Oli now has six folks in his cabinet and let us hope that he will get done with his cabinet expansion natak in the next few weeks. It seems that our so-called top leaders are having a tough time figuring out whom to select as mantris in Oli’s cabinet.

After all, most of our clowns want to be mantris and make a few Rupees more for the party, his or her family and their near and dear ones. 

What about the country? The country can wait. Our government thinks that we should not graduate from the least developed countries (LDC) status to a league of developing nations because we would then get less foreign aid and not get preferential treatment when it comes to trade and other freebies that comes for being poor. 

But if we were to be ranked by the wealth of politicians then we would probably be in the top 20. Yes, our  mantris make peanuts in salaries if we were to compare it with the mantris in Singapore but if we were to add up all the chiya kharcha, state perks and commissions then our mantris make ten times more.

Yes, it’s good to be a politician in this land where even when everyone knows you are corrupt, you still can have it your way and continue to live like a Maharaja!

Yes, we will not have the jumbo-cabinet like in the earlier days but if we add all the folks at the provincial levels then we will be spending billions more to take care of them. And let us not even talk about taxes. We, the common folks will be paying more taxes so that our government will at least have enough to feed our local, provincial and federal clowns.

Our comrades are waiting for the Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN) to join them, and then we will have a government that holds two-third majority in the parliament.

Upendra Dai wants to be our Foreign Minister and also wants two more ministries as well. After all, it’s all about sharing power and making some dough. We all know that our politicians really don’t care much about the country or the people. Once they become mantris, the first thing they do is ask their personal aides to figure out how much can be looted from the ministry’s budget. 

Our ministers make money from everything. Our hakim sahebs want lucrative postings, promotions and other freebies. And they need to pay boras of cash to the mantri’s personal aide to make it happen.

Then, our civil servants work with the mantri’s folks to fudge the bills, award government contracts to slimy contractors for commissions and even make money from new government employees. Yes, if there is a vacancy for a peon and you are on the top ten list then you better pay a few lakhs to get the job. No wonder, you need Karods to be the main hakim at our sarkari offices. 

And we, the common folks, know very well that corruption will not disappear overnight. Our politicians need to make the dough to run their parties, feed their cadres and then win elections next time around.

Our civil servants need bribes from service seekers so that they can pay off the mantris for promotions and save millions of themselves and their kids as well. Our low-level civil servants need chiya kharcha from us to feed their families because the government salary is not enough to send their kids to private schools.

What about the common folks in this country? We, the people, are the ones who vote for our clowns, but it seems that we are not in the priority list at all.  It seems that out of thirty million folks, only a few hundred thousand of our sarkari folks matter in this land of ours.

And Oli dai is making sure that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) play a more active role in issues of foreign policy, national security and financial and economic crimes.

What that means is that the PMO will now get to interfere in other mantri’s domain and also select their near and dear ones as ambassadors, senior police officers and other sarkari hakims as well as make sure that our fake VAT bill byaparis get their matters resolved in Baluwatar instead of running around ministries and even the Supreme Court.

And it seems that our Supreme Court is busy passing verdicts favouring our chor byaparis when it comes to tax evasion matters. Yes, let us thank our justices for inspiring our byaparis to continue to invest black money in this country, make it white and evade taxes if they can provide chiya kharcha to the folks looking into their cases.  

The PMO will also have the National Investigation Department (NID), the Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI), and the Department of Money Laundering Investigation (DMLI) under its control. 

Oli will be a busy man meeting byaparis in Baluwatar. Don’t be surprised if you see our mundrey dons hanging out at Baluwatar as well. After all, our PM had earlier announced that we should let all ‘black’ money in and make it white for once and then it can be invested in productive sectors in the country.

Oli’s experts tell us that they are just making sure that our PM exercises power like those in the US, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China and many other countries. But somebody needs to tell our politicians that we are not like those countries.

Yes, politicians there are not all saints either but at least, the government does provide basic services to the people there. We still have five years to figure out if we did the right thing by giving our comrades a chance to lead us.

By 2022, we will either be a prosperous nation or not much will change, and then it will be time for the other clowns to lead us to another five years of procrastination and lies. 

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. 

You may contact him at [email protected]