Nepal shoots down minister’s Everest dream
Nepalis have given the thumbs-down to their forest minister Deepak Bohora’s lofty plan to hold a cabinet meeting in the lap of Mt Everest, calling it an unnecessary ploy.
The minister, whose wish to allow hotels to run as usual in the core area of a national park in southern Nepal has also been shot down by parliamentarians, was snubbed by the nation in a public opinion poll conducted by Nepal’s biggest private television channel, Kantipur Television.
Asked how they regarded the announcement by the minister that the government would hold a cabinet meeting in the Everest base camp – located at 5,360m – purportedly to draw world attention to the fallout of global warming, especially its impact on the Himalayan ranges, a staggering 80 percent of the respondents who took part in the SMS voting said it was entirely unnecessary.
Another 12 percent also drubbed the minister’s plan as mere propaganda while the remaining eight percent said it was weird.
Bohora was also tacitly snubbed by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, whose office said there was no immediate plan for such a meeting. Nepal’s government is grappling with an acute funds crunch since the former Maoist guerrillas have prevented parliament from passing the budget; the cash-strapped coalition doesn’t even have the money to pay civil servants and security forces, let alone foot the bill for a jamboree to the Everest base camp.
But perhaps the most powerful opposition to the minister’s Everest dream came from the Maoists, whose chief and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda Sunday said during a media interaction in the border town of Birgunj that the current political impasse would end within a week when the Nepal government would give way to a new one under the leadership of his party.
The Maoists, who are the largest party in parliament and led an eight-month government that collapsed in May, have since then been on the warpath, demanding the formation of a “national government” under their stewardship. While they have kept parliament paralysed since May, street protests started this month have hit the government machinery.
The former rebels have now called a blockade of Kathmandu valley on Tuesday, to be followed by the encircling of the prime minister’s office and key ministries later this week.
