20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

How times have not changed

Back in 2001, the infighting within the then ruling party Nepali Congress reached a point where it paralysed the country helpless even as its people suffered through the ruinous Maoist insurgency at its peak. 

Raising healthcare standards, improving the quality of education and equitable development was an afterthought, much like it is now as political leaders fight it out during a pandemic. How the times have not changed!

For much of the past year until now Prime Minister K P Oli’s administration had been bogged down with intra- and inter-party power struggles, preventing it from concentrating on battling the pandemic. 

As a result, the country and its health system are at a breaking point with the second wave spreading unchecked. As our reports this week reveal, people are now dying due to the lack of oxygen, not strictly succumbing to Covid-19.

Nonetheless, these lines from the editorial 20 years ago this week in issue #43 18-24 May 2001 might as well have been written today. Excerpts:

Analysts have come up with many analogies to describe the present state of the nation: a patient in intensive care, a village on a volcano, a boat that has sprung a leak, a truck falling off a cliff. But the best one we have heard so far in the cocktail circuit is a jet with a major systems malfunction that is diving towards the ground, while the captain and co-pilot are busy punching each others’ faces, as a hijacker behind them holds a gun to their heads. Go figure out who is who. 

Pretty soon, at the rate we are going, there will be nothing left to fight over. Here we are, confronting one of the most perilous times in our nation’s history and our elected politicians are behaving as if it is plunder as usual. At a time when we need a national consensus, we are at our most divisive. At a time when we need decisive leadership, we have vacillation and a twiddling of thumbs. At a time when we need transparency and accountability, the looting has gone into high gear. At a time when we need to be delivering health care and education on a war footing, we are footing a war. And there is even a sickening scramble on to pocket kickbacks on the paraphernalia to fight that war. 

From archives material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search:  www.nepalitimes.com 

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