Let us all congratulate our incompetent and corrupt government once again. They have led us to glory by making sure that we remain one of the top corrupt countries in the world. We thought things would get better after we officially became a Republic, but it seems that our politicians don’t have access to the Oxford English Dictionary. Just to clear it for you: Republic does not mean ripping off the public; peace does not mean sharing a piece of the loot and emptying our state treasury and the pockets of common citizens; and reconstruction does not mean diverting funds meant for the needy to the corrupt to build new fancier homes for themselves.

We are now in the 130th position when it comes to the corruption ranking. Last year we were 126th. Don’t be surprised if we are on the bottom of the list in a decade. Our politicians show no signs of changing their bad habits and continue to seek commissions from contractors. Our civil servants continue to seek bribes from common citizens. Our police stations now hold few criminals, but have enough storage for hundreds of liters of fuel and tons of cooking gas cylinders.

We are the third most corrupt country in South Asia. We hope that our government will do their best to make us the number one corrupt country in the SAARC region by 2020. 

It seems that our civil servants and politicians strongly believe that we, the common citizens, owe them everything, just because they are in power. 

It took our government a year to finally appoint a guy with little experience to head the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). And it will probably take another year before the government begins any reconstruction works in the earthquake affected districts. But it seems that we might have a new government in a few months, and then we might have to get a new CEO for NRA and then it will be another year of figuring out how to divide the foreign aid amongst the political parties. 

It seems that our political crisis will not end soon. Our Madhesi leaders are not sure how to pack up and ask their cadres to go home instead of blocking our borders. Our government is busy coming up with new plans to make us a developed nation in a year. Oli has promised us that we will have 24 hour electricity in a year. Then, we will save billions of dollars on fuel and also make billions more by selling our electricity to our chimekis. Oli will make our land a developed nation in five months while it took Singaporeans fifty years to be where they are today.

Kamal Thapa tells us that we will soon have local elections, but we all know very well that our major political parties would rather keep us in limbo rather than have local elections. Why have local representatives in our wards and municipalities when our all-party mechanism can loot all the development funds meant for the people?

Our young lands won the Banglabandhu Gold Cup in Bangladesh and they have been promised Rs seven lakhs each. I don’t know if they have received the money yet. Here in this land of ours hooligans, who destroy public property and harass common citizens during bandas, get a million rupees each if they somehow lose their lives, but our athletes who make us all proud by winning tournaments abroad get less. Ganesh Thapa made karods of rupees and is said to own hundreds of ropanis of land in the valley. But our football players don’t even have enough to buy a new pair of football boots. Corruption is everywhere. Maybe, instead of only blaming our politicians, we should blame ourselves, for letting the corrupt walk all over us again and again.

Ganesh Thapa will live the rest of his life in luxury, while our football players will live in poverty after they hang up their boots. Officials who head our sports organisations in the country make millions while athletes have to sometimes even pay chiya kharcha to be on the team.

It seems that we, the common folks, are okay with all the corruption in this land. We seem to believe that we have no choice but to pay chiya kharcha to get things done. After all, our CIAA wallahs only catch the small fishes. Yes, our former police chiefs, both in Nepal Police and Armed Police Force, have been charged with corruption but nobody seems to be in jail. Either they pay millions of rupees in bail money to stay home or somehow the courts find them not guilty and everything is forgotten. 

Our former Army Chief Saheb is having fun in India. He is worth billions but that didn’t stop him from acting like a Shree Teen when he was in power. Well, he actually comes from a family of Shree Teens so maybe we cannot blame him. After all, it’s in his genes. But why do you need to spend billions of rupees to build a new military hospital in the middle of the city when you could have used that money to upgrade the hospital in Chaunni? 

I hope one day, our politicians, civil servants, and security chiefs will be found guilty and spend time in jail while all their ill-gotten assets are confiscated by the state. We don’t know when or if that is ever going to happen, but a little optimism never hurt anyone. Tomorrow will be a better day. Let’s hope that one day, we will learn to honour and respect honest folks instead of bowing down to corrupt clowns. One day, hopefully, Nepal will be free from the parasites that have been sucking us all dry. And only then our ancestors will thank us for finally being strong and courageous enough to get rid of the evil doers. 

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at [email protected]