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When will the old guards resign, retire or fade away?

In a week, Balendra Shah will take his oath as the Prime Minister of Nepal but it seems that the old defeated political parties and their goons at the so-called student unions, civil servants union and nearly all byaparis who have made their money with their links to the previous governments are waiting for any excuses to go out on the streets and do some daang doong and pollute the air with their usual 'masal' joo-loos!

First, let us start with our national comedian KP Oli, our former Prime Minister and the don of Jhapa, who not only got smacked and thrashed electorally by Balen but still thinks he will continue to run his party, the UML, all the way to hell. How did the party of Madan Bhandari and Man Mohan Adhikary get hijacked by the likes of Oli and his sidekicks like Rimal, Bhogate, and other buffoons?

This man has no intention of resigning and making way for the next generation of politicians to lead the party. It seems that nobody has the numbers to oust this man from the top chair of his party for now. Oli will not go quietly and will not leave his throne till his kidney power holds, and it seems that the party is waiting for the new government to take action against him and those responsible for the massacre of school kids last year.

What are they waiting for? If the new government does implement the recommendations of the Karki commission, then the UML plans to go all out with carrying out bandas, destroying public property and going crazy. After all, this is the stuff our old political parties have been good at for the past three decades whenever they are not in power.

And when it comes to Nepali Congress, Gagan Thapa resigned but his Central Committee does not think so. You cannot blame Deuba or the old netas anymore. Gagan's father-in-law is probably going to be the oldest lawmaker in town. After all nepotism is what it is all about when it comes to Nepali politics. RSP has done better but when it comes to its PR quota, there are some questions regarding byaparis and beauty queens.

I don't think we need business people in politics or beauty queens for now. I mean it's okay if they stood up for election because it is their right but to get the PR seats meant for the MARGlNalized, the voiceless and those forgotten by our society is a slap on what inclusiveness means. The PR quota was not about filling up your seats with your friend's friend but with real people who have been fighting for justice and have been left out by the system.

Even if Deuba was still in power, Nepali Congress would have been thrashed in the election and maybe not even got half the number of seats they got this time. And luckily, Prachanda won from the great place of Rukum, which is yet to see any meaningful development in the past two decades even when the Maoists shared power with others. The voters from Rukum chose him and it is their right.

Prachanda is pissed with his own party members. NCP is a group of mix-max 25 other political parties combined from Tharu to socialists to disgruntled former UML wallahs to our Maoists. Prachanda thinks that his party was betrayed by his own cadres who voted for Ghanti. He has promised to go after anybody who has betrayed his party. Maybe, the first person who should be held accountable is no other than our great Comrade Prachanda.

Prachanda and his Maoist crew still boast about how if it weren't for them, there would be no freedom of speech in this land. If it weren't for them, the King would still be ruling like a solo paraglider. If it weren't for them, Nepal would not be where it is today.

But where is Nepal today? Prachanda promised us 10,000 MW of electricity, US$10,000 GDP per capita and more in ten years, that too, back in 2008. It is almost two decades and he has been losing his power and number of seats in the House and by the next election, there will no signs of the Maoists in our national political scene and all the credit goes to Prachanda and nobody else.

Prachanda is mad at Chitwan-baasis for not voting for his daughter, Renu even after she did so much to develop her municipality. Well, she did build tons of roads and made her crony contractors and cadres richer and she must have received her gifts as well but she forgot to have a drainage system in place. Only roads and big buildings are not going to cut it with today's voters. They want jobs, they want affordable education and healthcare and food products.

Deuba and his wife are busy spending quality time in Singapore or is it Hong Kong? Deuba has worked hard for the past thirty-plus years to enrich himself. He truly deserves a break from all this. His son already has assets worth billions of Rupees. He can live anywhere on this planet.

Maybe, one day, our new government will make sure that the illegal wealth of our old politicians and their cousins, cadres and contractors will be confiscated and used for development purposes. The previous government nationalized properties of the late King Birendra. Hope the new government will do the same with our new Kings of Nepal who have been misruling us for the past two decades.

When you look at the UML, the Nepali Congress or the NCP, we see the same old fogies still controlling the party. Gagan Thapa thought his 2.0 version would somehow change the course for his party but just changing the cover with the same old source code riddled with viruses will not fool the voters.

Oli must go if the UML wants to be relevant. I think the UML had the '70 and you die' rule in its constitution, but then bent backwards so Oli could still hang around and destroy his own legacy and that of his party. I think the UML should go back to its roots and act like a communist and not like opportunists since 2008.

The Nepali Congress should get rid of all politicians above the age of 65 if it wants to be relevant but that will not happen as it has sent Gagan's father-in-law at the age of 78 as a lawmaker from the PR quota.

The grand old party thinks that we the Nepali people should keep on applauding for their hard work to get rid of the Rana regime then and then bring back multi-party democracy in the 1990s while forgetting that it was them who actually went on a looting rampage after that and destroyed our public enterprises while also being part of the problem that created the uncivil war which led to the loss of 17,000 lives in a decade.

NCP is still controlled by Prachanda and disgruntled UML wallahs who are in their 70s. The only way NCP can be relevant after five years is if they patch up with UML for more seats and then break up again. That's what our good old communists are good for, making out and then breaking up as soon as one does not get the hot seat to loot some more.

In my personal opinion, this is the beginning of the end for our Maoists. In a decade or two, the new generation will forget their contribution to Nepali politics and the destruction and the loot while in the jungle and while in power as well. Who will remember Girija in a decade? No one. Same goes for Prachanda when he is gone.

Hope the new RSP government will bring some changes, mostly at the ground level and minimize corruption, promote transparency and accountability and make the bloated bureaucracy more efficient and hardworking as well. Then in five years, we will only have two parties, the RSP and Harka's or will the old corrupt guards still linger around to share power and loot... well, we still have five years to see where we do end up?

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