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Amending citizenship-related laws has never been easy. Diverse opinion among the political parties and stakeholders always complicates the process. Most recently, the amendment bill to the Citizenship Act had been pending in the House of Representatives for two years. Looming elections may have prompted the five-party ruling coalition to ditch that and table a new one. The ruling coalition fast-tracked the parliamentary endorsement process and forwarded the bills to the president for authentication. Usually, the president does not censure such bills. But in a rare move, President Bidya Devi Bhandari returned the bill to Parliament, raising concerns over some of its provisions. Questions can be raised over the President’s intent as some of her past decisions were motivated by her political inclinations but on this occasion her decision cannot be termed unconstitutional. Article 113(2) of the constitution allows her to do so. But irrespective of what has happened, the issue of citizenship is a sensitive one and major political stakeholders must now refrain from politicizing it—elections or no elections. The ruling parties made a mistake by fast-tracking the bill’s endorsement instead of holding intensive discussions on it in parliament as well as in public. Lawmakers had filed dozens of amendment proposals, all of which were sidelined. The president’s move has now given them another opportunity to correct their earlier error. Time has come for sober reflection. The ruling and opposition parties need to sit down and find an amicable solution. Their common goal should be to ensure that every eligible citizen gets citizenship without hassles, and without any kind of discrimination based on gender, identity or orientation. The bill sent by the president with her suggestions has already been tabled in the HoR. If parties are honest and mindful of national interest, they can easily find a compromise because they know what is the right thing to do. Just heed the larger public opinion on citizenship which is increasingly accommodative rather than restrictive. The question is: can our major parties for once rise above partisan interests and cynical electoral politics?

Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka’s China trip was viewed through two distinct lenses in the country. For some it was a part of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's ‘fig leaf’ diplomacy with China. In this reading, by sending his foreign minister to China before his own long-desired US trip, Deuba wanted to show that he is keenly aware of Nepal’s need to carefully balance the big powers. But, in reality, he wants to help the Americans fulfill their interests, a suspicion which has been bolstered by the recent appointment of his China-baiting foreign policy advisor.

In the other reading, the trip will really help bolster Nepal-China ties. This will be partly out of compulsion: many of Deuba’s coalition partners are staunchly in favor of a close partnership with China, even at the cost of alienating other powers. On the eve of upcoming elections, this visit will show the government is not beholden to India or the US. Critics point to the government’s recent handover of vital hydro projects to India, often in contravention of established norms. The prime minister’s wife openly hobnobs with the BJP honchos in New Delhi. Deuba has also been traditionally known as the American darling, an image that has only been solidified by his successful pushing of the MCC compact in the parliament (which, by the way, this newspaper endorsed). The same could be said of Deuba’s supposed backing of the Special Partnership Program (SPP)—no, we have not heard the last on this.  

These are delicate times. The Russia-Ukraine war shows no sign of abating. The situation on the Taiwan Strait continues to be tense, something that Nepal says it is ‘closely watching’. Whatever the case, as elections have been announced, the government should not sign any agreement with far-reaching consequences for the country with any outside power. Yet the opposite is true: Nepal’s relations with big powers unfortunately become a matter of election-time political grandstanding. That is risky business in these fraught times that call for carefully navigating the tricky geopolitical landscape.

As most of Nepal’s recent foreign policy documents suggest, it’s in the country’s interest to diversify its relations and reap economic benefits from friends near and far. History has time and again shown that over-reliance on any of its two giant neighbors is fraught with danger. This is why Nepal in the late 1940s started reaching out to the US and European states. As a country precariously placed between two regional behemoths, it is a wise course. In this light, the recent announcement that Nepal was being ‘promoted’ from a ‘dialogue partner’ to an ‘observer’ in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—the Eurasian grouping with now 10 members including Russia, China, India and Pakistan—is something to be celebrated. 

Interestingly, Nepal expressed its interest in the organization way back in 2001 when Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala wanted to explore the import of petroleum products from Central Asia via China. This is not as dreamy as it sounds. Nepal and China are already discussing a cross-border electricity grid. A cross-border railway has also long been talked about. So why not a cross-border pipeline to bring Central Asian oil and gas? Alas, the geopolitical chessboard is seldom as simple to figure out. The SCO is basically a Russia-China construct to challenge the supremacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the post-World War II grouping of Western countries. In other words, the organization has a huge strategic component. 

If so, should Nepal embrace one strategic grouping, the SCO, while it shuns another in the form of the American Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS)? With no official statement coming from the government, it is unclear what exactly we want to achieve through a bigger SCO role. Nepal, the current SAARC head, has been unable to play a meaningful role in bringing the moribund organization back to life. Shouldn’t the SAARC be higher on Nepal’s priority than the SCO? The question is not about the rightness or wrongness of joining the SCO. It is rather that those lobbying for Nepal’s greater participation in it haven’t thought it worthwhile to explain their logic. Perhaps they too don’t have a clue.   

Are you a Nepali passport holder? Prepare then to be greeted by suspicious looks and a salvo of queries, whether you are traveling to Amsterdam, Bangkok or Cairo. Nepalis have become notorious among airport authorities the world over for overstaying their visa or even disappearing into thin air. Probe a little and you will be told that Nepalis are also ‘uncouth’ and ‘rude’. It is thus only natural that other countries should try to avoid them. The Nepali passport is unvalued for the same reason. According to the latest Henley Passport Index, the Nepali passport is the seventh worst in the world—even behind the passport of the communist dictatorship of North Korea. While Nepalis are allowed visa-free entry into 38 countries, the North Koreans are welcomed into 40. 

That Nepalis are considered ‘escape-prone’ and ‘mannerless’ in turn has a lot to do with the wretched state of their homeland. Its national politics is in shambles: the country has not had a government that has served out its term in the past 32 years of democracy. The economy is, likewise, in tatters, with the finance minister openly working for vested interests and without a clue about running the country’s financial system. Tourism infrastructure and facilities are shoddy. The influence of black-money ever on the rise. Very few good jobs are being created, and even when they are, the pay and perks tend to be rather poor. Most of its youngsters thus want to escape the country the first chance they get.  

Another reason for Nepal’s continued slide in the passport index is its poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Other countries are not assured that those tested in Nepal are virus-free. That the country should find itself ranked alongside the likes of war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan again says much about how the rest of the world sees Nepal. The old bunch of corrupt and immoral leaders are taking the country down with them. Before they fully succeed, it is time to boot them out of office in the upcoming elections. A thorough clean-up of the old, stinking stable could for once attract the right kind of international attention.