Caretaker Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai lost the legal and moral legitimacy to continue in office after his failure to hold the new Constituent Assembly polls on November 22. Now his hold on premiership appears shakier with each passing day. In fact, looking back at his tenure as PM, spanning a year and three months, it is hard to find a single initiative of national importance that he has gotten right. The unrelenting attitude of the Maoist-Madhesi coalition has long hindered a breakthrough in the stalled political and constitutional process; his signature road-expansion initiative is going badly wrong; and his solemn pledge to clean up bureaucracy and governance while in office appears laughable after a couple of developments on Sunday.
During a public function on Sunday, Bhattarai made a shameful admission of his failure to control corruption in the government machinery. He accused the political and bureaucratic leaderships of being thoroughly corrupt. In his reckoning, only a handful of top-level bureaucrats and politicians are untainted. If so, why has the prime minister failed to take any action against them, even when he seems to be well aware of the identities of the rotten apples in his administration? Either he does not have the clout to take on these corrupt interests (which puts a question mark over his leadership) or he is hindered by coalition compulsions (which suggests he is ready to ignore serious lapses for partisan benefits). Perhaps Bhattarai failed to realize that he was undermining his own credentials as prime minister while he was busy blaming others on Sunday.
The second development on the day is still more troubling. Also on Sunday, Republica reported the appointment of Timila Yami, sister-in-law of PM Bhattarai, as the chairman of Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), the government-controlled water utility. According to sources at KUKL, the decision was taken under pressure from Hisila Yami, Bhattarai’s wife and Timila´s sister, who oversees the Ministry of Urban Development, a portfolio the prime minister has kept for himself. Disturbingly, Timila replaces the incumbent Prayag Lal Joshi, an expert in drinking water management, who was selected to lead the KUKL 20 months ago through free competition. Reportedly, the change at the top was made possible after Hisila was successful in packing the KUKL board with her confidantes and close relatives, even though Joshi had over two years to go before his tenure expired.
This shameful culture of corruption and nepotism taking place right under the nose of PM Bhattarai is inexcusable. We urge the government to at once roll back the decision to sack Prayag Lal Joshi to restore the credibility of the vital public utility. The caretaker PM crippled service delivery at Patan Hospital, perhaps the most efficient public hospital in the country, by overlooking the demand of hospital workers to roll back the appointment of a vice-chancellor picked purely on the basis of her Maoist loyalties. It took a dedicated doctor’s fast-unto-death to reverse the government decision to foist political appointees on Teaching Hospital, Maharajgunj. It remains to be seen how the PM acts in the case of KUKL, or how he responds to the criticisms of corruption in his own government. However he acts, his reputation might already have been irreparably damaged. It will be damage control from now on.
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