Difficult

Nearly every Nepali I speak with says “life is difficult, very very difficult in Nepal”. Indeed, as I have previously discussed, I find life difficult at times, too, but I have found a new way life is difficult – getting accurate news. I have checked four different sources – The Kathmandu Post, Ekantipur.com, Nepalnews.com, and Mark’s blog and the facts just aren’t lining up about the election situation!

[background] Democracy came to Nepal in 1990, so it’s a relatively new concept ‘round here. Then the son of the king went on a rampage and killed his entire family; this spoiled the democracy. Since I haven’t finished reading the history of Nepal Mark lent to me, I’m not 100% how we got to this point of stubborn political parties… but I do know that there are many many political parties who were not agreeing on the direction of the country until last week when all but one of them decided to cooperate. What we’re left with is the Madhesi party (aka United Democratic Madhesi Front [UDMF]) and everyone else (aka the Seven Party Alliance [SPA]) negotiating about what it would take for the Madhesis to participate in the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, which will decide who will write the country’s new constitution, 10 April. [/background]

I heard from Mark (who had checked the web – source unknown) this morning that the Madhesi party had again missed the deadline, which had been changed so the party could complete the task of submitting necessary paperwork to participate in the CA elections. A post on his blog reports the same, so no new news there. However, sitting in front of me in the internet store is the Kathmandu Post, whose headline reads “SPA, UDMF finally reach deal”. Who’s a girl to believe?!?

So, I went on a fact-finding mission to the internet; actually, the two Nepali news sites Mark had recommended to me. Ekantipur.com has the same article as The Post. Nepalnews.com reports that the involved parties talked early into Monday morning and reached an agreement, but were having difficulty deciding how to word the agreement. Still, no definitive answer to what’s going on.

I am heartened by the news that the parties have come to an agreement, though I wish I could get more than one source to say so. I’ll just have to continue to wait like the rest of the country until someone sees fit to tell us what’s going on. Waiting, too, is very very difficult.