After weeks of popular protests, the Nepalese monarch collected all his guts and tried to dramatise the situation by calling the seven party alliance to come forward with a candidate for premiership.

It is noteworthy that he had made this appeal before also when the general people had for some months accepted his move. He had called the general people to list their name for premiership, and of course people had responded. But is the monarch so foolish to give such a lacking-in- all-sorts type of address when people are dying on the streets asking him to get

lost! The call could have been heard properly if he had spoken earlier, but the streets are too noisy now and people are too conscious of their fate under his rule.

The political parties and the general mass dismissed his call for talks branding them as 'his tactics to divert the people's sentiment from him to the

parties.'

All credit to the popular movement, and my countrymen. We took time, but it is never too late for us. If it is getting late, it is for the monarch to step down.

Umesh Gautam, BUET