Forget about removing me, PM Oil says

Kathmandu, Jun 28

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said on Sunday that internal and external elements had started making movements against the present government after it issued the updated map of the country including Nepal’s territory encroached by India.

However, he challenged such elements maintaining that Nepal’s nationalism was strong. “If anyone has dreamt of removing the prime minister of this country for including the new updated map in the Constitution, this will not be possible. Our nationalism is not that weak,” he said.

He made the statement while addressing a programme organised in Baluwatar on the occasion of the 69^th Memorial Day of late leader Madan Kumar Bhandari.

According to him, the new map with the territory that Nepal used for 146 years after the Sugauli Treaty in 1816 was not printed by mistake. He expressed hope that the encroached land would be returned at any cost.

PM Oli said that the government was protecting the national interest as per the guidance of the People’s Multiparty Democracy. “The sovereignty of a country is not small or big. This is not a time to sit idle considering ourselves a ‘helpless-yam’, we are not yam,” he said.

He also said that the country that had a glorious history, dynamic present and bright future could not remain neighbour-locked for ever.

Stating that he had to leave the post of the country’s chief executive after signing a transit treaty with China, he said, “We did not have majority in the parliament then. But dreaming the same, some elements had started activities against the government. They only had not dared to say it openly.”

Therefore, this is an illusion, let them make their try as the situation is not same now, he said.

 “No one should make a haste and no one should carry any biases,” said Oli who is also the chair of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP).

Indicating that the internal and external forces had been trying to push the country into the instability, he said, “Just listen to the media from New Delhi, you will know what is happening where. Activities happening in the hotels in Kathmandu and activism of the Indian Embassy further clarifies the matter.”

He clarified that the government did not make any mistake by publishing the updated map, including Limpiyadhura in it. “The land that we used for 146 years was snatched away 58 years ago. We want to get that land back. We have not encroached other’s land nor interfered in other country’s internal matter. Therefore, we have not committed any mistake,” he said.

PM Oli said that he had chosen politics not to be a ruler but to serve the people of the country and expressed his commitment that he would fight for the future of the country as well, and at the backdrop of all these, there are dimensions of the People’s Multiparty Democracy, a philosophy devised by late Bhandari.

“The party guided by the philosophy of late leader Bhandari clearly understands it. I don’t just want to cling to the post but if I am subdued, no one will dare to talk about the nationalism so openly,” he said.

PM Oli maintained that the government was marching ahead instilling confidence in people and inspired by the philosophy of Madan Bhandari.

According to him, Nepali people admired Bhandari as a charismatic leader when he first addressed a mass meeting as the spokesperson of the then Nepal Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) at the Open Theatre in Kathmandu in 1990.

He said that Bhandari was a far-sighted leader and the provisions that he was discontented with in the Constitution of 1991 were included in the interim constitution of 2063.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 29 June 2020.