LMFAO, ROFL & OMG
Nepali Times ईspecial 2 - 8 May 2025 #1259
There is one thing you must give the misruling dispensation in this country: they have kept us thoroughly entertained for the last three decades. They may have elastic morals, they are long in the teeth, they are certainly incompetent, but those holding senior positions in all political parties are all highly qualified clowns.
They have put amateur wanna-be jokers like us out of business. You might have heard Oli Ba’s stand-up routine to parliamentarians this week. LMFAO and ROFL. And Comrade Awesome’s May Day Monologue in front of his comrades. LQTM, LSMH, as well as OMG and WTF. (Abbreviations used to stick to my word limit in this newsletter.)
We are barely a year into this NC-UML coalition and already there are cracks opening up. Allow me to summarise it for those of you who have tuned off: UML’s KPO and SBD of the NC had a gunshot wedding to save themselves from fake refugee and land scam probes by RL of the RSP in the previous coalition with PKD. SBD ditched PKD to get hitched to KPO.
Hell hath no fury as a coalition partner scorned, so PKD has been plotting revenge ever since, even threatening another revolution. The Socialist Front is made up of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) led by PKD, MKN’s Communist Party of Nepal Unified Socialist (CPN-US), the People's Socialist Party-Nepal (PSP-N) and the Communist Party of Nepal (No Suffix) led by Comrade Big Plop.
Going by the number of times the words ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ appear in that last paragraph, Nepal should have been a Communist Utopia long ago. TBC.
But for a more serious analysis of who is currently back-stabbing-whom in Nepali politics, read correspondent Shristi Karki’s analysis of how PM KPO is dealing with the polycrisis of street protests in Kathmandu (The Juggler, page 1). Diwakar Chettri’s cartoon is a visual summation.
May 3 was World Press Freedom Day, and as publisher I got the chance to pen this week’s Editorial on page 2. A report by the Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) this week points out that press freedom is in retreat across the world. Nepal is still one of the more open societies in Asia, but we now also face the danger of too much freedom killing freedom. The liberty to say anything can mean we end up saying nothing. Democracy, it seems, allows citizens to destroy democracy itself. The media is therefore becoming a pillar of authoritarianism. Even the practice of independent journalism is now a form of resistance (Messaging Is the Message, page 2).
Elsewhere in this issue, Nepali Times reporters look at whether Chitwan’s rhinos are becoming too tame (Not Out of the Woods Yet) and Nepal’s success in protecting snow leopards (Guarding the Guardians of the Himalaya), both by Sudiksha Tuladhar. Urmila Gumwa Tharu reports on how the ban on elephant safaris and high cost of upkeep means Elephants Are Becoming White Elephants. And on page 9, we profile conservation scientist Reshu Bashyal who was one of the recipients of the Whitley Award 2025 in London last week.
Photojournalist Amit Machamasi goes back to the Rosi Khola in Kavre that was ravaged by floods last year to find out that the valley is ill-prepared to face another approaching monsoon. The illegal quarries and crushers that magnified the destruction are back in action (Before the Next Monsoon, page 6-7).
Sudiksha Tuladhar’s take on the movie on a refugee from Bhutan (spelled Bhuthan) is on page 4, while our film critic Abishek Budhathoki psychoanalyses Nepali cinema, its producers and audiences (Nepali Cinema’s Melodramatic Realism, page 5).
The Nepali Times Team will be back next week with another action-packed edition. Till then,
Kunda Dixit