KATHMANDU: The restoration of Nepal's dissolved lower house of Parliament by the Supreme Court and Sher Bahadur Deuba becoming the Prime Minister for the fifth term by winning the trust vote by a comfortable margin, has finally helped the Nepalese to heave a sigh of relief.
Nepal under the Prime Minister-ship of K.P. Sharma Oli had been occupying the international headlines for all the wrong reasons and the Himalayan nation plunged into uncertainties and political instability.
With almost one and a half years to go for the next general elections, Deuba as the most favourite choice to head the country, has already announced that his top priority would be to ensure that all the Nepalese are vaccinated against COVID-19 even as the threat of a third wave of the pandemic looms large. Deuba was instrumental in signing eight Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) during his India visit in August 2017.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate Deuba after he won the confidence vote is a clear cut indication that the unique and millenia-old people-to-people linkages that underpin the special friendship between the two countries would take greater heights.
Modi has also assured of supply of COVID-19 vaccines. It is expected that the supply of one million doses of vaccines from India which was stalled, will soon resume.
Deuba's diplomatic and political statements, including the one when he visited India in 2017 as the Prime Minister, proved his maturity in regard to how to maintain a balanced ties with both India and China. However, this time China has every other reason not to expect the same benevolence as it used to get during the time of Oli.
In a bid to portray India into bad light despite its best efforts to take the bilateral relation to a greater height, Oli tried to work overtime to appease its northern neighbour. Oli's egoistic rhetoric would have only caused more damage to the tiny country in the long run. Deuba has a challenging task to outdo the wrong.
At least four of the eight MoUs signed in 2017, including utilisation of India's Housing Grant Component to support reconstruction of 50,000 houses had largely helped Nepal.
Similarly MoUs on implementation of reconstruction packages in the education sector, cultural heritage sector and in the health sector in Nepal, were the testimony of how Deuba was a pragmatic leader who could easily visualise the issues and prioritize them. (IANS)
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