Sushil Koirala: A Hero After All (Video)

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Neither an inevitable death nor a bed-ridden physical state seems to able to keep a genuine politician from being active in politics until the last breath. Nepali Congress president and former prime minister Sushil Koirala, who died at his residence in Kathmandu at the age of 79 early Tuesday, watched the news on television and shared his political concerns about the world and Nepal with his aides as he fought with pneumonia and asthma in a losing battle. Koirala had demonstrated the will needed to beat his lung cancer. Now, sharing his last words with his personal assistant and private doctor, he gave up: "I got it." In the old and new media, the world remembered Koirala for his simple outlook and sheer political determination to work for the nation and people. The party halted its ongoing 13th convention programmes to elect its new leadership. The 12th convention had elected Koirala, who earlier served in the posts of party's general secretary and central leader, as the NC chief.

A downright politician, Sushil Koirala stood out among Nepal's prime ministers for making a promise and keeping it. Koirala's election plank during the Constituent Assembly (CA) election of 2013 was promulgating the post-monarchy Nepal's first constitution in a year. His promise earned him voters, and he was elected to the CA from a constituency each of Banke and Chitwan. As the chief of the largest party in the CA and parliament, Koirala then became the prime minister of a coalition government and helped the CA cobble together the new constitution and issue it before it would be too late. The first CA, elected in 2008 with the main mandate to give the peace process a logical conclusion by promulgating the new constitution of Nepal, had failed to fulfill its mandate despite extending its own tenure for four years.

In Koirala's death, the nation has lost a true democrat from the breed of Nepali politicians who had participated in the country's democratic movement to oust the Rana oligarchs, served jail terms and exiles for upholding contrary political views during the party-less monarchical system and chose to live a simple life without showing any craving as such for physical property, such as a house, land and car, or getting married to establish a family, for that matter. Starting from his childhood dream of becoming an actor, Sushil Koirala, who joined politics early on by drawing inspirations from the NC's ideals of nationality, democracy and socialism, lived a life full of twists and turns that eventually made him a hero, who led Nepal's peace process to a logical conclusion in the Federal Loktantrik Republic of Nepal, placing him somewhere down the Koirala-clan line linking late BP Koirala and GP Koirala. Until his demise, Sushil Koirala worked for a politics that aimed at making Nepal peaceful and prosperous. His absence will be conspicuous in the party as well as in the nation. As the nation and the world remember leader Sushil Koirala, the onus lies with his top brass party colleagues to take good care of the party and make it work towards fulfilling late Koirala's political dream.

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