Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Moriarty Going The Bloomfield Route


US Ambassador Moriarty has for the longest time given the king the benefit of doubt. I admire the Americans for their caution on the extreme elements among the Maoists. And I have always liked it that Moriarty has tried to forge personal relationships with members of the regime. That is one of the things you do when you mean business. You don't shun your opponents, you engage them. You look for signs of progress, you offer face saving opportunities.

The UK Ambassador Bloomfield (Keith Bloomfield) on the other hand has been much more vocal to the chagrin of the regime. He has been in their face. Good for him.

But now looks like the regime has been testing even Moriarty's patience. That is a good omen for the democratic movement. After all, Moriarty is a personal emissary of a President Of The United States - POTUS - who made it absolutely clear in his State Of The Union address that he is for a major spread of democracy in the world. Noone can expect Moriarty to veer from that fundamental goal. He is a professional who intends to do his job and I have at no point understood him to be otherwise.

"How can the government say it is imposing fiscal discipline when two of its ministers are loan defaulters? How can the government say it is serious about fighting corruption when it willfully ignores the Asian Development Bank's own report regarding the alleged corruption by former Prime Minister (Sher Bahadur) Deuba? How can the government say it is operating with good governance under the rule of law when the extra judicial RCCC's (Royal Commission for Corruption Control) recent verdict looks more like a political vendetta than a serious exercise of judicial authority and when people who exercise their constitutional right to freedom of expression are imprisoned for sedition?"

The movement for democracy in Nepal needs every friend it can get, and it seems to have the greatest powers on the planet in the ranks. That should be a major morale booster. The work should go on.

I think the good news for the democratic powers of the world is that Nepal is in many ways the perfect laboratory for democracy as it might be spread in the rest of the world. A little less than half of humanity still does not have it.

Unlike Moriarty I am no diplomat. Frankly I am looking next door. I am thinking China. The War On Terror as we know it today got ignited because the Arab world is not a democracy. And that fire will be doused fully only after the entire Arab world becomes a democracy: plain and simple. Say that happens, then what next? I think the next big challenge, if it is not simultaneous as is, will be China. The political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party will have to be brought to an end for the good of the Chinese people, as for the good of the world. Democracies do not go to war with each other.

I am emotionally involved with the Tibetans as a Buddhist, I find the prospect of democracy in China intellectually fascinating, and it is also about being a good neighbor.

The world would be better off not seeking a hot war with China that it has found itself engulfed in in the case of the Arab world. And Nepal offers that opportunity. Nepal should become a democracy. And then it should export that democracy, starting with the not-China countries in South Asia.

Chinese democracy should be a Chinese effort. That might be the best way. But external help makes all the difference. Ask the Nepali autocrats. The goal is as to how best to extend that help. How to make it the utmost sophisticated? How to take it to a war footing? It is war with communications technology. It is to be a peaceful transformation to which the Chinese authorities will find it impossible to find a foreign power scapegoat. Or two or three.

That will take care of their saber rattling idiocy on the Taiwan question. You threaten to squash an island that is your prime source of Foreign Direct Investment? How smart is that? A democracy would never even dream of such a thing. In an era of a clear momentum towards economic integrations sovereignty and territory take whole new meanings.

There is another, perhaps more accurate explanation. These Chinese communist leaders are underemployed. If they don't rally around the Taiwan question on a regular basis, they don't have much else to do. Taiwan might or might not become part of China, but Taiwan sure unifies the Chinese authority figures.

Talk about Chinese economic success. Taiwan is a bigger one. Democracy in Taiwan is the reason why. You can not be a market if you are not also a democracy and democracy is a simple concept: it is one person one vote. Either you have it or you don't.

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