like Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers’ Association and Transport Entrepreneurs Association have been distributing food and clothes to the victims.

Every year Nepal’s southern districts are ravaged by fires. Most of the houses in the region are made from highly flammable things like wood, bamboo and straw. Although, the people in Terai have become more aware about dangers of leaving open fires and unstubbed cigarette butts, in many case the fire starts accidentally from inside the house as was in the case of Siraha but victims complain the local administration was slow to respond which caused extensive damage that could have been avoided.

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Putting an end to weeks of political deadlock, top leaders of  three parties have declared that they have found mutual grounds to agree upon. The parties say they have resolved a crucial issue of governance form. After the meeting, top three leaders interacted with the media and said they have agreed on a directly-elected president and parliamentary elected prime minister with executive powers divided between the two. The leaders also said they are close to resolving dispute on state restructuring.

For the last couple of weeks, parties have been staying put on their respective stance on federalism. Last week, the constitutional committee asked the dispute resolution sub committee to prepare a list of unresolved issues to be tabled for voting in the CA, but the exercise was dropped after  the committee realised that voting would be inconclusive. So it  asked top leaders to find a mutual point of agreement on all issues.

NC leader Minendra Rijal says voting on outstanding issues is a futile exercise as it will only polarise opinions. “Nobody has the numbers required to push through their agendas, so breaking down negotiation now will only upset the environment of trust needed to move ahead,” he told Nepali Times.

Leader of cross party political caucus of indigenous lawmakers, Prithvi Subba Gurung believes that parties have no choice but to agree on federalism based on identity. He ridiculed public statements made by NC and UML leaders asking lawmakers to respect partys’ whip if there is voting and warning them of serious action if they failed to follow instructions. “Trying to stifle dissenting voices is not acceptable in a democracy and such statements only expose how undemocratic Nepal’s political parties are,” said Gurung.

But even Gurung seems confident that there will be no voting and parties will arrive at a point of agreement. He said, “We are already standing here, now our leaders will have to find the courage to take a step  forward and stand with us. Only then can we hope to move ahead.”

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Crash site of Agni Air's Dornier 228 on a mountainside, west of Jomsom Pic: RSS

Barely six months after a deadly plane crash in Kathmandu, there has been another one taking the total number of people killed in seven accidents in the last six years in Nepal to 95.

Fifteen of the 21 passengers and crew on board an Agni Air flight from Pokhara were killed when the Dornier 228 was trying to turn back to Pokhara after reporting a technical glitch. The crash site is on a mountainside west of Jomsom airfield 500 ft (200 m) above the runway at an altitude of 9,000 ft (3,300 m). The weather was reported clear, although the notorious high winds were beginning to pick up at 9:45am when the crash occurred.

The two pilots and 13 Indian passengers were killed. Among the survivors are the flight attendant, two Danish trekkers and two young Indian girls and their relative: all were sitting at the back of the plane. The crash site is located near the Nepal Army’s Mountain Warfare Training Centre, and rescuers were at the scene almost immediately. The injured have been airlifted to hospital in Pokhara, only 15 minutes flight time away.

Rescue team at the site (Pic: AFP/Chandeshor Bastokoti)

The crash will make Nepal even more notorious for aviation safety. This is the fourth crash of a domestic flight in the last two years with a loss of at least 76 lives. And that does not include four other helicopter crashes, some of them fatal.

In October 2011, six people were killed when a military rescue flight from Nepalgunj to Kathmandu went off course at night and hit the mountains near Dhorpatan. Barely a month before that, a Mt Everest sightseeing flight returning to Kathmandu hit a hillside near Kathmandu airport killing all 14 on board, most of them Indian passengers. In December 2010, 22 crew and passengers, most of them pilgrims from Bhutan, were killed when a Twin Otter hit a mountain after takeoff from Lamidanda.

This is the second major crash involving an Agni Air Dornier. In 2009, a Lukla-bound flight crashed after turning back to land in Kathmandu due to bad weather and multiple generator failure. In November 2008, a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter crashed on the threshold of the runway at Lukla, killing 14 passengers, mostly German tourists. Only a co-pilot had survived.

Once again an air crash investigation commission has been set up by the government, but it seems certain that the new report will also gather dust. Monday’s crash and the previous Agni Air crash seem to have had technical issues but most crashes in Nepal are caused by pilot disorientation while flying through the mountains in cloudy weather. Questions will be asked about sloppy regulations and inspection, and airlines cutting corners on maintenance.

Kunda Dixit

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The uncertainty and drama surrounding constitution drafting does not seem to die down and the parties have started hurling accusations at each other for failure to arrive at a consensus. The dispute resolution sub-committee could neither resolve the issues, nor come up with a list of contentious issues to be tabled for voting in the next CA meeting. On Saturday, the constitutional committee had asked dispute resolution sub-committee to make a list of unresolved issues to be tabled for voting or find a common ground.

Although the parties have been holding meetings everyday in an effort to forge consensus, so far they have not proved successful. Today’s all party meeting ended inconclusively, and emerging from the meeting, NC leader Ram Sharan Mahat told journalists, “ We have requested the Maoists and the Madhesis to reconsider their stance on single ethnic states because we believe there are multiple layers of identity including linguistic and cultural and in a democracy everybody has the right to express their concern.”

However, on the other hand, Maoist leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha blamed the NC and UML for increasingly positioning themselves as ‘anti-federal’. He said the so-called united movement launched by various groups across Nepal is being fuelled in order to diffuse the ethnic movement.

Today, a group of janajati lawmakers visited the NC and Maoist top brass requesting them to stand in favour of ethnic federalism. While, NC leader Sushil Koirala refused to entertain their demands saying it would endanger integrity and social harmony, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal advised the lawmakers to remain vigilent and confront ‘anti-federal’ forces.

As the May deadline for statute drafting draws closer, the parties are getting more desperate and their disputes have spilled over onto the streets with each party giving implicit support and legitimacy to a group of protestors.

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After shutting down the country for two days, the protestors called off their strike early Saturday morning. The Brahmins, Chettris, Dashnamis and Dalits organised a press conference in the capital this morning and said they were calling off their protest program due to Saakela festival of the Kirat community but stated further protests will be declared by evening. At a time when the country is ravaged by ethnic clashes, the move has demonstrated deep respect shared by various communities towards each other’s culture.

Transportation is slowly getting back to normal and shops have opened across the country. The news of protest being called off was greeted with applause in the capital, but it failed to bring any relief to the people of Far-West where the protests have turned more violent.

The growing shortage of food and medicine in the region paralysed by 16 days of strikes has created a humanirarian crisis. Although a team of protestors have arrived in the capital to hold talks with the government, thousands more demanding undivided Far-West and the another group calling for a Tharuhat state continue to clash with each other in Dhangadi. More than three dozen protestors on both sides were injured in the clash yesterday and according to an unconfirmed report this morning, a man was found dead on the border between Kailali and Kanchanpur.

In the last few days, thousands of people have been brought to Dhangadi in buses from all over Kailali and Kanchanpur district by Tharuhat Sangharsha Samiti spearheading the Tharuhat movement, but those injured now find themselves struggling to pay for treatment and find food.

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There are fresh indications that the present political deadlock may end soon. The major parties say they have agreed on 11 states and are now negotiating on boundaries and names of federal states. The latest development is significant as it follows a series of meetings held by Indian Ambassador Jayant Prasad with leaders of the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML. Sources reveal that Prasad expressed his government’s concern about the deteriorating condition in the country and urged parties to implement the five-point agreement in letter and spirit. Prasad met UML leaders at the party’s parliamentary office in Singhadurbar on Saturday morning and requested them to join the national unity government as per the five-point agreement. India’s increased interest in Nepal’s political process is seen by many as an ‘unnecessary interference’, while the embassy maintains it is a ‘friendly concern’.

The parties are making a final effort to avoid going into voting by forging a consensus on unresolved issues. Yesterday’s talks ended positively with parties agreeing to form 11 states, but there are still disagreements on the boundaries and names. Emerging from the meeting at UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s residence in Lajimpat on Saturday morning, NC leader Ram Chandra Poudel said, “The numbers have almost been finalised and in order to avoid further controversy, we have proposed that the names should be decided by the respective states.”

The major parties had earlier agreed to vote on unresolved issues but given multiple stance on several issues, it was unlikely that the voting would have yielded any conclusion. So the constitutional committee once again asked the dispute resolution sub-committee to resolve the issues through consensus. Even the parties are reluctant to go for voting as none have been able to come up with an official position given the disagreement between party leadership and lawmakers from Madhesi and janajati backgrounds who have threatened to violate party’s whip if unilateral decisions are made.

Approaching deadline and cornered on all sides, leaders of the major parties are at a point of no return and the only way ahead is to forge an agreement and come up with a statute on May 27. The bilateral and multilateral meetings in progress at the moment in Singhadurbar is trying to do just that.

Anurag Acharya

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