A Citizens Letter to the New Prime Minister

Congratulation Dr. Bhattarai, to you and your family! We wish you all the best for the future. May you be a better leader than we hope, and are hitherto accustomed to.

I have no doubt that you shall find your term in office challenging and awfully frustrating. You now bear responsibility for a politically fragmented country that has lost trust in its leaders and has been robbed of optimism. These are times when grand decisions must be made with urgency and wisdom. A balance many consider impossible.

Having irreparably cast off the shadows of 240 years of apathy we find ourselves ill prepared to face what we were promised would be a better future. Years of wasted opportunity and petty squabbling have undermined the aspirations with which we poured onto the streets in April 2006. And while the political future of the present Constituent Assembly members will be determined in time, the future of the nation and all its citizens is under threat.

While we recognize that the tangles of the political system ensure that you will not govern us alone, you alone will be held responsible for the accomplishments of your administration. The moral obligation of the CA is the completion of the peace process and ensuring we have a constitution within the prescribed time. Anything less will be deemed a failure. Is that fair? I don't know. I wish it were different, but it isn't.

You, being an educated man, carry additional burden of expectations. We, as a people, keep telling ourselves that our politicians are fools because they are uneducated, and if only we were to have an educated person leading us, we could overcome the perils of these testing times. As of right now, you’ve become a symbol of what an educated Nepali can offer this wronged nation, and if you disappoint there is much to grieve over. Have no illusion, we will hold you to a higher standard than we have held your predecessors.

We hope you remember –what many forget –that you are a public servant. Through you were voted in by the few elected members, we the people legitimize you and your office. Your priorities are to represent the nation and its interest. The interests of you party, your friends, and yourself are and must be subservient. Keep in mind that the country suffers each day under the brutal incompetence of the system you now have the reins of. How best to ease that pain is up to you?

Also know this: regardless of how you govern us in the next few months, and what its consequences are, the resilience of the Nepali people will ensure we survive this political hurricane. We have endured much and are thick skinned to political belittlement. But when our patience runs out, it will give way to an anger that has shaped the course of our history time and again. When the dust settles we will hold each of you accountable for wasting our time, resources, and hopes. I only pray we act more responsible than you and your colleagues.

We don’t expect great things from you. We only hope you do your duty.
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