President Duterte, Mayor Dwariklal and Corruption                                 

Recently the mayor of Itahari, Dwariklal Chaudhary, has attracted an intense controversy in the social media and among journalist and intellectual circle.  It is because he made some controversial remarks about corrupted bureaucrats and so called ‘Patrukaar’ meaning biased journalists whom he believes are driven by the vested interests of the politicians. In addition, he also openly challenged government and his party for his rhetoric to punish him if found guilty. Although his phone interview with Ravi Lamichhane was highly condemned by people but it has also given birth to different questions that are very crucial to be answered. To a larger extent, at one point, Dwariklal Chaudhary and former mayor of Davao and the present president of Philippines Rodrigo Duterte trigger some striking similarities in their rhetoric to do their job and the way of speaking.

Duterte and Dwariklal

 The infamous president of Philippines and former mayor of Davao, Rodrigo Duterte has been in the limelight for his controversial remarks and actions when he was the mayor and even when he is in the presidential seat. His political origin steams from a lawyer to state prosecutor and eventually to the mayor enabling him to rule the city for past 30 years. During his tenure, he built his ‘strongman’ reputation by fighting some of the biggest problems in the city- crime, militancy and corruption where he was successful to ensure his city as the safest in Philippines. In the presidential election of 2016, he won with a landslide majority when he said that he wanted to replicate the same strategy to tackle crime and corruption at the national level. After taking the executive seat, he started the bloody drug war that led to the death of over 5000 in a single year with more than 170,000 arrests including hundreds of government employees, 263 elected officials and 69 uniformed personnel. He was relentless that he even urged the members of public to kill the suspected criminals and drug addicts in his total clean-up campaign because he said he believed that it was only the way to cure the problem of the Philippines. He has been condemned by human rights activists and international community for extrajudicial killings and his controversial approach to tackle the problem.

Duterte is not only popular for his drug war campaign but also for his irresponsible and fierce remarks in different occasions. For example: he called former UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon ‘a fool’. He also drew further controversy when he called the former US President Barack Obama as ‘a son of a whore’ and later he did not stop to call the Pope of Vatican City ‘the son of a whore’. On the top of that he even challenged the international community by threatening to withdraw Philippines membership from UN. Not only that, he admitted that he killed an individual when he was a teenager and threatened druggists and corrupted officials that he would push them down from the flying chopper. Threatening to kill is very common with Duterte.  However, in most of the occasions, he apologized telling that his remarks were merely jokes. Although full of allegations and condemnation, he is very popular and likeable among the people of Philippines resulting to yet another landslide win by his political supporters in the 2019 senate elections which has further given him a majority in the upper house.

Dwariklal and his approach to control corruption in Itahari looks similar to that of Duterte. Looking at Dwariklal and his contested remarks, it obviously drew special attention of journalists because Chaudhary has openly threatened to punish the corrupted government employees, bureaucrats and also insisted that he has enough economic resources to break the nose of the ‘biased journalist’ whom he termed as ‘Patrukaar’. In the earlier video, he was found to be showing hand gesture to shame a journalist that initially gathered public praise too. He further stayed firm in his stance that he will keep on punishing, physically assaulting and public shaming all the corrupted government employees and journalists. Although taking law in his hand and doing such jobs seems irresponsible to his position however, the public opinion on his contentious remarks has divided the public opinion. It is very surprising to see individuals speaking on his favor whereas many are questioning his sanity, position and bullish remarks. Moving forward, he also admitted that he personally punished few government officials in charge of corruption, physically assaulting and manhandling them and further claims that they were ousted from their duties. Like Deuterte, Dwarikalal also apologized for his remarks.

Corruption in Nepal and Dwariklal

Nepal positions itself as one of the most corrupted nations in the world Ranking 124 least corrupt out of 175 countries according to the 2018 report by Transparency International. Nepali society has been the victim of systematic corruption and corruption has been so institutionalized among the people that these days it just becomes very normal. Very few of the employees have been punished in corruption charge and the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) also faces severe complaints for its inability to punish so-called ‘big fish’. Ranging from Wide-body corruption to the gold smuggling case the government is unable to punish so-called ‘big-fish’. This impunity coming out of the misuse of power or political asylum has definitely garnered dissatisfaction among the public. Dwariklal has also faced different charges for corruption where he claims to get clean sheet in every petition filed against him. The allegations to Dwariklal and his accusations against so-called ‘land mafias’, bureaucrats and politicians definitely reflect how our state mechanisms fail to stop the systematic corruption and acute misuse of power and position in the vested interest politicians, bureaucrats and mafias.

Some questions to be answered.

• How will the Communist Party Nepal take the challenge of the mayor?
• Can we confidently say the journalism sector in Nepal is unbiased and professional?
• Are our legal mechanisms and service delivery system efficient enough to take prompt action?
• People seem to like his rhetoric of punishing the corrupted (not the way he spoke), what made people appreciate that?
• What if Dwariklal wins the second term like Duterte? Will that make him legitimate to carry on such approach?
• Is Dwariklal a reflection of a frustrated individual who is fed up with corrupted bureaucracy and biased journalism?
• How will state act upon his public challenge?
• What if he literally breaks the nose of that journalist?
• Do we prefer Dwariklal who takes laws in hand to fight against corruption or someone who follows legal system that is often delayed and infested by impunity?