Blockade led to search for new trade, transit options: PM

KATHMANDU, April 6 : Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has has said that the government has learnt a serious lesson from the five-month  Indian blockade and is now committed to further diversification of Nepal’s transit and trade options.
The prime minister vowed to ensure more trade alternatives so as to free Nepal from a situation of total dependence on a single country, and to lay the ground for developing a self-reliant national economy.
“We have become further aware of the difficulties of genuine exercise of sovereignty as an independent nation and we have experienced how costly it can prove for national independence while remaining entirely dependent on a single country,” Prime Minister Oli, who is also chairman of the CPN-UML, said in his political paper distributed to the party’s politburo members at its meeting on Tuesday.
Describing India’s blockade as inhumane, the prime minister said it was entirely inappropriate, abrupt and unfortunate for the Nepali people “as it was imposed for producing a pro-people constitution through  democratic procedures as a sovereign nation.”
He said India had just taken note of the historic promulgation of the new constitution in Nepal and imposed a blockade just a day after its introduction.
“Though a detailed loss assessment resulting from the blockade is yet to be made, it can easily be estimated that it is many times the loss caused by the earthquakes last year,” he said.
Oli in his paper concluded that India’s rulers were compelled to end their “unofficial blockade unofficially due to severe criticism from the international community, tremendous pressures from within their own country, and  the realization that the Madhes movement couldn’t be prolonged any further.”
On the Madhes movement itself, Oli said the agitators not only protested out of genuine concerns over the contents and procedures of fromulating the new constitution but they also had an intention of placing the country’s very existence and integrity at risk under the cover of certain demands.
He said that the Madhesi agitators were involved in anti-people and anti-national activities, in  misusing Indian territory and  the no-man’s land to attack Nepali security personnel, inviting external intervention and  stopping the supply of essential goods under a plot to create havoc in the country.
He also smelt a rat in the intentions of the Nepali Congress. “Nepali Congress’ recent activities have led to suspicions that the largest political party is moving away from the major responsibility of implementing the new constitution and that this may invite instability in the country,” he said

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