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The budget session of the federal parliament kicked off on May 8 amid a nationwide lockdown. President Bidya Devi Bhandari is scheduled to present the government’s policy and program on May 15. As per constitutional provisions, government will have to present budget for fiscal year 2020-21 on May 28. Before that, there will be pre-budget discussions.

Before the house commencement, of 441 lawmakers and employees of the central secretariat underwent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) coronavirus tests. Untested lawmakers were not allowed into the parliament. 

Speaking in the House of Representative, opposition parties’ lawmakers came down heavily against the government. President of the main opposition Sher Bahadur Deuba questioned the intent with which PM KP Oli brought the twin ordinances.

“At a time the whole country is suffering from the coronavirus, the prime minister introduced ordinances with the goal of weakening democratic norms and values,” Deuba said. (After widespread criticism, the government has already withdrawn the ordinances.)

“There was also a case of abduction of a lawmaker. Nepali Congress takes these issues seriously and concludes that the government has lost political and moral ground to remain in power,” Deuba said.   

Leader of Janata Samajbadi Party Baburam Bhattarai urged Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to step down, partly over his poor health. “The government’s image has gone down because of its anti-democracy activities. The prime minister should step down to protect Loktantra,” Bhattarai said. “The efforts to split parties and the intent of capturing the constitutional council are clear dangers to democracy,” he added.

Deputy Parliamentary Party leader of ruling Nepal Communist Party Subas Nembang said both ruling and opposition parties should stand together to fight coronavirus. Nembang said along with endorsing the budget, this parliament session has a responsibility of settling the remaining issues related to the peace process. 

“The law-amendment process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission on Enforced Disappearance has reached a final stage. I am hopeful the remaining tasks of peace process will be completed in this session of parliament,” Nembang said.

The next meeting of parliament is scheduled for May 10. PM Oli is likely to address the Parliament on the day.

Nepal government on May 6 extended the nationwide lockdown against Covid-19 by another 12 days. It did so in spite of heavy pressure from economists and businessmen who were in favor of progressive loosening of the lockdown. 

The hard reality is that Nepal is unprepared for a post-lockdown situation. “Back in the middle of January, Nepal became the first South Asian country to detect the novel coronavirus,” says Dr Kiran Raj Pandey, who has been closely tracking the virus in Nepal. “Even the World Health Organization was warning us that we were a high-risk country. And yet there were next to no preparations.” 

As Nepal fumbled for a response, developed countries did two major things: carry out massive testing and gauge the capacity of their healthcare system. Through massive testing, they identified the actual status of the spread. That, in turn, prepared them to start easing the lockdown in low-risk areas. There has been no such effort in Nepal. For instance, Nepal has failed to effectively manage the flow of people along the porous Nepal-India border during the lockdown. Nor has it been able to control the free movement of its nationals within the country. 

It has been almost five months since the first outbreak; corona detection kits and medical equipment are still in short supply. The Nepal Army was entrusted to procure medical supplies from abroad a month ago, yet procedural hurdles continue to hamstring its efforts. In the absence of test kits, testing has been halted in parts of the country. In other parts, testing machines have stopped functioning. 

Indefinitely prolonging the lockdown without also carrying out the requisite number of tests is prolonging the inevitable, and will contribute to further impoverishment of the daily wage earners who are already struggling. Yet there is also no hard data on the social and economic impacts of the lockdown in Nepal. In this situation, Dr Pandey advises gradual easing of the lockdown coupled with massive testing. 

The government was apparently preparing to ease the lockdown in low-risk areas after May 6. But the fear of the already significant movement of people inside the country turning into a flood stopped it. 

A team of security forces has given color codes to 77 districts on the basis of risk: red (high risk area), yellow (partial risk area) and green (low risk area). According to the Home Ministry, 29 districts are categorized as red, 28 as yellow, and 20 as green areas. 

But it is not easy for security forces to control people’s movement. Many vehicles have gotten travel passes from local authorities, which the security personnel must honor. Already, people who had gone out of Kathmandu at the start of the lockdown are returning, and most of them are not following quarantine guidelines. Thus even though Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa was in favor of a gradual easing of the lockdown, he had to back down after the Health Ministry intervened. 

Similarly, post-lockdown measures have not been thought through. Doctors suggest continuing with social distancing measures for months even if the lockdown is eased. 

On May 1, a doctor’s team of Kiran Raj Pandey, Anup Subedee, Bishesh Khanal and Bhagawan Koirala published their joint study: “Covid-19 Control Strategies and Intervention Effects in Resource Limited Settings: A Modeling Study.” It suggests measures that can be adopted after easing the lockdown. The study says, “A month-long lockdown and physical distancing interventions combined with an active case finding intervention instituted early is likely to effectively control a potential epidemic, however physical distancing and testing interventions have to continue for a year.”

The findings suggest that the best control strategy against the epidemic is a combination of interventions that identify and isolate infected individuals and reduce contact between individuals. “A lockdown can prevent the escalation of the epidemic, but is likely to be of limited value if no additional control measures are put in place,” the report says.  

One problem is that the country’s average age is 24.6 years. Most of the youth may not show any symptoms and simply pass on the virus to the infirm and the elderly, who could be affected much worse. This is also why widespread testing, including that of the youth, is vital. 

“Again, the easiest and most effective way of stopping the virus from spreading is massive testing. If the pandemic goes out of control, it would be very difficult for us to stop it,” Dr Pandey warns. 

Despite a month and half of lockdown, the number of novel coronavirus cases in Nepal continues to rise. As of May 5, the number of infected has climbed to 82. Of them, 61 are male and 21 female.

Banke district’s Nepalgunj, which lies on the border with India, has emerged as the hotspot in Nepal, with 24 new infections reported in the past couple of days. In the past 24 hours, seven new cases were detected there. Local authorities have imposed a curfew to contain the virus. Authorities fear the outbreak in Nepalgunj could reach a community-transmission level.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Health, 31 people have been infected in Province 1, 13 in Province 2, 7 in Bagmati Province, 1 in Gandaki Province, 24 in Province 5, 0 in Karnali Province, and 5 in Sudurpaschim Province. 

According to the ministry, around 21,000 people are currently quarantined in various parts of the country, with 120 people in isolation. “The health condition of all infected people is normal and they continue to undergo treatment,” said Dr. Bikas Devkota, spokesperson at the ministry.

Authorities attribute the increasing number of corona cases to flexible lockdown. Even during the nationwide lockdown, people have been traveling. There has been a growing movement of people in and out of Kathmandu as well as along the Nepal-India border.

As the prolonged lockdown has badly hit the country’s economy, authorities are working on multiple models to ease the lockdown. Speaking at a parliamentary committee, Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa said that the government was contemplating easing the lockdown as it could create a potential economic crisis.

Public health experts warn that easing lockdown without a massive expansion of testing could lead to a second wave of transmissions. In Nepal, the testing process has been slow. Due to the delay in purchasing testing kits, government hospitals are struggling to expand testing. It has been over a month since the decision on buying corona kits through a Government-to-Government (G-2-G) process was made. But there has been little progress since. 

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli may have averted an impending crisis in the ruling Nepal Communist Party for now. But, as soon as the coronavirus threat dies down, there could yet be stiff opposition to the functioning of his government from the opposition parties.

The opposition parties—chiefly the Nepali Congress, the Samajbadi Party, the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal, and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party—had little coordination before the federal government came up with two controversial ordinances on April 20. The ordinances, later withdrawn, allowed for easier splits of Nepali political parties and restricted the role of the main opposition party in the constitutional council, the body tasked with making appointments to vital constitutional bodies.

At the time, even if opposition parties were critical of government functioning, no one was demanding the prime minister’s resignation. In fact, when the anti-coronavirus lockdown was put in place, the opposition parties fully supported the government. Yet the ordinances brought with ‘mala fide’ intent changed all that.

It helped bring about the long-delayed merger between the Samajbadi and the RJPN, the two Madhes-based parties, which could now spell trouble for the Oli government.

Now big and small opposition parties are preparing to fight the government’s ‘totalitarian tendencies’, which includes asking PM Oli to step down.

Political analyst Puranjan Acharya who closely tracks Congress internal politics says much depends on party leadership. “Congress President as well as its other office-bearers are failing to effectively check the Oli government’s totalitarian tendency,” says Acharya, adding that the second generation NC leaders should step forward.

Countering ‘divide and conquer’

Three opposition parties—the NC, the new Janata Samajbadi Party, and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP)—had even issued a joint statement deploring government functioning, and they plan on moving ahead together. “The current government is headed towards totalitarianism by destroying democratic norms and values… We vow to collectively fight this,” says their joint statement released last week. The pair of ordinances riled the opposition parties as they supposedly demonstrated the PM’s intent on ‘dividing and conquering’ the opposition. Another issue that angered them was the ‘abduction’ by Oli’s close associates of Dr. Surendra Yadav, a Samajbadi lawmaker, in order to split the Madhes-based party. Had the party split, the seven breakaway members were scheduled to join the Oli-led government.

Even though opposition parties have their respective agendas and don’t see eye to eye on everything, they plan on developing an alliance on common issues. The top agenda for Madhes-based parties has always been constitution amendment. They supported the Oli government so that the constitution could be amended. They now feel betrayed. Then RJPN never joined the government. Nonetheless, it helped Oli garner two-thirds support in the federal parliament, but pulled its support after Oli ruled out amendment before the next elections.

The Samajwadi Party Nepal, which unlike the RJPN was a part of the federal government, parted ways this past December, citing the failure of PM Oli to take an initiative to amend the national charter.

Though the NC and the Janata Samajbadi have come together against the government, there are some ideological differences between them. For instance, the Congress does not support the Madhes-centric parties’ ethnicity-based federal model.

Janata Samajbadi leader Keshav Jha acknowledges efforts to form an anti-government alliance between three opposition forces. “Though we have differences with the Congress and the RPP, there could be alliance on corruption, bad governance and other people-centric issues,” says Jha. After the lockdown is over, the Janata Samajbadi is preparing to hit the streets in Madhes with the support of other backers of identity politics.

The RPP, currently led by Kamal Thapa, Prakash Chandra Lohani and Pashupati Shumsher Rana, however, is still undecided about joining the opposition front. The party decision to join a meeting called by the Congress last week generated controversy. Thapa expressed his dissatisfaction over Lohani and Rana signing a joint press statement issued by opposition parties. “There are views in the party that we should retain our separate identity instead of joining any block,” says Mohan Shrestha, an RPP central committee member. Shrestha, however, says the RPP will harden its anti-government position in the days ahead.

Holding Oli to account

The opposition parties are likely to mount their protests against the Oli government, either collectively or on their own. And when the national parliament opens for budget session, they will try to hold the federal government to account for its supposed failure to contain the novel coronavirus contagion.

NC Central Working Committee member Shekhar Koirala says time is ripe for opposition parties to band together against the government's intent of destroying democratic values. “Minimizing the role of opposition party in the constitutional council suggests the government plans to control constitutional bodies, and destroy the principle of separation of powers. The government is on a totalitarian path, and the NC shoulders the responsibility of protecting democratic norms and values,” says Koirala. He thinks that as the main opposition party, it is the responsibility of Nepali Congress to bring all opposition forces together.

As pressure continues to build on Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to step down, he has only two options: either establish his majority support in party’s standing committee and parliamentary party, or quit. Another, albeit less likely scenario, is continuation of Oli as PM if he publicly acknowledges his mistakes, and assures the rival Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Madhav Kumar Nepal faction that those mistakes won’t be repeated.

In the nine-member NCP secretariat, the top party organ that oversees the party’s regular functioning, PM Oli is already in a minority. He is also unsure about his ability to garner majority support in the 45-member standing committee and the 174-member parliamentary party. This is why he is delaying the standing committee meeting. Oli says he is busy preparing the new policy and program and the budget. But he was nonetheless forced to call the party’s secretariat meeting on the evening of April 29. The meeting witnessed heated exchanges, with majority members demanding his resignation from the posts of PM and party chair.  

PM Oli is trying to secure the support of majority lawmakers of the party. In the federal lower house, the ruling NCP has 174 lawmakers. Of them, 78 are in Oli’s favor, 53 in Dahal’s, and 43 in Nepal’s. To establish majority support, Oli needs 88 lawmakers. In order to do so, Oli is reportedly offering ministerial positions to the lawmakers close to Dahal and Nepal.  

If Oli refuses to resign even after failing to gain the support of majority lawmakers in the party, the rival faction is likely to register a no-confidence motion in the parliament against the PM. In this scenario, he will lose his post, as opposition parties are sure to vote against him. However, both Dahal and Nepal are reluctant to opt for this course as it could ultimately lead to the party’s split. The two are of the view that Oli should be removed from the PM’s chair by keeping the party intact. So their first priority is forcing him to resign by pushing him into a minority in vital party committees.

Hemmed in

PM Oli has warned of grave consequences. With President Bidhya Devi Bhandari firmly on his side, he can threaten with mid-term elections or a state of emergency. However, the constitution does not allow PM to announce mid-term elections, says constitutional expert Dr. Bipin Adhikari. “Mid-term elections can happen only if the federal lower house cannot elect new prime minister on repeated attempts. The constitution has envisaged a full-term of parliament,” Adhikari says.

With limited options, the PM has adopted a strategy of divide and conquer, and buying time to weaken the rival faction. In the party’s secretariat meeting, Oli dropped a bombshell when he proposed making Bamdev Gautam, someone who is not even a member of parliament, as prime minister.

“The proposal of Gautam as prime minister has come with the intent of fomenting divisions. As this is not a feasible proposal, it could easily backfire on Oli,” says NCP leader Haribol Gajurel, a confidante of co-chair Dahal. “It is not in PM Oli’s nature to realize his mistakes, and the new proposal will further complicate things,” he says. In the secretariat meeting, Gautam, however, supported Oli’s proposal even while Nepal and Dahal abstained.

The constitution allows only a member of the federal lower house to be the prime minister. Oli has for long been neglecting party secretariat’s decision to appoint Gautam to the federal upper house, and to clear his way to the PM’s chair by amending the constitution. Now Oli has made a sudden volte-face. Nonetheless, amending the constitution won’t be easy as the ruling party is short of the required two-thirds majority in the lower house. “It is just a time-buying tactic,” argues Gajurel.

In the April 29 secretariat meeting, PM Oli also proposed the elevation of senior leader Nepal to the post of third party co-chair. Earlier, through his close confidants, PM Oli had offered some ministerial and chief ministerial positions to leaders close to Nepal. Similarly, Oli has assured Nepal of his support for the latter’s bid for party chairmanship in the party’s next general convention. Yet the ongoing corona crisis will make it nearly impossible to hold the general convention by the scheduled late-April 2021 date. Nepal knows this all too well.

The secretariat is again meeting on May 2 to take a final call on the standing committee. However, according to leaders, Oli wants to push it back as he currently does not command a majority in the committee.

Towards denouement

Both the NCP factions are in the middle of separate signature campaigns to prove their majorities in the parliamentary party. If the rival faction succeeds in securing majority support, Oli will have to resign. “It will be better for the prime minister to heed public opinion and step down. He has become highly unpopular following his pair of mistimed ordinances,” said Gajurel.

The long-standing rift in the ruling party had reached a climax when Oli issued two ordinances, one related to making splits in Nepali political parties easier, another related to minimizing the role of main opposition party in the constitutional council, a body tasked with making vital appointments to various constitutional bodies. Oli didn’t consult anyone beyond his small coterie on these ordinances.

Oli withdrew the ordinances after considerable backlash from in and outside the ruling party. Yet many party leaders reckoned he had already gone too far. In the past two and half years, Dahal and Nepal have been unhappy with what they saw as Oli’s ‘monopoly’ in the government and the party.

Oli is trying to buy time on two grounds. First, he says the rival faction should wait till the coronavirus crisis is over. Second, he argues that the government is already preparing to summon the House soon. As per constitutional provisions, the government will have to present its budget by May-end. Before that, there has to be a pre-budget parliamentary discussion and the government has to unveil its annual policies and programs.

On April 25, Nepal marked the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake that rendered nearly 3.5 million people homeless, destroyed countless public and government buildings, and claimed around 9,000 lives. Five years on, 87 percent of private houses have been rebuilt, according to public records. Yet thousands are still forced to take shelter in tents and cracked buildings.

Soon after the earthquake, the government decided to give Rs 300,000 in grant to each affected household, on an installment basis, to build new houses. But the cash proved insufficient for the poor and vulnerable groups to build houses by sticking to the construction standards set by the Nepal Reconstruction Authority (NRA). In contrast, the comparably rich households took the government grant and built their houses, either by adding their own money or by taking out loans.

Initially, neither the government nor donor agencies paid much attention to vulnerable groups. There are basically two categories of households that have been unable to rebuild. The first group is comprised of single women, elderly, disabled, the landless people who do not have citizenship certificates, and the extremely poor, all of whom have been categorized as vulnerable. They are yet to start rebuilding despite accepting Rs 50,000 in the first installment of the government grant. 

In the second group are those who built the house foundation with the first installment but were then unable to complete the house. For this group of people, the NRA has a policy of providing Rs 300,000 in loan with five percent interest. But the commercial banks are hesitant, and an expected progress has not materialized. NRA officials say banks are not cooperating enough. 

 Foundational challenge

Sonam Funjo Sherpa, 65, from Chhekampar of Gorkha district shares a painful story. Widowed after the death of his wife a decade ago, he has been alone and unable to rebuild. “He cannot walk, but it takes five days to reach to district headquarters to apply for the grant,” says Ward Chair Pasang Funjo Lama. “He has a torn citizenship certificate without a photo, and his name is blurred. So he needs a new citizenship certificate too.” Sherpa is living in a house damaged by the earthquake.

Likewise, Ram Bahadur Shrestha, a permanent resident of Indrawati Rural Municipality in Sindhupalchowk district, says the Rs 50,000 he got in first installment was spent flattening his steep land so that he could build on it. “I do not have money to build the damp-proof course, the house foundation, which is essential to be eligible for the second grant installment,” Shrestha says, adding that he is not in a position to take out a loan. Nor does he have all the required documents. His four-member family is living in a makeshift house. 

Initially, there were an estimated 18,000 vulnerable people. Of them, according to the NRA, 3,000 have built their houses with the assistance of donor agencies, local governments, and other philanthropic organizations. “Currently, around 15,000 people have not started building their houses. We have instructed local governments to collect data of such groups. The lockdown has disrupted the task of data-collection,” says Manohar Ghimire, joint spokesperson and information officer at the NRA.

To resolve their problem, the NRA plans to provide them with an additional Rs 50,000 in grant but the cabinet is yet to endorse it. Similarly, the NRA will request local governments and interested donor agencies to assist vulnerable groups. “We are deploying carpenters and other technical manpower to help this group build their houses,” says Ghimire.

 Commercial disinterest 

For the second category of people, the NRA has been urging the commercial banks to simplify loan procedure. Soon after the earthquake, the government brought out a scheme of providing low-interest bank loans but the scheme has been poorly implemented. Commercial banks were reluctant to give loans to poor people, and the process was made extremely difficult for those who could not show a regular source of income. 

The NRA has also been continuously talking with commercial banks about concessional loans for vulnerable people. In 2017, the cabinet had endorsed the Working Procedure for Subsidised Credit, which allows the people who were unable to build houses after taking the first installment to take out further loans. But hundreds of earthquake-affected families cannot produce the required documents. 

The vulnerable people in earthquake-affected districts are still living in temporary or damaged houses, and even a small earthquake can destroy their abodes. There are also poor people who got the first requirement but spent the money to sustain their livelihood. Bishnu Maya Pariyar of Ajirkot, Gorkha district says, “The 50,000 rupees we got in the first installment were spent on daily essentials. Now, we don’t know how to go about rebuilding our homes,” Pariyar says. 

Single women face additional difficulties in earthquake-affected districts. Sarita Karki, 32, a resident of Kamalamai Municipality-5 of Sindhuli district, has lost all hopes. Soon after the earthquake, her husband, who was working in Malaysia, died. “I have since been struggling to feed my son and daughter. I hear the government helps single women purchase land and build a house. But I don’t know how to go about it,” she says.  

Bishnu Maya Magar, 62, of the same village, was abandoned by her husband 10 years ago. Her only income is government allowance for single women, and there is no way she can build a house on her own.  

Five years since the earthquake, thousands of poor and vulnerable families are still struggling to put a roof over their heads. With the monsoon approaching, they could not get help soon enough. 

With inputs from our district correspondents Shiva Ram Upreti (Gorkha), Yubaraj Puri (Sindhupalchowk), and Rajan Gaunle (Sindhuli)

It has been over four months since the first outbreak of the novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan of Hubei province, China. On January 24 Nepal recorded its first Covid-19 case. Any way you look at it, Nepal had sufficient time to prepare, including on the purchase of medicines and medical kits. Yet most of this precious time was wasted.   

Medical doctors, nurses, and other frontline health workers say they are desperately short on gloves, medical masks, respirators, goggles, face shields, gowns, and aprons. Other urgent needs are ventilators, testing kits, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and medicines. The testing process has been painfully slow due to the lack of sufficient test kits and other supporting equipment.  

Nepal has fallen far short of testing all corona suspects, which is vital to curtailing the spread of the virus. Right now only those who came to Nepal from abroad after the second week of March are being tested. Public health experts say low testing levels could be a reason behind the paucity of detected cases in Nepal, even when compared to other South Asian countries. Similarly, due to the lack of PPE, doctors and other health workers are reluctant to treat those suspected of corona or any other infectious disease. 

A doctor at the Kathmandu Medical College (KMC) says that the hospital staff has been told to prepare for the testing and treatment of possible Covid-19 patients, even as they are short on PPE and other protective gear. “Doctors, nurses and other working staffs worry they will be asked to tend to suspected Covid-19 patients even without these protective gears,” the doctor says, requesting anonymity.  

The situation is worse outside Kathmandu. For example, in the vulnerable Province 2, there are just 11 ventilators and testing level is slow. Various local governments have also complained of insufficient test kits. 

Long and short of it

Dr. Lochan Karki, President of Nepal Medical Association (NMC), acknowledges a slight improvement in the delivery of PPE. “In the initial days, the situation was dire. Things now are better, but we still don’t have sufficient stock if the number of coronavirus cases shoots up,” Karki says. He says still both private and government hospitals are short of vital medical equipment. Some private hospitals are thus trying to get supplies from private companies abroad. 
A rising global demand and severe disruptions in global PPE supply chains maybe a reason for the delay in their import in Nepal. But the federal government’s mishandling of the purchasing process is undoubtedly more responsible. First, the government initiated the process too late. Second, the decision to allow a private company to make these imports without due process invited controversy. The contract was scrapped and another one started, which also took time. 

To fast track the process, a government-to-government (G2G) purchase was initiated. On March 29, the cabinet instructed Nepal Army to do so. The army wrote to China, India, Israel, Singapore and South Korea, requesting for the needed medical supplies. 
The army took nearly three weeks to complete paperwork. Even after this, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali had to talk to high-level Indian and Chinese officials to hurry things up. Of the five countries, there has been some progress on the purchase of test kits and medical equipment from China, while some medicines have also been imported from India.  

Nepal Army completed paperwork to purchase kits and medicine from China on April 20, and the army says it will take another two weeks for the first consignment to arrive. Chinese companies have informed that they are under pressure to deliver to other countries as well. In total, the army will be importing 340 tons of medical supplies worth some Rs 2.24 billion from China—and in multiple stages. The first consignment will be via a charter flight and the subsequent ones will be imported via road. 

Wait and watch, not  

On the purchase of medicines from India, there has been no substantial progress. Nepal Army has dispatched a list of medicines and equipment but is yet to receive specific prices for those items, says army Spokesperson Bigyan Dev Pandey. India is itself purchasing medical supplies, including test kits, from China. Government officials have not shared details about the progress in bringing medical supplies from Israel, Singapore, and South Korea. 
Despite the initial controversy, private companies are also being used for the imports. The Department of Health Services has signed three separate agreements with Om Surgical, Hamro Medi Concern, and Lumbini Health Care for the import of medical goods. These companies are expected to bring medical equipment worth Rs 300 million from China within next two weeks. They could yet take some time to arrive. 

As the World Health Organization puts it, the disruptions in the global supply of PPE and other medical supplies owes to, “…rising demand, panic buying and to some extent misuse of those equipment. Supplies can take months to deliver and market manipulation is widespread, with stocks frequently sold to the highest bidder.” 
To meet rising global demand, says WHO, the medical industry needs to crack up manufacturing by 40 percent. 
Nepal must increase its imports amid all these challenges. Its lethargic health bureaucracy needs to step up its game if Nepal is to tide over the corona crisis with limited damage. 

At a time Nepal is struggling with Covid-19, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli-led government on April 20 introduced an ordinance to relax the provision of party split. The ordinance has changed some provisions of the Political Parties Act.

According to new provisions, a new party can be registered at the Election Commission with 40 percent support either in parliamentary party or in party central committee. President Bidya Devi Bhandari issued the ordinance on the cabinet’s recommendation. Earlier, there was the provision of 40 percent support both in parliamentary party as well as the central committee for party split. 

The ordinance came at a time when there is news of growing rift inside the ruling Nepal Communist Party. The NCP leaders, however, say the change won’t affect the dynamics of ruling parties.

It is unclear why government amended the law at a time the country is concentrating its efforts on fighting the coronavirus. The provision, however, makes it easy for rival factions of ruling parties to break off.

There are speculations the new ordinance is aimed at engineering a divide among Madhes-based parties. It is rumored that some members of the two main Madhesi parties—the Samajbadi Party and the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal—want to join the government.

Samajbadi leader Upendra Yadav and RJPN’s Rajendra Mahato both said that although the new ordinance was apparently brought to weaken them, the move could backfire on the ruling parties.

Oli’s decision invited criticism from his own and opposition parties. In the cabinet meeting, ministers from former Maoist party objected to the PM’s proposal. Similarly, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali also opposed it. PM Oli, however, insisted on the proposal’s passage saying that it would not affect NCP dynamics. The main opposition Nepali Congress, in its preliminary reaction, termed the timing of the move ‘inappropriate’.