This may be a good time to start making a glossary of past Nepali ambassadors, where and when they served and reasons for their notoriety.
We all know about the shoplifting plenipotentiary who claimed diplomatic immunity when apprehended red-handed after mistaking a Washington DC bookshop for a takeaway. Nepal's formerly-royal embassies are still being used as longterm guest houses by Kathmandu's hoity-toity. During the royal period, our envoys essentially served as buying agents for the palace. The main job of the Bangkok embassy was to ship home rambutans, in Paris it was lingerie and lacy stuff for princesses, and at the Court of St James His Majesty's Envoy's role was to be a guardian for various royal brats then studying in English boarding schools.
After 1990, royal-appointed ambassadors were replaced by politically-appointed ambassadors and it is a matter of some debate which kind did more harm to Nepal's image abroad. These hard-drinking dips don't stop even when they get back. An appropriately named Mr Nepal, who served as the UML-appointed envoy to the Chrysanthemum Throne in the mid-1990s, was nearly lynched after molesting the minor daughter of a bhatti-owner in Ghattekulo this week.
How such a nobody even qualified to be chosen as an ambassador to a country with which Nepal's economic diplomacy should be on high-priority is anybody's guess. But His Excellency is lucky he wasn't killed when the girl's mother broke the bottle of San Mig he was drinking over his head and knocked him unconscious.
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While Nepal recovers from his hangover and bad-headache, how long is his namesake country going to be without ambassadors? We seem to be doing perfectly well while missing 12 ambassadors, so why have them? They're terribly expensive, don't do much to enhance our national image and haven't yet learnt to tuck their shirts in while presenting credentials.
Still, as we speak, Sharmas, Pyakhurels, Simkhadas. Pudasinis and Khanals are lobbying in the corridors of power to be named ambassadors. (Editor's note: All men, all bahuns.) Trouble is, with seven parties in government, every party's candidate gets six no-votes from the other parties. From what we hear, all the candidates are cancelling each other out and hence the delay in the announcement.
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It's official: Nepal's formal name in English is no more 'Kingdom of Nepal'. It's just 'Nepal'. A cabinet decision to this effect is being circulated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This has delayed donor projects which were in the pipeline, bilateral MoUs are all put off because the documents have to go back to lawyers for necessary changes. Whatever we do, can we at least spell check the rubber stamps on our passports? Nepalis are getting jailed all over the world on suspicion of having forged passports because CDO offices can't spell 'government'.
Which brings us to the national anthem. The committee set up to find a new anthem hasn't yet submitted its shortlist. But at the South Asian Games in Colombo, it was still the "Sri Man Gambhir" that rang out in the stadium when our karate, wushu and taekwondo champs bagged golds. I guess since "Prachanda" gets a mention even in the royal anthem, it's ok to keep the old one as a caretaker anthem.
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What a historical irony that interim chief of army staff Rukmangat Katuwal, the soldier responsible for quelling the Okhaldhunga Uprising in 1974, is now Chief Sah'b. Although there was an effort to kick him upstairs and get him out of the way by naming him ambassador to the US, it looks like the Nepali Congress has put the man who put down its own armed struggle in 1974 as army chief. The militant wing of the NC at the time was led by none other than a younger and more radical Girija Koirala. As a baby, Katuwal was adopted by King Mahendra from Okhaldhunga and raised inside the royal palace.
Katuwal's unit was in hot pursuit of the NC militants, and after killing 10 of them captured the leader of the rebel force, ex-serviceman CaptainYagya Bahadur Thapa who was later executed. It was after that defeat that the NC abandoned its armed struggle and decided to go for 'national reconciliation'. 
ass@nepalitimes.com
