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Parties fail to name new PM
Washington Diary |
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Parties fail to name new PM
Kathmandu, July 11 The 25 parliamentary parties need to come up with a new consensus government by Monday to replace the caretaker government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who resigned June 30. The new premier should have been named by July 6. However, as the bickering parties failed to reach an agreement, President Ram Baran Yadav agreed to extend the deadline to July 12. Now Nepal seems doomed to go round in circles with the major parties frittering away precious time without addressing national interests. The Maoists, who want to return to power, angered the parties instead of seeking reconciliation as they unveiled their plan to take the halted peace process ahead. The former guerrillas said they were ready to dismantle their youth wing, the Young Communist League, regarded as being their paramilitary organisation, as well as their guerrilla army with over 19,000 combatants. The Maoists are advocating that their People’s Liberation Army (PLA) be put under a special committee that would decide how many fighters would join the national army. They are seeking that each discharged guerrilla be given NRS 1 million to start a new life. Those who want to join the army should be inducted as per international recruitment norms. In case the army is unwilling to accept the guerrillas, in their midst, the Maoists have proposed the creation of separate units comprising solely of Maoist combatants. But the proposal was opposed fiercely by the ruling parties Sunday, who said it was unilateral and against the peace accord signed in 2006. The prime minister is also accusing the Maoists of being responsible for the murder of a party cadre, Chhabi Karki, who was stabbed to death in eastern Okhaldhunga district Thursday. “The Maoists are a criminal party,” the prime minister said at a public programme in the capital Saturday to offer last respects to the slain local leader. “They have yet not transformed into a civilian party. We will take action against Karki’s killers as per law.” As it becomes evident that the parties will not be able to name a consensus prime minister by Monday, the president will ask them to produce a candidate who can show majority support in the 601-member parliament. The ruling parties, the prime minister’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist and the Nepali Congress, will then have an edge over the Maoists if their alliance stands. However, the Maoists are trying to split the Communists and the process of forming a majority government will lead to what Maoist chief Prachanda in the past dubbed a “dirty game”, horse-trading and floor-crossing. A government formed under such a cloud will have no staying power, as the nine-month-old Maoist government and its successor, the 13-month-old Nepal government showed. The race for three governments in two years has dealt a blow to the task of writing a new constitution, the centrepiece of the peace accord. The constitution was to have been ready by May. But it failed the deadline due to the war among the parties. Now, it is poised to miss the extended deadline of May 2011 as well with the bickering parties failing to resume work on it, even nearly one and a half months of the extension having gone by. — IANS
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Japan govt may lose upper house majority
Tokyo, July 11 The government was not immediately threatened, because it holds a majority in the more powerful lower chamber, but the result makes it more difficult to pass laws and will force it to seek new coalition partners. The election result, the first ballot box test since Kan’s party swept to power under a previous leader in a landslide poll last summer, complicates his ambitious reform plans for the world’s number two economy. When Kan took office a month ago as Japan’s fifth prime minister in four years, he pledged to restore the nation’s vigour after two decades of economic malaise and to whittle down a huge public debt mountain. The one-time leftist activist also promised to strengthen the social safety net for the rapidly ageing society and raised the prospect of tax hikes to pay for it all-a gamble that backfired badly on election day. If Kan, the 63-year-old former finance minister and self-declared “son of a salaryman”, or man of the people, was looking for a strong mandate from Japan’s more than 100 million eligible voters, he was left disappointed. His Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will hold no more than 113 out of the 242 seats in the House of Councillors, far short of the 122 seats needed for a majority, according to an exit poll by public broadcaster NHK. Other television stations forecast even worse results for the coalition government, which now includes one other small party, meaning it will have trouble pushing laws through the bicameral parliament. Instead, Kan’s government will have to engage in coalition talks to seek the support of smaller parties, with pundits pointing at the Buddhist-backed New Komeito Party and the year-old Your Party as the most likely contenders. It’s a disappointing state of affairs for the party that less than a year ago took power in what was widely hailed as an electoral earthquake that ended more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule. When the DPJ took power last September under former premier Yukio Hatoyama, it promised to end the murky backroom politics of the business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the powerful state bureaucracy. Hatoyama pledged to return power to the people, make the capitalist powerhouse a kinder, gentler society, and forge less subservient ties with the United States, Japan’s main security ally since the end of World War II.
— AFP
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Washington Diary
India and Pakistan plan to resume a peace process this week that was derailed when terrorists attacked Mumbai in 2008.
While few expect much from the dialogue between External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the drumbeat of peace is loudest far from the subcontinent. Sitting at a roadside cafe in Washington on a recent summer evening, a small group of Indians and Pakistanis animatedly discussed the prospects of better ties between their countries. A Pakistani academic recounted her visit to Wagah. She recalled being amazed as the crowds on both sides of the border transformed within minutes from nationalistic, slogan-shouting foes to friendly neighbours who couldn’t get enough of smiling and waving at perfect strangers. Similarly, an Indian analyst recalled how on a visit to Pakistan he was warmly greeted by people on the street who wanted to know all about their “brothers and sisters in India”. Behind the headlines lies a genuine warmth that binds most Indians and Pakistanis. One hopes that the leaders on both sides can harness this energy. A failure to do so will only embolden divisive elements on both sides of the border and push the peace constituencies closer toward extinction. Losing count
Obama appointed Preeta Bansal Vice Chair of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States last week. Bansal is currently the general counsel and senior policy advisor for the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Bansal was a partner at a New York law firm and has also served as the Solicitor General of the State of New York. Bansal is just one in a growing number of Indian Americans who are playing prominent roles in the administration and serving their country to the best of their abilities. Obama, who has a Hanuman talisman among his personal belongings and has proudly admitted to being able to cook daal, has appointed Indian Americans to top positions in his administration. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Special Representative to Muslim communities Farah Pandith are just some of the many Indian American faces in the Obama administration. In 1987, Ronald Reagan appointed Joy Cherian commissioner at the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This was the first major sub-Cabinet level appointment of an Indian American. Box office disaster
One thing movie critics across America can agree on is that Shyamalan’s latest offering, “The Last Airbender,” is a must-not-see. Noted critic Roger Ebert was particularly scathing in his review. “The Last Airbender’ is an agonising experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of the low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that,” Ebert writes. The movie features Indian American actor Aasif Mandavi (The Daily Show) and Indo-British actor Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire). Shyamalan shot to prominence with the 1999 blockbuster “The Sixth Sense.” The movie was about a boy who could see dead people. It’s a pity the director couldn’t see a movie that critics agree was dead on arrival. Hate crime?
An Indian American scientist was brutally bludgeoned in front of his wife and two young sons in New Jersey last month. Five teenagers in Old Bridge punched and beat up Dr Divyendu Sinha, 49, in what is described as an unprovoked attack. Sinha later succumbed to the injuries he sustained in the beating. Numerous charges were brought against assailants, including murder and aggravated assault. The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) wrote to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, asking his office to “monitor the prosecution of the individuals charged with this heinous crime.” “We are shocked at this heinous crime directed toward a member of our community,” said Dr Ajeet R. Singhvi, AAPI president, and Dr Sunita Kanumury, AAPI president-elect, in a statement. “We will send a strong message across the nation that we will not sit by idly when acts of serious violence are directed toward innocent Indian Americans,” Dr Singhvi said.
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Castro makes rare public
appearance 
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President Barack Obama has appointed yet another Indian American to serve in his administration.
Indian American director Manoj Night Shyamalan, once the toast of Hollywood and as a consequence the darling of the Indian media, has bombed at the box office... yet again.
