Problems Mount

 

EDITORIAL

Problems Mount

Monday afternoon sent Kathmandu rumour mills abuzz with the news that a five O’clock cabinet meeting would be followed immediately with a five-thirty K.P. Oli message to the nation live on national television. What followed was surely a national putdown. The Prime Minister rambled through his assessment of the country’s Covid-19 war and that was that. The government’s efforts to combat the Corona Virus is now mere mundane. This is our third month of lock down and Oli didn’t give much hint that, as rumoured, there will be a relaxation to the lockdown in the following weeks although it will not be lifted altogether because of the increasing numbers traced with contamination. Still, Oli’s twenty odd minute address did nothing to hide the publicly transparent mismanagement in the delivery of relief to a locked down population, or the inadequate arrangements in the isolation wards, or even, the utter inadequacy of tests that have slowed down results and prevented speedier identification of the corona infected. The fact has been that government has at best been slow and clumsy in mustering available national resources so that the one prescription to tackle the pandemic—tests, tests, tests—has been, slow. The lock down should have been designed to muster the resources and not, as is being used, to prevent the disease. Oli’s revelation that government intends to test two percent of the population is unlikely to materialize fast because the people are no longer patient and helpless onlookers of government inefficiency. A restive population is taking to the streets if government fails to bring tests to the people isolated or not.

But the pandemic is only one of Oli’s mounting problems which is the reason why his TV address was a put off. Oli must face parliament with a budget this week. Much anticipation prevails over what the budget will for to revive the economy to comfort a desperately edgy population. Touching here and there on what could be was clearly not much assurance of a new fiscal measure designed at public amelioration which was the one outstanding fault of the government program outlined last week. Fumbling through budget outlays in similar traditional manner is unlikely to assuage a highly desperate population. What follows the budget session is yet another reason why the population is edgy. Oli has not settled but merely postponed his political problems within his own party. An antagonized party secretariat has augured in a numbers game in the party central committee which is to be summoned after the budget session which may be short on account of the pandemic. Despite freshening up his nationalist image by facing Indian claims with a new Nepali map, the prime minister, it seems, has been caught up with a whirlwind of rival international games at the moment of which the Indian road to Manasoravar is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It is going to take quite some analyzing at how the MCC connects with an Indian general’s claim that the Oli government has been pumped by the Chinese to oppose the Indian road move and how that narrative has to do with Oli remaining in his seat despite a newly united Tarai party that has yet to unite officially. What matters is that, as Oli’s problems mount, so does the country’s.