Nepal (and its candidate) Kul Chandra Gautam lost out to Qatar for the UN General Assembly after a spirited fight carried out with dignity. Though the results were kept secret, it is said that Nepal did very well and came very close to winning the seat. Apparently, the powerhouses of Asia including China and India supported Nepal’s candidatures, but the block voting by the Organisation of Islamic Conference members and South Pacific island states, made things go in favour of Qatar. It would be interesting to know how the Southasian countries, particularly Bangladesh and Pakistan voted.

This is of course a loss, because Kul Chandra Gautam’s position as President of the GA would have been good for the Nepali national spirit, and his heightened profile would have been beneficial for the country in the future in many different ways in the days ahead, including in reconstruction and rehabilitation.

What was interesting was the kind of articles and writeups in Nepali newspapers and blogosphere which tended to denigrate the Nepali candidature as well as the candidate. It seems that there are many individuals in the Kathmandu Valley and the diasporic intelligentsia who would themselves have voted against Kul Chandra Gautam’s candidacy, were they given half a chance. This is a matter of sadness, of disconsolation.

The suggestion that Kul Ji has not contributed to Nepal flew in the face of reality and reason. Firstly, an international civil servant is not meant to serve his country but the world’s population. But the international civil servant can certainly do his/her country proud. In Kul Chandra Gautam’s case, the dedication required in his Unicef career was to the world’s most marginalised segments, the women and children of the developing world, including Nepal. Besides, upon his return to Nepal three years ago (he could have stayed on in NYC), Kul Ji engaged in the most critical and urgent areas of Nepali public life, including the peace process, in education, a ‘himsa antya abhiyan’, the Gautam Buddha International Peace Award, and many other requiring a public-spirit that the ‘tippanikaars’ would perhaps be surprised to learn about – unless they wrote what they did knowing all this.

Despite being landed with a weak foreign minister in Sujata Koirala for most of the presidency campaign, the Foreign Ministry bureaucrats in Kathmandu and in the New York mission rallied for the Nepal candidacy. One knows that Madhav Kumar Nepal and his team, as well as new prime minister Jhalanath Khanal and his team, stood behind the Kul Chandra Gautam candidacy. When the Qatar government representative came calling a couple of weeks ago to ask for withdrawal of our candidacy, the Prime Minister Khanal politely declined the suggestion – decorum was mantained. Meanwhile, those who proclaimed that our candidacy would endanger the livelihood of the many Nepalis working in Qatar were perhaps doing an injustice to Qatar.

On the whole, Nepal lost in a fair fight with a powerful opponent, and the post-facto castigation of our Foreign Office for poor diplomacy and the display of ‘rastriya atmaheentabodh’ by commentators and reporters (many unwilling even to divulge their names) indicates how low we have fallen in our self-esteem. Hopefully, in a race that was apparently close, these expressions of negativism regarding Kul Chandra Gautam’s commitment and caliber did not impact on the voting in New York.

Nepal had every right and the required confidence to put up this candidacy. Why did we reach out to pull down the candidacy before the vote and why do we now seek to pull ourselves down further after the loss? Nepal did good to reach for the high office of the President of the General Assembly, because we are a proud country that has the ability to rise above the daily vicissitudes of a transitioning society. Our’s is an adaptable society that keeps a humble profile but aims high. Kul Chandra Gautam was the best candidate we could have presented, and he was ideally suited for the job. Nepal lost, but gained from the experience. We also learned something about our ‘bichar nirmankarta haru’ in all of this, if I may say so.

It would have been good if the boy from Gulmi who worked his own way, against all odds, to reach high international stature had been elected President of the General Assembly. But there will be other arena, other engagements, inside the country and without, where someone like Kul Chandra Gautam will serve and do the citizens of Nepal proud.

By Kanak Mani Dixit Published IN NNSD YAHOOGROUPS 6 MARCH 2011