The difficulty of being Nepali Congress

The grand old party has come to such a pass that it is struggling to present itself as a redoubtable political force.

On Thursday, Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba complained that there had been attempts at his character assassination within the party. Then he complained that the party had no money to spend on protests, and that very few people had turned up at the protests it organised. Deuba's complaints sound ridiculous, to say the least, coming from the supremo of the party that has a formidable history of putting up valiant fights for democracy. But that is how it is: The Nepali Congress is a fractured party, with too many talking heads doing precious little work even when recent political circumstances have presented it with an unlikely opportunity to rise like the phoenix.