I am not a huge fan of Gachhedar at all. The guy walks in a Kathmandu parade with a mafia don. That is hugely problematic. But he seems to have the numbers for now. And he symbolically does represent the largest ethnic group in the Terai: the Tharus. Yadavs are number two. Going by the current numbers Gachhedar seems to beat Yadav. But, forget Yadav, not even the MJF(D) and TMLP have taken concrete steps towards unification. And the SP has not taken concrete steps either. So far the three have suggested they'd rather be an alliance than a unified party. If they can forge an electoral alliance and not compete against each other, that can also be a positive move.
But the whole debate is kind of moot. Because the presidency of the party should be decided through a general convention, not through living room negotiations. A unified Madhesi party stands to reap rich dividends electorally. Let Bijay Gachhadar and Upendra Yadav compete and let there be a vote.
Would you rather be the president of a party with 20 MPs or the Vice President of a party with 50 MPs? That is the question.
Yadav should be made Chairman, and Thakur should be made Ganeshman. And all these people pictured above should be made members of the politburo. I might have left a few names in haste. Please make amends.
Thakur represents the Terai's central role in Nepal's democracy movement going back decades. Upendra Yadav symbolizes the first Madhesi Kranti. Sharad Singh's bona fides are as strong as anyone's. The guy quit the powerful Defense Ministry to make a strong claim on behalf of the Madhesh. And he represents 40% of the Terai's population: the Pahadis. Gachhedar represents the Tharus, a group larger than the Yadavs, the largest among the many Madhesi groups. Tripathy, Mahato, Sarita, Anil: they are all Gajendra's disciples. They all have long histories.
After this step all Madhesi parties will be forced to join the unification bandwagon. They will do that or they will get left behind. I think it is important to bring all Madhesi parties together, even small ones like the ones led by Sarita Giri. Sarita Giri has so many benefits to harvest in such a party in a new Nepal where women will get one third reservations top to bottom.
The unified party should be called Sadbhavana Party or Janata Dal. Two words, with no mention of either Terai or Madhesh. Because this party has also to grow into the hills.
It is not true Upendra Yadav needs to join the current government for the unification to go forward. The current government will likely make way for a caretaker government full of non political people to hold elections. So everybody is getting out. There is no point in Upendra Yadav getting in right now.
A general convention has to be held by the end of 2012. And elections are in April. This unified party will easily emerge the second largest party in the country. It just might even emerge the largest.
It is for the party convention to decide who the party president will be. It is for the parliamentary party to decide after the elections in April 2013 as to who the leader of the parliamentary party will be. Let the democratic process take its due course. Don't try to make big decisions in smoke filled rooms.
"A unified party under leadership of Thakur will be announced in the third week of Bhadra," said a Madhesi leader on the condition of anonymity, adding, "Yadav will be powerful senior vice-chairman." ...... However, leaders from MPRF claimed that the unified party will be led by Yadav and Thakur will be given post of supreme leader of the party. ..... MPRF has proposed to name the unified party through general convention after unification. ..... some leaders of TMDP including Vice-chairman Hridayash Tripathi were not happy with the move as they have stressed the need for unification with MPRF-Democratic rather than with MPRF..... "It is not bad to hold discussion with any party for unification but there are differences between TMDP and MPRF at policy level," said TMDP Joint General Secretary Jitendra Sonal, adding, "Unification between the two parties mean either TMPD should quit the present government or MPRF should join the government which is not an easy task."
Speaking to the daily, joint general secretary Jitendra Sonal said the party had decided to join the government to raise the Madhes issues.
The split occurred in September 2007, as the MJF vice chairmen Bhagyanath Gupta and Kishor Kumar Bishwash and Ram Kumar Sharma and Jitendra Sonal were expelled from MJF. Gupta became chairman, Sharma general secretary, Bishwash and Sonal vice chairmen of the new party. However, Sonal and Sharma were expelled from the party in December 2007.
September 5: A central committee meeting of the MJF expelled the four dissident leaders Kishore Kumar Bishwas, Bhagyanath Gupta, Jitendra Sonal and Ram Kumar Sharma and also decided that the MJF will take part in the Constituent Assembly election.
Those expelled include, his adviser Kishor Kumar Bishwas, Bhagyanath Gupta, Jitendra Sonal and ram Kumar Sharma.
"As a political party our agenda is pretty clear-we want democratic system of governance, autonomous federal structure, proportional elections, and we want Nepal to be a republic" says Jitendra Sonal, MJF's secretariat member.
“We are positive over the prime minister´s offer but could not discuss this issue in our party on Wednesday. Our party is likely to recommend our ministers on Thursday,” said Jitendra Sonal, TMDP joint general secretary.
"We are not ready to tolerate discrimination anymore in the name of keeping peace," said Jitendra Sonal, the president of the youth wing of the Madhesi People's Right Forum. Sonal's face was marked by purple bruises -- the result, he says, of a police beating.
On December 31, 2007, a Central Working Committee of the party was formed, chaired by Thakur. Other members are Hridayesh Tripathi, Mahendra Prasad Yadav, Ram Chandra Raya, Sarbendra Nath Shukla, Anish Ansari, Ram Chandra Kushwaha, Brishesh Chandra Lal, Srikrishna Yadav, Govinda Prasad Chaudhary, Ram Kumar Chaudhary, Ram Kumar Sharma, Jitendra Sonal, Bishwanath Saha, Satyawati Kurmi, Kritaram Kumhal, Dilip Singh and Sheikh Chandtara.
"The chances of TMDP getting three ministries have increased," Jitendra Sonal, joint general secretary of the party, told myrepublica.com.
Looks like we will end up with somewhere between 10 and 15 states in a federal Nepal. The good news is all major parties have finally ditched the ridiculous idea of strictly geographic north-south vertical states. All of Terai will likely not end up as one state, but the only disagreement now is if the Terai will have two or four or five states. I say two: Tharuwan and Madhesh.
The Maoists were the original proponent of the two states in the Terai idea. Then after the first Madhesi revolution they decided to punish the Madhesi people by breaking up their own Madhesh state into many parts in their internal maps. Now they are back to having the original Madhesh state minus the two important eastern districts of Jhapa and Morang. They have to rectify that as well. All of the Terai from Rapti to Mechi has to be one state.
Looks like the Limbus will get Limbuwan, and that is fine by me. And looks like the Himali people will get their own two states. And the Khasan in my map will be two geographic states. The UML has better names for those two states than do the Maoists.
So in this map you end up with not eight but 12 states. The reason the Maoists have 13 is because they have mistakenly taken Jhapa and Morang out of Madhesh. Put them back.
I just got off the phone with Karma Gyalden Sherpa. It was a half hour conversation.
Karma has been my favorite Nepali in New York City since I showed up in town a few years ago. The Madhesis have to seek an alliance with the Janajatis to achieve equality in Nepal and the Nepali diaspora. He is not one of those "Bahun ko jhola bokne" Janajati/Madhesi, his phrase. I like that about him a lot. He has a warm personality. He has a high emotional intelligence. He has been running the largest, most vibrant Nepali organization in New York City for a few years now.
I missed the meeting yesterday evening where the Adivasi Janajati Mahasangh and the UNDF tried to work out the details for the Prime Minister's program on the 25th. I might have been late: it was to have been my fourth event of the day (Nepali Picnic, Poetry Festival, Science House MeetUp). And I also ended up at the wrong location. But I did meet someone who was on his way back from the meeting. I debriefed him on the sidewalk by the Satya Narayan Mandir in Jackson Heights.
I talked to TekGurung on the phone an hour before I talked to Karma. It has been decided Karma will chair the event, and Tek will give the welcome speech. I think that is a happy middle ground.
I also wanted to ask for five minutes of speaking time, but before I brought up the topic Karma said he had made a few decisions as chairperson. One, the emcee will only announce the names of the speakers, otherwise sometimes the emcee's introductory speech ends up longer than the speaker's, there will be few speakers, maybe four or five, each speaker will have a strict time limit, and mostly the program will be a question answer session. The floor will be opened to the general public. He said among the few speakers there will be one Madhesi, one Dalit, only one Janajati. ANTA has been asked to furnish the Madhesi speaker. And that the entire event will be live streamed worldwide on the web.
I said I was very happy with the arrangement, that he had thought everything through. I dropped the topic of seeking five minutes for me. I am happier that I will get a minute during the question and answer session. I am also going to try to meet the Prime Minister at the Columbia University event a few days before that.
Karma and I talked about many other things to do with Madhesi and Janajati rights besides this one event. We concluded by agreeing what the Janajatis of Nepal need is their own political party.
As to ANTA, this is what I said to a friend a few days back.
There are more than 3,000 Madhesis in America. Of those less than 100 are members of ANTA. We have to go beyond ANTA to grow Mission Madhes. Can we get 500 members? That is what we need to ask. I urge you to start with making a list of all Madhesis you personally know who are in America, and get them to work on similar lists.
20 Districts In MPRF's "One Madhes" Republica Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Banke, Dang, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, Nawalparasi, Chitwan, Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Mahottari, Dhanusha, Siraha, Saptari, Sunsari, Morang and Jhapa.
Paramendra Bhagat to chitiz Aug 25
Tekji.
My bio data.
Paramendra Bhagat is president of a digital democracy organization called Hamro Nepal that has the largest Nepali mailing list in the world at over 8500 members. He is now working to launch a global organization called Mission Madhes. He was one of the most active Obama volunteers in all of New York City in 2007 and 2008. He came to the US for college in 1996. Within six months of landing he got himself elected student body president at the number one liberal arts college in the South, a record in college history. In Nepal before that he had been Vice General Secretary to the Nepal Samajwadi Janata Dal that had split from Gajendra Narayan Singh's Sadbhavana. Hridayesh Tripathy was General Secretary and Rajendra Mahto was a central committee member. He runs a blog called Democracy For Nepal that you might have heard of. He worked full time for Nepal's democracy and Madhesi movements in 2005, 2006 and half of 2007.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:52 PM, chitiz tamu wrote: > Parmendra jee, > > I would like to wel-come you from Madhese as a speaker on the topic of "New > Constitution and Burning Issues of Nepal" on Aug 30, Sunday at 11:30 P.M. > Yak Restaurant, Jackson Height. Please send me your your bio-data within 5 > to 7 sentences. > > Thank You, > Tek Gurung
Sukhdev Shah was way ahead of his time in terms of how far he went with his education. But his observation has been that his homevillage looks still the same after half a century.
He was vocal about democracy during the Panchayat era, and he has been vocal about Madhesi rights since democracy in 1990.
He gave so much to the Nepali Congress, but that party did not think him qualified to be the Nepali ambassador to the US back in 1991 or ever after. It took a MJF to make him the offer. He has been qualified this entire time.
I have utmost respect for Sukhdevji. And it is so very unfortunate that a government got toppled and the almost achieved dream of seeing a Madhesi as the Nepali ambassador to the US got dashed.
Maybe this government will also get toppled in a few months, and an all party government will get formed, and the MJF will come back into power, and perhaps we will see the job done. But right now I am not counting on it.
What most gets me is the strong anti-Madhesi prejudice that the Nepali community in Washington DC expressed upon his nomination.
The prejudice is well and alive. No amount of education or global exposure seems to cure it. If anything, it seems to become stronger.
There is no escaping the struggle. If this generation will not do the work, the next generation will have to. Why pass it on to the next generation?
For Sukhdev Shah at this stage in life to have to feel the hurt of the prejudice in a locale that has been his home for decades, it is like Ambedkar finally giving up on Hinduism to become a Buddhist. Maybe he should consider becoming an American citizen after all, after having resisted the idea for close to half a century.
The creation of a Madhes state in a federal Nepal is a must for Madhesi liberation.
Most diaspora Madhesis don't admit it, but Sukhdev Shah's experience is also their experience. A lot of them have mastered the art of getting along with Pahadis by either skipping the topic of Madhesi rights, or downright parroting the Pahadi talking points on Madhesi rights issues. I have a name for it. I call it the Mr 1% personality. It is the mindset of those who should be 40% of the room but are only 1% due to ethnic prejudice, and so they figure out a way to survive while being that 1%. That mental slavery exacts a heavy emotional price that many choose to pay. Salvation lies in those Madhesis reaching out to the Madhesi masses in Nepal, because they have the numbers to make a difference.
One word of criticism I would heap Shah's way is that it was Upendra Yadav and the MJF that nominated him, but he immediately started acting like it was the big wig Pahadis like Prachanda, Baburam, maybe even Girija who had authored the idea. We the downtrodden have a hard time accepting Madhesi leadership, and thus contribute to our continued downtrodden status.
Ethnic prejudice is an ideology that has to be defeated. The Madhesis of the world will have to get organized.
My quest for ambassadorship Republica Based on the news that filtered through the internet and newspapers, it appeared that the entire Nepali community in Washington was opposed to my nomination. Maybe the silent majority here was positive but none—except one person I can remember, Homraj Acharya, coordinator of Washington-Nepal Group—came out in my support. ....... my wife and I declined to attend the White House State Banquet given by President Reagan in honor of late King Birendra in December of 1982. Afterwards, Dr Bhekh B Thapa—then Ambassador to Washington—started treating me as if I had insulted his father and banned me from embassy functions. ....... the last Panchayat ambassador lobbied hard with the International Monetary Fund that I be fired from my job because of my “political activities”. ....... and have maintained personal contacts with all prominent politicians and leaders .......... I then find it amazing and puzzling why a person of my background would be opposed by this community where I spent most of my adult life and maintained good relations with everyone and all groups. No one had even hinted to me that I was not qualified for the job, that I have not served Nepal’s interests living outside the country and that I was unfit for the job for any specific reason. ....... From the beginning of my nomination, it looked as if the entire Nepali community here had become opposed to my nomination—tooth and nail—citing reasons that were made up, acrimonious and unverified. Otherwise, my nomination and appointment would have been a cause for celebration—that at least one of them had made it to the top and that it would open the way for many others residing outside the country. ....... just one: I am not one of them. ....... This kind of exclusionary politics in Nepal has lasted for many decades and over many generations but Madhesis are now determined to get their fair share of national recognition and claim equal opportunities as citizens.
Now that the MJF has split into two, there is no one Madhesi party that is much, much bigger than the rest. And it is not like the MPs of the breakaway MJF faction are now working
against the Madhesi agenda that got them elected in the first place. The Madhesi people have not lost any strength in the parliament. No strength has been lost for the work on the constitution.
Now you have two MJF factions and a TMLP that are all roughly equal in size. And you have two Sadbhavana factions that are relatively small. I feel like these five Madhesi parties are in perfect shape to attempt a unification at some point over the next few months.
Attempts have to be made over the next few months to do that work of unification.
At this point it is no longer obvious that if the Madhesi parties were to unify, who the leader will be. That might be a good thing for unification talks.
Both the Madhesi Movement and Nepal's peace process are at a delicate juncture at this moment. There is major lawlessness in the country, especially in the Terai. A political paralysis has gripped the country. The largest Madhesi party has undergone a vertical split. The Maoists are doing all they can to disrupt government work until a new government in their leadership is formed. Basic due process has been disrespected, either through ignorance or ill will, by all and sundry. The peace process is at its lowest point since the 12 point agreement between the Maoists and then seven parties in late 2005.
The Maoists are not about to reignite a civil war. But is lawlessness not bad enough news? Is the current political paralysis not bad enough news? Nothing much is getting done. The work on building the institutions of democracy is at halt.
It is important for the largest six parties in the parliament to work hard to revive the spirit of the 12 point agreement when they put aside their major differences in the interests of the people and the nation.
Even if the Maoists will not go back to the jungle, even if the Maoists will accept mul
ti-party democracy for good, there still is much work to be done. Basic law and order is something all parties should be able to agree upon. That is among the most fundamental of people's expectations.
An all party government might be the need of the hour. That might be the way out of the current political paralysis.
As for the Madhesi movement, I do think the split in the MJF is a tragedy and a setback. But the split is not formal yet. There could still be a rapproachment. Or the split could become formal. Whatever the case the newfound political consciousness of the Madhesi people through three major social mass movements is not about to be trampled. That no longer depends on any political party. All parties in the country have no option but to respect that newfound political consciousness. The Madhesis will get federalism, and the Madhesis will make steady progress towards equality in all walks of national life no matter how many parties split, form and unite. It is just that that process would be faster if the Madhesi parties stayed united and actually become unified, such that there is not three, four or more but one party.
Former Prime Minister Prachanda's decision to sack the army chief Katuwal lacked due process and was declared so by the president. That decision by the president was promptly challenged and taken to the Supreme Court. Madhav Nepal went ahead and nullified the decision by the former Prime Minister. He can not possibly have done that. That is a disrespect of rule of law. A case that is still being considered by the Supreme Court has to be left to the Supreme C
ourt. The Prime Minister, or the president or the parliament may not engage in such indulgences.
Madhav Nepal has made another similarly improper decision as Prime Minister. He waited for his own party to decide which UML people will represent that party in the parliament. Otherwise three top UML leaders were in major disagreement. He similarly waited for the Nepali Congress central committee to decide on which NC people will go into the government. That was also true of the TMLP, the SP and the RPP. But in the case of the MJF, Madhav Nepal at the instigation of Girija Koirala went against all the basic norms of parliamentary democracy and appointed Bijay Gachhedar as Prime Minister.
Upendra Yadav probably could take Madhav Nepal to court on that one.
Upendra Yadav could have expelled Bijay Gachhedar as he did, but then Gachhedar has had the option to walk away with 40% or more of the MJF MPs, as he did. A split came about, although it is not formal yet because both factions are still trying to say they are the original party. Gachhedar has not registered a new party yet.
Curiously now Madhav Nepal is toying with the idea of sacking Katuwal after all. He can do that. If all his coalition partners agree, Nepal can legitimately sack Katuwal.
So there is the law, and there is politics. That also leaves the possibility of Upendra Yadav doing the Hridayesh Tripathy thing and saying let bygones be bygones, he does not want to go into power himself, and making overtures to reunify the MJF.
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