Things had begun to look a little clearer from Saturday night onward, after weeks of uncertainty. Leading figures from the government and opposition parties came to an agreement to create a parliamentary committee to look into the cooperative scam connected to Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Rabi Lamichhane in order to break the impasse in the House. Four second-rung leaders were assigned to a task force by the leaders to draft the investigative panel’s terms of reference.
Instead of presenting any convincing evidence to prove the allegations wrong, Lamichhane tried to label counter-accusations against his accusers, they said.Congress has been obstructing Parliament proceedings since Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal changed the coalition partners on March 4 by breaking alliance with the Nepali Congress and bringing the CPN-UML onboard. Congress has been obstructing Parliament for the last two months, demanding the formation of a parliamentary committee to probe Lamichhane’s alleged involvement in the embezzlement of cooperatives funds.
Lamichhane and his former business partner, GB Rai, who has fled the country after the cooperatives controversy surfaced, are accused of rerouting the money from various cooperatives in Pokhara, Butwal and Chitwan to Gorkha Media Network to jointly run Galaxy 4k Television, which is now dysfunctional.Lamichhane, the president of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), had been seeking time to defend himself in the Parliament after Congress demanded that a parliamentary committee be formed to probe his involvement in the scam. Though he got the opportunity to speak after insisting on it for two months, experts say he failed to defend himself.
In his speech, Lamichhane could not provide a clear answer as to why he wasn’t involved in the misappropriation of the cooperative funds, they say, adding that instead of addressing the questions raised against him, he raised other issues that would not prove him innocent.Som Bahadur Thapa, a former secretary of Parliament, said that Lamichhane was given the platform to clarify the charges against him but he couldn’t utilise that.“A programme presenter in television before joining politics in 2022, he definitely should have known what he was supposed to tell while addressing Parliament,” Thapa told the Post. “But, instead of answering the questions earnestly, he tried to ‘do politics’.”
During his about 40-minute-long address in Parliament, Lamichhane fiercely attacked the Congress party and its leaders, accusing them of being involved in various scandals. Lamichhane particularly took aim at Congress General Secretary Gagan Thapa and other senior party leaders.Unfortunately, Lamichhane presented himself in an utterly irresponsible way, spending most of his time slinging mud at opposition lawmakers, and the Congress General Secretary Gagan Thapa in particular—in fact at all those who were asking for a probe against him. He threw caution to the wind and tore parliamentary decorum to shreds. Had he presented himself in a responsible way and had he really wanted to use the opportunity to clear the old deadlock, his Sunday’s speech in the House could have been a turning point. Alas! It was just the opposite. He further provoked the opposition and spoiled the situation that was headed in a positive direction. The crux of his over half-an-hour-long lecture was that “if you all [leaders from opposition parties] have for so many years engaged in various wrongdoings, why should I be punished for following the same corrupt path?”
Source: Here
