...and more political gymnastics

I think we, the Nepalese people, are like sheep, totally and completely lacking any sense of our own, and happy to turn wherever our 'wise' politicians take us.

Yesterday, the maoists dropped out of the goverment, in a political wrangling bid to get seats in parliament out of elections, and they have the support of masses of people. In this day and age, can you believe that! They have announced a 'peaceful' agitation program to derail the election process.

For everyone's knowledge, this is their agitation program schedule that they announced yesterday (to be absolutely fair to readers, by the time you read this, it will probably change...knowing the Nepali penchance for doing this)

19-21 Sep - door to door awareness programme (read it as 'donation collection' and/or request to house agitators)

22 Sep: Mass meetings and demonstrations all over country (read stopping traffic and causing commuting crisis - this has a bigger nuisance factor than just shouting on a microphone)

30 Sep: Surrounding of Election offices to restrict nominations

29 Sep - 3 Oct: Exposing persons indicted in Rayamajhi Commission (on the People's Uprising last year) and "corrupt persons" (read after all this disturbances in the past weeks, trying to get the sympathy of the masses again, but touching topics that touch people, corruption and the people's uprising.

4-6 Oct: Nation Wide General Strike. (read clean air in Kathmandu.....)

For tourism, this could not come at a worse time, but somehow this is the fate of a tourism professional in Nepal. Not only did we have the tourism season of Nepal coinciding with our biggest festivals, Dasain and Tihar (which meant that we could not really celebrate the festivals as we wanted), since about 7 years, every year, during the season, some sort of agitation is announced by someone... such is the stupidity of the politicians... I guess for them it is tactical, but I hope they also realise that they are alienating a vast majority of people, who directly or indirectly benefit from tourism.

In end effect, the tourism itself will be safe. The only thing is what I like to call the 'hassle factor' (strikes, check points etc..) which will delay tourism.

But remember, most of Nepal's tourism is in the villages, and the further you go from Kathmandu and bigger towns, the less you will be affected by all this political wrangling.