Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Narayan Kaji Shrestha has, in the course of his tenure, been blunt about the breach of diplomatic code of conduct by high-ranking government officials and bureaucrats, including the president and the prime minister. He has repeatedly taken them to task for meeting foreign dignitaries without prior knowledge of the foreign ministry, which is tasked with acting as an intermediary between domestic and foreign interlocutors in high-level talks.
Over the years most foreign dignitaries visiting the country have completely bypassed foreign ministry channels in their dealing with top-level government officials. This is the reason no one really knows what transpires in these talks in the absence of official facilitators and minute-takers. This is taking place even while Nepali leaders and bureaucrats fully understand that their actions could compromise national interest. In this aspect, foreign minister Shrestha’s outspoken, principled stand has been admirable.
We believe Shrestha has got it right again when he insists works related to the modernization of the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) should, as far as feasible, be carried out with internal resources. Shrestha has spoken out against the plan of PM Baburam Bhattarai and his cabinet colleagues to hand over TIA upgrade works to India, which, if the deal went through, could raise troubling national security concerns. The sum that has been extended by India (Rs 186 million) in Detailed Project Report for immigration system upgrade and modernization is a pittance given the sensitivity of the matter, which takes the feasibility issue out of the equation.
The foreign minister’s stand against Indian involvement in the project is all the more admirable since it risks alienating him from the prime minister and the rest of his cabinet colleagues. We support his opposition to foreign involvement in the TIA project. As he has made it clear, there is no doubt that Nepal needs to address India’s genuine security concerns vis-à-vis TIA, the same site from where terrorists had managed to hijack an Indian Airlines jet back in 1999. But that does not mean India itself needs to be involved in such a sensitive project.
There are speculations that PM Bhattarai and his cabinet colleagues are trying to please New Delhi to prolong their stay in power, and that the proposed upgrading of TIA by India should be seen in this light. Indeed, it is not farfetched to assume that Bhattarai, who has long been noted for his cozy relationship with India, might seek its blessings to prolong his tenure, at a time the support for his government has been steadily waning at home. In any case, a caretaker government has no business getting involved in a project with long term implications for the country.
Rather than trying to curry outside support to prolong the stay of a hugely-unpopular government, the caretaker PM should be concentrating his energies in finding a way out of the current impasse. He should understand that all that these desperate and highly troubling mechanisms to cling to power will do is further undercut the already tenuous democratic credentials of the ruling coalition.
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