Nagarik Dail / www.nagariknews.com/ 26 July 2010

Wake me up when we have a new prime minister. Three weeks after the prime minister resigned, one week before the third round of parliamentary election to find his successor things are stuck again. On Sunday, closed door meetings between the NC, UML, Madhesi front and Maoists were once more deadlocked.

The NC can’t command a majority without the support of the Madhesi front and the UML, while the Maoists can’t come to power without Madhesi support. The Madhesis want either the NC or the Maoists to first give it to them in writing that they support One Madhes One Pradesh, a more inclusive Nepal Army and a stop to logging in the Tarai. If the Maoists give that, they’ll be home free.

However, even if the NC signs on the dotted line, it will also have to get the UML’s support. The UML itself is hopelessly split between the Oli camp which wants a coalition with the NC and the Jhalanath camp which wants to get into bed with the Maoists.

So, what does the 2 August bode for us? Actually most Nepalis are past caring. The vox pop coming in from callers all over the country to FM studio discussions harp on one thing and one thing only: when will our netas give up their greed and lust for power and get on with constitution writing and longterm peace-building?

The Madhesis and UML say they will remain neutral. What they really mean is “what’s in it for us, what portfolios will you give us if we join your coalition?” And this week you can be sure the bargaining will be intense for the lucrative ministries. It’s a Hobson’s choice between:

a) a party bent on totalitarian control of the state, which doesn’t believe in non-violent politics and for whom all this is just a tactical move in their goal of declaring a people’s republic, and
b) a corrupt and visionless party that has shown since 1990 that it doesn’t much care for the long term future of the country and which has neither the will nor the capacity to control corruption, but which believes in pluralistic non-violent politics

It won’t depend on ideology, of course, it will be the simple arithmetic of the House. If you really come to think of it, this is fairly easy to fix. Before the prime minister resigned, Pushpa Kamal Dahal wanted his resignation. Now, all he needs to do is keep his end of the bargain and fulfil the No. 1 point in the May 28 agreement: a time-bound commitment to implement past agreements on renouncing violence, behaving like a mainstream pluralistic party, giving up its politics of violence and intimidation, disbanding the YCL.

If Dahal can convince his own party that it is now ready to cross the Rubicon, as it were, he’s in. And if that happens, Poudel can throw in the towel and we can have a Maoist-led government. And even the Indians may not mind.

But, of course, this is not going to happen because it needs our leaders to show common sense, integrity and accountability.

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From himalkhabar.com

करिब तीन साताअघि माल्दिभ्सको बान्डोस टापुमा आयोजित जलवायुसम्बन्धी अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय गोष्ठीको उद्घाटनपछि राष्ट्रपति मोहमद नासिद अरू सहभागीसँगै चिया–कफीको लाइनमा उभिएर चार–पाँच मिनेट लाइनमा कुरेर कफी लिएपछि पत्रकारहरूको झुण्डमा मिसिन आइपुगे। नेपालबाट अघिल्लो दिन मात्रै त्यहाँ पुगेको यो पङ्क्तिकारलार्ई त्यो दृश्य अलि अचम्मलाग्दो थियो। 

जलवायु परिवर्तनको कारण र असर सम्बन्धमा नासिदको जानकारी वैज्ञानिक, वातावरणविद् अथवा समाजशास्त्रीको जत्तिकै गहिरो र घतलाग्दो थियो। उनले आफ्नो देशका समस्या र भविष्यमा आइलाग्ने चुनौती सामना गर्न लिइएका नीति र कदमहरूबारे अर्थ्याएको सुन्दा प्रभावित नहुने कोही थिएनौं। मसँगै उभिएका एक श्रीलङ्काली पत्रकारले पछि भनेः “हामीकहाँ यस्ता सरल र सक्षम नेताहरू कहिले जन्मने होलान्?” मनमनै म पनि नेपालको बारेमा त्यही प्रश्नको उत्तर खोजिरहेको थिएँ। 

पद बहाली हुनेवित्तिकै पहिले आफ्नै सुविधा, सम्मान, गाडी, भत्ता आदिको चिन्ता गर्ने नेताहरू हामीले थुप्रै भोग्यौं। यो मामिलामा, पञ्चायतकालका पञ्च र २०४६ सालपछिका झ्गडिया नेताहरू होऊन् या त्यसपछिका क्रान्तिकारी― कोही फरक देखिएनन्। हाम्रा नेताहरूमा लाइन नमिचिकन चिया लिने, एयरपोर्टमा भीआईपी कक्ष नताकी अरूले भोगेकै सुविधा–असुविधा उपयोग गर्दै हिँड्ने चेत पलाउन एउटा नयाँ सभ्यताकै उदय हुनुपर्ने हो कि जस्तो लाग्छ!
नासिदले आफूभन्दा अगाडिका राष्ट्रपति गयुमले बनाएको भव्य राष्ट्रपति भवनलाई माल्दिभ्सको सर्वाेच्च अदालतमा परिणत गरिदिएछन्। कार्यकारी राष्ट्रपतिको कार्यालयको वार्षिक बजेट ४ करोड डलरबाट २० लाख डलरमा झ्ारेर बचत भएको रकम स्वास्थ्य मन्त्रालयलाई दिएछन्। एउटा प्रसङ्गमा राष्ट्रपति नासिद पत्रकारहरूमाझ् भन्दैथिए, “इमानदारी र समानता माथिबाटै शुरु हुनुपर्छ। म चाहन्छु― मेरो सरकारले जनताले तिरेको कर खेर फाल्ने र दुरुपयोग गर्ने काम नगरोस्।”

नासिद १० वर्ष अगाडिसम्म पत्रकार र मानवअधिकारकर्मी थिए। गयुमले उनलाई सात वर्ष जेलमा थुनेर देशनिकाला गरे। सन् १९९६ मा कोलम्बोमा भेटिँदा उनी माल्दिभ्समा कुनै दिन लोकतन्त्र ल्याएरै छोड्ने कुरामा विश्वस्त थिए। नभन्दै सन् २००८ को निर्वाचन माल्दिभ्स डेमोक्रेटिक पार्टी (एमडीपी)ले जित्यो र उनी राष्ट्रपति बने। माल्दिभ्सको नयाँ संविधान अनुसार राष्ट्रपति र उपराष्ट्रपति बाहेक सरकारका कुनै पनि मन्त्री पार्टीका कार्यकर्ता हुँदैनन्। राष्ट्रपति नासिदले आफ्नो मन्त्रिपरिषद् ‘टेक्नोक्र्याट’ले भरेका छन्। गत हप्ता माल्दिभ्सको पूरै मन्त्रिपरिषद्ले नैतिकताको आधारमा सामूहिक राजिनामा दिएको थियो, विपक्षीहरू हावी भएको संसद्बाट नयाँ कानून ल्याउन नदिएको विरोधमा। तर बुधबार नासिदले पूरै क्याबिनेटलाई पुनर्बहाली गरे। 

बान्डोस सम्मेलनमा नासिदले सन् २०२० सम्ममा माल्दिभ्स कार्बन उत्सर्जन नगर्ने (कार्बन न्यूट्रल) देश बन्ने र फ्रिज तथा कोल्डस्टोरमा प्रयोग हुने ‘एचसीसीएफ’ ग्यासमाथि प्रतिबन्ध लगाउने घोषणा गरे। माल्दिभ्स जस्तो माछा र पर्यटन उद्योगमा निर्भर देशका निम्ति यस्तो लक्ष्य प्राप्त गर्न कम चुनौतीपूर्ण छैन। तर नासिद भन्छन्, “हो, यो गर्न कठिन छ र हामीले गर्ने यस्ता कामबाट मात्र पृथ्वीलाई बचाउन पनि सकिँदैन। तर हाम्रो जस्तो सानो मुलुक; जसको अस्तित्वलाई नै जलवायु परिवर्तनले सङ्कटमा पारेको छ– ले नै केही गरेर देखाउनुपर्छ।”

कुराकानी सिद्धिएपछि राष्ट्रपति नासिद पत्रकारहरूसँगै सडकसम्म आएर हात मिलाएर टुकुटुकु हिँड्दै नजिकै रहेको आफ्नो कार्यालयतिर लागे। उनी चढ्ने ठूलो कालो गाडी छेउको पार्किङमै रहिरह्यो। धनी मुलुक र भारत, चीन जस्ता देशले कोइला, डिजल र पेट्रोलको खपत कम गरेनन् भने आगामी ७० वर्षमा पृथ्वीको तापक्रम वृद्धिसँगै समुद्रको सतह एक मिटरले बढ्ने विज्ञहरूको अनुमान छ। त्यतिबेला माल्दिभ्स जस्ता कैयौं टापु देश पूरै जलमग्न हुनेछन्। त्यसैले नै माल्दिभ्स वातावरणका लागि हानिकारक खनिज इन्धन (फोसिल फ्यूल) को उपयोग कटौती गर्ने विश्व अभियानलाई नेतृत्व प्रदान गर्न अग्रसर भएको छ।

विश्वव्यापी जलवायु परिवर्तनको असरबाट नेपाल पनि अछुतो छैन। अबको ५० वर्षमा नेपालका धेरै हिमनदी पग्लिसक्ने छन्। नेपालले पनि माल्दिभ्सको सिको गर्दै गत वर्ष सगरमाथाको फेदीमा मन्त्रिपरिषद् बैठक गरेर थोरै भए पनि विश्वको ध्यान आकर्षण गर्न सफल भयो। तर हाम्रा यस्ता काम भाषण, नारा र अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय गोष्ठीमै सीमित छन्। नेपालले खनिज इन्धनको बढ्दो खपत नियन्त्रण गर्न सकेन भने भारतसँगको व्यापार घाटा आउँदा वर्षहरूमा चर्को दरमा बढ्दै जाने र त्यसले गर्दा नेपालमा भारतको राजनीतिक प्रभाव अरू विस्तारित हुने खतरा टड्कारो भइरहेको छ। त्यसैले, पृथ्वीलाई जोगाउन भन्दा पनि नेपालले आफ्नै अर्थतन्त्र र आफैंलाई जोगाउन पनि आयातीत तेलमाथिको निर्भरता घटाएर जलविद्युत् र नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा स्रोतलाई प्रोत्साहन गर्नुको विकल्प देखिँदैन।
तर त्यसनिम्ति आवश्यक नीतिनिर्माण र निर्णय गर्न सक्ने सरकार, त्यसलाई कार्यान्वयन गर्न सक्ने राज्य संयन्त्र अनि त्यसका लागि नभई नहुने राष्ट्रिय सहमति र राजनीतिक इच्छाशक्ति भएको नेतृत्व खोई हामीसँग? तीन लाख जनसङ्ख्या भएको माल्दिभ्सले नासिद जस्तो नेता पाइसक्यो। तर त्यस्तै नेता पाउन तीन करोड जनसङ्ख्या भएको नेपालले अरू कति कुर्नुपर्ला?   

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There isn’t a media conference these days where the subject doesn’t wind back to online vs offline journalism. Usually the debate is polarised between those who accuse ‘hardcopy hardliners’ of being fossil dinosaurs, and traditional hacks who think citizen journalists are impostors.

Till recently, I confess, I was a skeptic. The digital divide globally and within our countries made the debate only theoretical for us in developing countries. Before we stick computers into a classroom, I argued, how about making sure it has a roof first? What’s the point of ‘leapfrogging’ to computer literacy when schools don’t have textbooks, teachers are often absent and school kids suffer from chronic malnutrition?

These arguments are still valid, and some of them have been levelled at initiatives like ‘One Laptop Per Child’. Nepal’s internet penetration rate is 5 per cent, but a survey showed 20 per cent had used the internet in the last three months. According to a BBC Trust poll in 2007, nearly 80 per cent of those using the internet accessed it from cybercafés, mostly to check emails, and stayed online for only 1-2 hours a week. But things are changing rapidly because of the online application process for the US visa lottery, and with 17 per cent of Nepalis living and working abroad at any given time, VOIP and chats have spread the use of the internet.

But how much potential is there for online journalism? Till a few years ago I was a hardcore hardcopy guy. Now, some Nepali FM stations have more listeners downloading broadcasts from the net than tuning in through the radio. If you miss the BBC Nepali service at 8:45 PM you can listen to it at your leisure online, although you may have to wait a while for the full download in Nepal because of low bandwidth. When Nepali Times started in May 2000, it was online for the first two months before the first hardcopy edition came out in July and today, we have more readers online than in print.

At a recent media conference in Hong Kong, panelists for a session on the sustainability of online journalism listed the pros and cons. There was the familiar listing of the minus points of online journalism:

- citizen journalists lack training and this hurts the credibility of the content
- the information surplus makes it difficult to find relevant information
- any Tom, Dick or Hari can do blogs
- readers visit sites they agree with, leading to ideological ghettoisation
- content is prone to misuse for defamation
- not ‘mass media’ but ‘individuated media’

The plus points were also familiar:

- digital, multimedia content
- interactive
- dynamic updates, deadlines meaningless
- end of geography
- the medium levels the playing field

Most panelists agreed that neither side was right, nor wrong. The consensus was that online media is like a tiger, and if you don’t ride it, it will gobble you up. Just as radio before the advent of tv was different from radio after tv, newspapers too have to adapt to survive. The newspapers of the internet age have to change hardcopy content in order to complement news portals, their online editions have to separate products and not be treated like an afterthought where paper content is dumped. Content has to be written to contribute to a pool of knowledge of the subject that updates past coverage and will itself need updating in real time.

Online news sites do not compete against each other for eyeballs, but together they compete against social networking sites. An average reader of a news site in the US spends only 2-8 minutes a month there, but they spend at least 7 hours a month on Facebook alone. Readers are no longer reading an entire newspaper from start to finish, they pick and chose what they like to read online and preprogram their computers to do the sorting for them.

There are many examples of newspapers and magazines that have adapted their hardcopy editions to the internet age (The Economist, by making its paper copy complement online information, has overtaken Time and Newsweek in North America in circulation) or launched award-winning sites (The Guardian) that are now far ahead of the hardcopy in terms of readership.

The critical issue is revenue. The consensus in Hong Kong was that very few news outlets can get away with charging for content, and the only models that work are with financial magazines. The hope is that ad revenue for online will pick up and ultimately overtake the paper edition. But for the foreseeable future in Nepal, the income must still come from selling the hardcopy and the space in it to pay for the online editions.

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Don’t Write off Newspapers by Kunda Dixit

Exiled to Cyberia by Kunda Dixit

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How can demagogues be prevented from hijacking democracy? This is a riddle as old as democracy itself. The ancient Athenians grappled with the question, and history is replete with examples of tyrants who exploited populism and stoked ultra-nationalism during economic crisis to get in power, often with disastrous results and wars that caused immense suffering to the people they led.

These thoughts rushed through my mind as we crossed from Austria over the swollen Danube to Bratislava recently. It was a trip back in time, having come here as a teenager in 1974 to the still united Czechoslovakia. The country was locked in the darkness of Stalinism following the tantalisingly brief Prague Spring that was crushed by Soviet tanks. It was a drab and depressing time, people weighed down by lies and the crushed hope of freedom.

What a contrast 35 years later to see a Skoda Octavia taxi with Slovak number plates picking me up at Vienna airport and to not even notice the former iron curtain as we whizzed along the autobahn past the checkpoint in Berg. Crossing this border in 1975 used to take two hours as the entire bus and its occupants were searched and questioned. And the strangest sight of all: election posters in Bratislava. Slovakians were nervously looking forward to elections and their young country’s first-ever participation in the World Cup (they beat Italy 3-2 on Thursday).

When communism collapsed in 1990, Czechoslovakia split up into two republics. But it wasn’t a brutal breakup as in the Balkans, where the distintegration of Yugoslavia plunged Europe into its first genocidal war since 1945. The Czechs and Slovaks prided themselves on their anti-communist Velvet Revolution and their peaceful breakup which showed them to be more civilised than their southern Slav cousins.

Yet the recent elections in Slovakia and Hungary show how easily Europe can still regress into the intolerance, racism and even fascism of its recent past. The economic crisis in Hungary (where the finance minister set off panic in the stock markets by just uttering the ‘G’ word for Greece) has caused a right shift in the political spectrum and raked up latent nostalgia for a Greater Hungary. The Slovak economy is doing better (it now produces one-third of all the cars in Europe) but the recession has hit the job market as well, and this in turn has pushed the ultra-nationalist parties to go for an extreme anti-Roma and anti-Hungarian election platform.

In both countries chauvinistic parties used the joblessness created by the recession to openly use racist slogans to garner votes. It worked in Hungary in April, as the ultra-nationalistic Fidesz party won. But it didn’t work in Slovakia this month, where the anti-Hungarian SNS (Slovak National Party) party barely managed the minimum of 5% votes to retain its position in parliament.

With elections just weeks away, journalists at the Sme newspaper in Bratislava were worried about where the country was headed. The editor has been sued multiple times by successive Slovak governments, and had just done an expose on an anti-Roma billboard portraying gypsies as lazy parasites. The SNS was a part of the pre-election coalition with the ruling Smer party and had pushed through legislation making it illegal to speak Hungarian in offices.

The problem now is that while the Slovaks are trying to forge a new coalition without a racist party in it, the Hungarians have Fidesz in a centre-right coalition that wants to offer dual citizenship to Slovakia’s Hungarian minority and a government that openly espouses unity of the pre-World War One Hungarian lands. With Hungarians comprising 10% of its 5.5 million population, Slovakia sees this as tantamount to a declaration of war.

The fur is already flying between Budapest and Bratislava with Slovak officials describing Hungary as the “exporter of the brown plague”: a reference to the fascist youth of World War Two. The Hungarians have retaliated by saying “we don’t care what the EU thinks”. Fidesz MPs openly goose-step about Budapest in paramilitary uniforms and give Heil salutes, and now want to wear those uniforms inside parliament. The rise of the ultra-nationalist racist right has been greeted with dismay in Brussels where Hungary is set to take over the EU presidency on January 1.

Democracy is messy, but it’s the best we can do. It should by definition be inclusive, but often is not. Democracy is a work in progress and needs to be protected by its maximum application. But civil society and media have to guard against despots who have found a way to manipulate the electoral process to grab and retain power. In Nepal, the party that won the most votes in the 2008 elections started one by one to undermine the very institutions of an open society that got it elected in the first place. And we are paying for it now. The country is stuck between a ruling coalition led by a prime minister who lost in two constituencies and an opposition that can’t get enough votes in the assembly to oust the government and is therefore trying underhand ways to do so. The Nepali people are trapped in between, as rigor mortis sets in.

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HIS EXCELLENCY: President Nasheed queues up for tea with other participants after announcing his plan to phase out ozone-depleting substances by 2020.

Last week, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed announced that his country would phase out all ozone-depleting chemicals by 2020, ten years ahead of what is required of his country under the Montreal Protocol. In his speech, he thanked his predecessor President Gayoom for having taken the lead in climate change issues and putting the Maldives on the map.

This would be unheard of in Nepal: a leader complimenting a bitter political rival, especially someone who imprisoned and tortured and hounded him into exile.

But everything about ‘Anni’, as Maldivians affectionately call their president, shows that he is probably the only leader in our part of the world who hasn’t let the trappings of office get to him.

After giving his speech on Thursday in the resort island of Bandos, Nasheed stepped out for refreshments. He waited in line for tea, there were no sycophants and sidekicks trying to obsequiously usher him to the head of the queue. He waited like everyone else, and everyone left him alone because they knew he didn’t like the fuss.

Later, during an interview at his modest official residence in Male (he has refused to move into Gayoom’s luxurious presidential palace, which he has bequeathed to the Supreme Court) Nasheed denies he is doing this just for effect. “Integrity and equality must start at the top,” he explains, “but I am also trying to make sure that the government doesn’t cost the taxpayer more than it should.”

After he was elected to office in 2008, Nasheed drastically cut the size of the presidential secretariat, reducing its annual budget from 400 million rufias a year to 27 million ($1=12 rufiya). What a change from Kathmandu where the first priority for every new ruler is to increase the size of the cabinet, award themselves perks, facilities and junkets. Last year, Nasheed initially cancelled his trip to Copenhagen for the Climate Summit in order to save money and only decided to go after the Danish government insisted on hosting him.

It’s not just the president, most Maldivian ministers impress visitors with their grasp of the portfolios they head. The reason is that the president appoints technocrats to ministries, not cronies from his own party or members of parliament he needs to appease. Which is why the Maldivian minister of health has a PhD in nursing, the education minister has a PhD in education, the minister of the environment has a geography masters from New Zealand and the vice president is a public health doctor who once worked for UNICEF in Kathmandu.

WATER WORLD: The island of Male is a densely packed conglomerate of buildings that is the capital of an archipelago of nearly 2,000 islands spread over 90,000 sq km.

President Nasheed has already announced that his country will be carbon neutral by 2020. This is a huge challenge: the diesel used in the inter-island ferry system and the country’s fishing fleet needs to be replaced with biofuels, tourists have to buy carbon offsets for flights to the Maldives and back, the resorts themselves need to be converted to renewable energy, and the country has ten years to replace all thermal power plants.

To be truly carbon neutral, the country also needs to phase out the chemical called HCFC that is used in refrigeration and airconditioners in the fisheries and tourism sectors. HCFCs are harmful to the ozone layer and are also potent greenhouse gases.

While Nasheed has become popular abroad for his pioneering environmental activism, it has become more difficult for him to sell the idea of cutbacks and phaseouts at home. Which is why to his own people he justifies the switch to renewables by saying it will bring down the country’s high electricity tariff.

The country is setting up its first carbon-neutral resort in the south of the archipelago, powered by wind and solar and using cold 4 degrees Celsius water from 4 km below the ocean’s surface for cooling equipment to replace air-conditioning. All this will take time, and till then the Maldives is collaborating with the Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency to label household appliances to cut fuel use.

As Nasheed says: “What we do is not going to save the planet, but it will save us. And we can tell the world, look it works.”

After the interview, the President of the Maldives accompanies us to the street outside and walks along the sidewalk to his office a few blocks away.

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Our hosts from the May 18 Memorial Foundation in Korea had planned a tour of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The group of editors and publishers from Pakistan, Palestine, India, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia were looking forward to taking a peek at the North from the South.

However, word came that the trip to Panmunjeom was cancelled because the Korean military, which guards the border with the help of the US Army, said Nepali and Palestinian citizens were not among those allowed to visit the DMZ. We did not find a mention of this in any of the many brochures for DMZ tours that promised ‘A Close-up of the Border Where the Cold War Never Ended’. Nor is the purported list of ‘banned’ countries (Algeria, Cuba also blacklisted) on any Korean government website.

The May 18 Memorial Foundation is named after that date in 1980 when the town of Gwangju erupted in a Jana Andolan. It was a student-led rebellion against the military strongman Chun Doo-Hwan. It ushered in an era of democracy, but it came at a heavy price: more than 200 people were killed and 1,000 went missing. At the sombre cemetery on the outskirts of Gwangju last month, parents of some of the students killed by the military were grieving over the graves. Thirty years later, one father was hitting the tombstone of his son with a walking stick, tears streaming down his face: “Why did you go, why did you have to leave us?”

This year the thirtieth anniversary of the 5-18 Uprising, as it is also called, coincided with campaigning for local elections and tensions with the north over the torpedo attack on the corvette, Cheonan, hardening the stance of the ruling party. The polity appears to be swinging to the right, and many saw the absence of President Lee Myung-bak at the official anniversary commemoration as an insult to the memory of the uprising (his excuse: meeting visiting Bangladesh president Sheikh Hasina). Relatives of the victims shouted slogans while the official ceremony went on inside the cemetery.

Hyankoreh editors at the newspaper's lobby where the names of 60,000 shareholders are engraved on the wall.

Since we could not go to the DMZ, our hosts took us instead to see the Hyankoreh Shinmun newspaper office in Seoul. The paper was a direct offshoot of the Gwangju Uprising. Koreans fed up with rightwing military dictatorships and their brutal crackdowns on the free press decided to set up their own newspaper that would be independent of both the state and commercial pressures. Money to start the newspaper was raised from 60,000 shareholders who gave up to $2,000 each because they believed in press freedom and democracy. All 60,000 names are engraved on copper plates and are on display at Hyankoreh’s reception area. This is probably the only newspaper in the world where the president and editor are elected by staff. All the journalists know of Nepal’s struggle for democracy, especially because this year’s winner of the Gwangju Asian Human Rights Award was our own Sushil Pyakurel.

Journalism student Seulki Lee, who spent five months as a volunteer teacher in Lamjung in 2005, poses with a copy of Nepali Times outside the fortress-like office of Hyankoreh Shinmun in Seoul.

Hyankoreh means ‘united’ and represents the aspirations of the Gwangju pro-democracy movement for a united, democratic Korea, a line espoused by one of the leaders of the uprising, Kim Dae-Jung, who was finally elected president in 1998 after trying four times. Despite Korea’s tremendous economic achievements and its transition to democracy, the journalists at Hyankoreh say the struggle for press freedom is not over. Since the paper takes a critical left-of-centre stance on issues, it is often accused of being pro-North Korean and its patriotism is regularly questioned. Last year, Samsung pulled out ads after an investigative report. Big businesses and politicians have also repeatedly sued the paper.

Having been destroyed twice (by the Japanese during the Pacific War and then during the Korean War), South Korea is a remarkable story of a nation that has risen from the ashes. Walking along the bustling Myeongdong Market in Seoul on Buddha’s birthday weekend alongside carefree Koreans, it is hard to imagine that just 60 km away is the 38th Parallel and the proximity of the biggest uncertainty of it all: the catastrophic collapse of the North.

The most surprising thing about Korea is that there are still two of them: one a terrifying Stalinist state with a nutty philosophy and the other a dynamic world economic power that is still so insecure that it does not allow Nepalis to visit the DMZ.

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The three-point pact between the three parties signed just before midnight on Friday reads like a UN resolution, and indeed what held things up till the last moment was semantics. They were haggling about whether the prime minister should “resign” or be “ready to resign”. There is nothing in it that couldn’t have been agreed on six months ago. Instead it was left to, literally, the last minute and the Nepali people were put through the pain and torture of indefinite strikes, neglect of the economy, apathy, lack of development, and the malgovernance that comes with shaky politics.

Still, we tend to always look at the bright side and say: “It could be worse.” A failure to extend the term of the CA would have been potentially much more disastrous. It would have been a victory for those who do not believe in the democratic process and the cynics who saw the CA members as a bunch of lazy parasites when it was actually the party leadership that was calling the shots. It would have encouraged the military and the militants. The extremists would have been ecstatic. If the CA term had not been extended, the country would have plunged into even bigger chaos. Once more, our political leaders have managed to extricate themselves from the quagmire they got themselves into. No one has any doubt that they’ll get stuck in the quicksand again, but for now they have bought themselves time.

The first order of business is to not forget how close we came to disaster. The three-point pact should be taken seriously. It means the peace process should be steered back on track, expediting the demobilisation of Maoist fighters, reorienting the YCL away from violence and returning stolen private property. Although the CA has been extended by a year, we should not wait one year to do all that.

The constitution has its own set of problems. One more year will allow time to resolve the contentious issues like government structure and the potentially implosive ethnic federalism proposal.

It doesn’t really matter who gets to be prime minister and who is going to be in which ministry. More than anything else, the new consensus government must turn its attention to rescuing a teetering economy, creating jobs and ensuring development. Only that will ensure that the government which follows will not be threatened by public anger and disaffection.

The Three-point Pact
1. We are committed to consensus and cooperation to complete the peace process and the historical responsibility of writing the new constitution.
2. We will extend the CA term by one year since we need to finish what we started with.
3. We agree to move forward by forming a government of national consensus after the resignation as soon as possible of the prime minister and his coalition.

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