Love triangles

The Irrigation Minister, of all people, has decided that he doesn't like the international security call signs used by his bodyguards and especially his code name: "Zulu 21". The cops recently were at the receiving end of the Minister of Irritation, who fumed: "Why are they using these English-sounding names? Let's use Nepali codes." So it has come to pass that the Special Security Force is switching call signs. The PM is henceforth "Gurans One" and former PM GPK is "Himal Two" and not "Foxtrot Tango" as previously.

The reason Nepali politics isn't moving ahead is because of the love triangle between the kangresis, eh-malaise and the baddies. The sooner we get the three of them married off, the faster we will have political stability in this country. The best would be for the UML and the UCPN-M to merge, which would mean the NC could then get hitched to the united lefties , form a government to have consensual interactions, and everyone could live happily ever after.

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But it seems Comrade Awe-inspiring has suddenly got the hots for Geezer Babu. PKD figured out he can use Makunay's falling out with Suzy Q to drive a wedge in the ruling coalition and made desperate attempts to court Koirala, who played hard-to-get for a few days. But then the Old Fox realised he could send lot of signals to various power centres and get tongues wagging by secretly meeting Shock and Awe, which he did. The two agreed to set up yet nudder 'High-level Mechanism' to untangle political knots.

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Sure enough, the meeting immediately made it to the gossip columns (like this one), and rattled the Indians enough during the MKN visit to make them snort angrily. Having triggered the desired effect, however, Dodder and Dotter are suddenly less excited about hitching their wagon to the Mao engine. There is just too much accumulated bad blood between the kangresis and the krantikaris for them to form an alliance just so the pampered daughter gets the toy DPM-ship that her Dad had promised her. Even the kangresis are now exasperated by Suzy, who got her flunkies to chant slogans ("Sujata au kangres bachau") when she arrived to be grilled by her own party.

The whole problem has arisen because Geezer thinks that since he can pull the rug from under Makunay at any time, even though his party lost miserably in the elections, he can dictate to the prime minister (who also lost miserably) about who gets to be DPM and who doesn't. And that's as far as the political horizon of these fellows extends.

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PKD, as the Ass has noted in earlier episodes of this series, has been trying to woo both GPK and JNK. Sometimes he has more luck with GPK and sometimes he scores with JNK. He seems to have had some success with Jhallu who is now circling like a vulture that knows a wounded wildebeest is going down any time. There has been a strange silence between JNK and KPO lately, and we all thought that might be because the two had called a truce. But the reason for the silence is that the two have stopped speaking to each other: even in public. Talk is PKD wants to make GPK prez and become PM himself after Dasain.

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Whenever the Chinese get antsy you know there is trouble ahead. After a 16-member delegation from the Autonomous Region visited Nepal recently, the Chinese are hosting a jumbo delegation of APF and Nepal Police brass as well as CDOs from eight Nepali districts bordering TAR-PRC. A senior politburo delegation is also coming soon and the subject of all of these meetings is, yes you guessed it, Tibet.

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The editors of a national broadsheet probably didn't realise that when they bannered the headline 'PM brings home the bacon' last week it was the first day of Ramadan. It's like the Riyadh press carrying a story about "pork-barrel funds" about Saudi Arabian legislators doling out patronage to constituents, or our own government "beefing up" security when we were still a Hindu Kingdom.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com