Gagan Thapa wrote an article for Kantipur, "Why does every generation have to fight for democracy?" while he was eating boiled rice in police custody back in the day when he was protesting for something. Today, we will talk about the 'real' Gagan Thapa, the one I know, and then it is up to you to decide if he is actually the right person to lead us out of poverty and the patronage politics prevalent since the 1990s.
Today, Gagan is out there with this Congress 2.0 version, still hoping that since the communists have been getting a bad rap, his party will get the 'old' votes and swing back to power. It is not that easy. Gagan began his political journey following the footsteps of the previous generation, joining student politics, shouting slogans, and attending rallies of his mother party whenever it was necessary.
He became an MP only in 2008. He has almost twenty years of experience as a lawmaker and a 9-month stint as the Health Minister. And as an MP for his constituency, he has not done much for his place. The 'Old' media and its supporters boast about how he was the one to finally introduce the national health insurance thing for all of us. Yes, starting something is easy. I could open a coffee joint tomorrow if I have the dough, but if it is faltering and on the verge of closure in a year, then should I boast about having started it in the first place?
The national health insurance thing is facing a crisis. There is no money to fund it further, and sooner or later, all government hospitals will stop accepting the insurance cards and will not give us subsidized healthcare since the Finance Ministry does not have adequate funds to even pay billions of Rupees due to the government hospitals.
Gagan cannot get rid of the 'mundrey money' political mix employed by his party and other major parties. What does that mean? Our major political parties do not actually hire mundrey gundas or the so-called local dons. These criminals actually join the party in hopes of receiving protection from the law. They make money from loan sharking, extortion, and other illegal activities. They are flush with cash, and when a political party sees that this guy has tons of cash and a bunch of thugs with him, their third eye opens up and welcomes them in hopes of using the cash and the manpower for election campaigns and rallies.
Gagan has close ties with the Kavreli Dons. When he was the Health Minister, his office was always packed with shady figures, including Dawa Lama and his friends. Who is our boy Dawa? Well, he is a local gangster, and also used to be the main guy for Tarun Dal in Kavre. Tarun Dal is the youth wing of the Nepali Congress. The UML has its own, and so do the once-upon-a-time Maoists. Are we all familiar with the YCL, right?
Gagan is a good orator. He looks calm and composed. He is happy going bald and has not gone for a hair transplant yet, but he needs to work out a little more because, at 49, he looks puffy, and a belly pouch is slowly showing up. He is at what would you call the right age? He is Gen X, and he has seen it all since the 1990s. He understands technology and has seen the dial-up modem days to the present high-speed internet, unlike the old Oli, Deuba, and Prachanda generation, who still want us to remain in the 'typewriter' age.
But Gagan has a problem, not one or two but millions of them, when it comes to changing Nepali Congress into a new political party ready for a 'New Nepal 2.0'. We had the first version in 2008 when our lawmakers decided to get rid of the monarchy and tell us that we were now a 'Republic'.
Nepal Congress can claim to be the oldest political party in Nepal. But is that enough to demand votes from the public? Where did they go wrong in the 1990s? They had the majority in 1991. The loot began since then. Girija and his clans went on a corruption binge. Deuba, then Home Minister, should be given tons of credit for introducing nepotism, payment for promotion, and political interference in Nepal Police, which has, in these 35+ years, destroyed the integrity of the institution and is the least trusted government agency in the country, according to some surveys.
It even broke into two factions as Deuba and Girija did not get along, which gave the UML a chance to form their own minority government for barely 9 months. In the first 10 years of our so-called multiparty democratic rule, the Nepali Congress enjoyed all the loot. UML was actually never in the government, and the 9 months were too short of a stint to do much.
The Nepali Congress was in power when the Maoists handed them the 40-point demand. The police brutality in so-called operations in Rolpa and Rukum actually made thousands join the Maoists, not because they believed in its ideology, but were disgusted and angry with the State repression.
Let us not even talk about the Maoists and the decade-long terror in the country today. We will talk about the Maoists some other day.
We cannot blame Gagan Thapa for the political mess the Congress created then. But is Gagan actually serious when he tells us that there will be no corruption in the country in the next five years if his party gets the majority and he becomes our PM? Will he really investigate all political scams and corruption cases from 1991 to date and punish the guilty ones, even himself, as his Health Ministry gig is also tainted?
Sujata Koirala never faced any punishment for the Lauda Scam. Krishna Sitaula did not get a slap in the buttocks for his APC scam, but three former IGPs of Nepal Police spent a year or two in DiliBazar prison drinking black tea and reading newspapers instead.
Will they also go to prison if Gagan becomes the PM? He talks about forming a 'Shakti-Saali Ayog', aka Very Powerful Commission, or Committees. We have had hundreds of committees since the 1990s investigating everything everywhere and nobody got punished even if they were found guilty. Most of the committee reports weren't even made public.
It is not easy to eradicate corruption in this country. How does a joint secretary making 50-60 grand afford a luxurious lifestyle and send his or her kids to private schools? How do our politicians with no source of income live in villas and afford luxurious vehicles? How do the folks working in customs, immigration, land revenue office, and the Department of Roads end up being billionaires by the time they retire?
Well, let's leave our poor government workers aside. Let's talk about government contracts? If Gagan, as a PM, focuses on meritocracy and not nepotism and all contracts are given to not party cadres or shady contractors but to folks who can do it well without bribing everyone, then how will the political parties get donations from the out-of-work shady contractors?
Most of our political donors are businesspeople who engage not in honest work but in tax evasion, public land grabbing in coordination with those in power, and selling adulterated products in the market. Not all business people are shady, but 20% of the ones, remembering my Dai Pareto again, who engage in shady dealings have made this country worse since they are the ones who have been paying off the politicians and civil servants to continue to evade taxes and even launder the money abroad.
So, Gagan Thapa, when he says he will eradicate corruption, will investigate all scams since the 1990s and make Nepal a prosperous nation again ... just think of it as another hawa-taari political guff which not only he but most of the older-generation are better at. Remember, Prachanda's 10,000 MW and US$10,000 GDP per capita in 10 years speech, almost twenty years ago? Prachanda is a nut case, and we will talk about him in the coming days.
Let us wish the Nepali Congress all the best in this election. Gagan should have left his party a long time ago, but he didn't because it's like he's been with them for the past thirty years. If I were Gagan or Ramkumari or Yogesh or all the Gen X 'stone-throwing-student-politics' groomed ones, I would have left and joined RSP, and then he and others would not have to carry the 'Congress' or 'Corrupt' baggage at all, and who knows what would have happened?
image credit: SANN