Republica has compiled some silly and funny moments and some embarrassing ones, that involved a prime minister, ministers, diplomats and senior government officials, over the past two years, including some that never come to public notice. [break]
While Minister Magar was stuck in transit at Abu Dhabi Airport on Monday, another Nepali minister was also an being embarrassment to the country the same day, in Germany.
While addressing a gathering of businessmen and officials in Germany Monday, Minister for Commerce and Supplies Lekharaj Bhatta said he was eager to welcome to Nepal Gudrun Kopp, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, next week. A statement from the Nepali embassy in Germany on Wednesday confirmed Bhatta as saying this in a written speech that day.
What the minister did not know was that Kopp was already in Nepal and busy in meetings Monday with Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai and Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Satya Pahadi.
The minister´s speech prompted German officials to check whether Kopp´s visit was deferred to next week, according to knowledgeable sources, who shared the embarrassing moment with Republica on condition of anonymity.
In January, Anil Jha also caused similar discomfiture when he visited India on an invitation extended in a third person note from the Indian embassy. According to sources, he had wished for an invitation from his India counterpart, Anand Sharma. But an invitation from Sharma was not available, and Jha flew to New Delhi on the third-person invitation, as he had to attend the marriage function of a newspaper columnist.
The nation saw one of the most embarrassing moments in the country´s diplomatic history in January when Chief of Protocol Mukti Nath Bhatta touched visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao while trying to steer the latter to the right side of Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai for a formal photo session. Television footage showed Bhatta pulling Wen to the right and Wen nearly fell.
The list of national embarrassments is longer. Last November, another minister caused major discomfiture to the nation before the international community. Minister for Environment Hemraj Tated, while addressing a climate change summit in Thimpu, Bhutan, continued to read out some other stuff even after he had formally concluded his speech.
According to an official who attended the summit, the minister reprimanded officials from his ministry right at the program venue.
´I have never experienced such an embarrassing moment in my life,´ recalls a government official who witnessed the incident.
Not only ministers, even a prime minister has been found causing discomfiture to the country by his act.
Last June, then prime minister Jhala Nath Khanal had himself written in the visa note, ´To Whom It May Concern´, requesting an European mission to grant a visa to his press advisor, Surya Thapa. The prime minister made the visa request in writing after the mission sought a visa note to issue visa on Thapa´s diplomatic passport. A visa note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is mandatory for any diplomatic mission to issue visas on diplomatic passports and no other authority can write such visa notes.
Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala caused national embarrassments thrice when she was Minister for Foreign Affairs. In 2009, she withdrew from the entourage of then Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal at the eleventh hour for a visit to Delhi as Nepal did not first elevate her to the post of deputy prime minister.
Some months later, she visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) without caring about the embarrassment it would bring to the nation. She visited the UAE on a one-year-old invitation of UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Anhyan even though the Sheikh was said to be out of the country at the time. Worse still, she flew to the UAE though none of the nine officials she was supposed to call on had finalized the appointments.
And that was not the end. In January 2011, Koirala asked High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to ensure that her office in Nepal properly monitored the Maoist combatants, without realizing that monitoring the combatants did not fall within the jurisdiction of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights.
´It was embarrassing to hear our foreign minister ask the High Commissioner to monitor the Maoist combatants,´ said human rights activist Subodh Pyakurel, recalling the one-year-old incident in Geneva.
Not only ministers, ambassadors have also caused embarrassment. Nepali Ambassador to Egypt Shyam Lal Tabdar went to assume his post in January 2010 without contacting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a result, he did not know where he had to go as Nepali officials at the embassy were unaware he was coming and were not at the airport in Cairo to receive him. He caught a taxi to the Nepali embassy, with the help of security.
Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said such embarrassing, silly and funny incidents are taking place due to the recklessness of concerned ministries and individuals in public posts.
"It is pointless pinpointing who is acting recklessly; such incidents expose us before the international community," said a career diplomat on condition of anonymity.
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