Nepali Congress (NC) General Secretary Gagan Thapa has identified five ills ailing the grand old party.
Addressing a program in Kathmandu on Wednesday, he has identified NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba’s utter disregard to party statute as the main problem. NC had held the 14th general convention in December 2021. It had announced to hold policy convention within six months of the general convention but it has yet to start discussion for that. Deuba is statutorily required to appoint treasurer within six months of being elected president but he has yet to appoint one and has been handling the party finances all by himself.
He has also yet to nominate 20 central members to complete the central committee. He has also not been able to complete the party’s departments and sister organizations. The party, meanwhile, is statutorily required to hold central committee meeting in three months but Deuba has not held one for around 10 months.
Thapa has pointed dysfunction of the middle of what he calls a three-tiered party as another problem. He says the first tier of the party is its cadres who abide by the party decisions whether right or wrong. The second is the groups of well-wishers that evaluates the leadership’s decision on merit and defies the wrong decisions, and the third is supporters and voters.
He has pointed how the well-wishers are hesitating to criticize wrong party decisions nowadays in greed of plum appointments or ticket in election or any other benefits thereby strengthening the wrong practices in the party.
He has identified electoral alliance as another problem for the party pointing that the party should have allied only for forming the government after the election instead of allying before the election. “The greatest mistake of Congress is alliance before the election. We wanted to stop the pre-election alliance but to no avail,” he has added. “I should also accept my share of responsibility because that decision was taken. But we should also have received backing from the well-wishers and supporters against electoral alliance but did not.”
He has identified continuity of wrong practices in the name of traditions as another of the ills. He has given example of how NC leaders are arguing that NC does not have tradition of suspending party leaders when they are accused of wrong-doings to ignore the demands for suspension of NC central member and former home minister Bal Krishna Khand following his arrest in connection with the fake Bhutanese refugees scam.
He has identified populist politics as another problem for the party that is making NC more unpopular. He has stressed that those practicing populist politics don’t care about performance and only think about what outrageous thing should be said to attract more people.
“There is need for purification of Congress. Congress should be oriented toward the citizens instead of leaders by incorporating its core values.”
