English News

‘Budgetary policies and commitments are only to be announced and never to be fulfilled’

Dr. Prakash Chandra Lohani – The present government has been insisting that it is working for the people. But when you have seen its utter negligence in its handling of the COVID-19; when you have seen its failure to institutionalize a sense of logic and rationality in public administration; when there is no regard for its own rules and regulations; when it is insisting that the illegal dissolution of the parliament is the only way democratic content of the present constitution; when the government is willing to push policies that pits man against nature in an antagonistic relationship because it enriches a few irrespective to its cost to the teeming millions; when the national budget becomes an example ad hoc mentality where budgetary policies and commitments are only to be announced and never to be fulfilled; when the party in power is busy along with other “big” political parties in distributing the spoils of governance as if the whole country was a feudal estate of a few lords who are clever at paying a ritualistic homage to the interest of the downtrodden and the poor while chanting high-sounding political rhetoric; when corruption in the form of hidden extortion, embezzlement, and bribery becomes a way of life of the power elite; when constitutional organs as visualized in the constitution are forced to become weak-willed and spineless; when the foreign policy of the country becomes like a rudderless ship not knowing right from the left, always clouded in its perception of national interest in a dense fog of petty self-interest – then we know that the nation is at a crisis. It is a time of crisis, and as citizens, we must speak our minds.