|
 O brave New Paper that has such people in it
The British comic troupe Monty Python famously described
Aristotle as being 'a bugger for the bottle' in their
cheeky Philosopher's Song sketch.
But had the Pythons' Flying Circus set their skits
in Singapore, they might've found comic inspiration in the
musings of one Clement Mesenas and Nepal's deposed Crown Prince
Paras Bikram Shah, in Singapore's New Paper these past few
days.
There, in all its glory, was an 'exclusive'
interview by Mesenas with Paras, infamously Nepal's own 'bugger
for the bottle' who's now exiled to Singapore after
revolutionary Maoist republicans took control of Nepal.
As long-suffering Nepalis know too well, this one-time
would-be 'living god' Paras doesn't mind the
hard stuff himself, preferring the transformational Johnnie Walker
Black Label. The patrons and owners of various Kathmandu nightclubs
know better, to their peril, for the Harley-riding prince and his
friends used to let lawlessly loose on the town after a big night on
the sauce at the palace. Nepalis have died because of Paras'
carousing.
No longer. The grasping Shahs were removed of their
entitlement, their monarchy and Nepal last year by Prachanda and his
fellow ascetic travellers. But Paras was and remains one of Nepal's
most reviled figures. Unlike his father, who 'retired'
quietly as a commoner to a villa outside Kathmandu, Paras felt
compelled to seek comfortable refuge in Singapore, where he drives an
Audi and a Lamborghini (provided by relatives, he claims) and where
one hopes he has developed rather more sober pursuits than the
boozing and gun-toting he was notorious for in Kathmandu.
In Mesenas' interview, which seems designed to
re-launch Paras as a political player in the country's tortuous
struggle for power, Paras outlined a web of palace intrigues which
culminated in the infamous 'Blood On the Snows' regicide
of June 2001 at Kathmandu's Narayanhity Palace by, as goes the
official version of the tragic events, Paras' predecessor as
Nepal's Crown Prince, his cousin Dipendra.
But this wasn't just a regicide - the act of
killing a monarch - in this case Nepal's popular King Birendra.
It seems it was also a patricide (Birendra was Dipendra's
father), a matricide (his mother Aishwarya was wasted), a sororicide
(his late sister Princess Shruti), a fratricide (his brother Nirajan
too), an avunculicide (his murdered uncle Prince Dhirendra) and
whatever the correct 'cides are for aunts and in-laws and
cousins. There were ten royal victims in total, including Dipendra
himself, who survived the massacre for 56 hours to become King before
succumbing to his wounds. So add another regicide as well and, per
that much-disputed official version, Dipendra's suicide.
In the Mesenas interview at Paras' Singapore
penthouse, Paras says he decided to open up because "the Nepali
people need to know the truth." The New Paper writes that Paras
"now wants to clear his name" about "the ugly
rumours of his involvement in the incident."
But what truth? Such is their hatred of Paras, most
Nepalis conspiratorially believe he and his deposed father, the
ex-King Gyanendra, had a role in engineering the massacre of their
relations as part of a power grab to put their part of the family in
line in for the throne. But these seemed details too far for Mesenas,
in the glossing of Paras' dubious past.
In the interview, Paras claims his royal relations had
been arguing over an arms deal for the Royal Nepali army. Dipendra
favoured a German assault rifle, whereas the King fancied an American
supplier. Paras seems to suggest his cousin would've earned a
massive kickback if the army had gone with the German weapons.
Mesenas cites Dipendra's other reasons; that Birendra never
consulted Dipendra in 1990 when transforming Nepal from the absolute
monarchy Diprendra was set to inherit to a quasi-democratic
constitutional monarchy. And then there was Dipendra much-discussed
romance with a member from the Shahs' rival Rana clan, which
apparently displeased his parents.
That's all very well, and the articles'
publication have titillated the Nepali intelligentsia, those at least
who are able to access the internet during the average four hours a
day the monarchy's Maoist successors turn the power on, in one
of the world's poorest and least technologically-enabled
countries.
But what is more interesting about Mesenas'
interview, and revealing so as to place, at the very least, a
critical shadow over its credibility, was not so much that Paras was
talking about the massacre publicly for the first time, it was that
he decided to do so in Singapore. By all accounts not a particularly
bright man, the 37 year-old Paras would at least know, or be advised
(by Mesenas?), that there are few better places to have an
advantageous story published about oneself than in Singapore's
clubby media, where standards and placement can depend on who you
know.
The Mesenas interview with Paras was not some 'world
scoop' exclusive by a respected independent journalist,
inasmuch as any exist in Singapore's hyper-control regime. It
was enabled by a well-practiced public relations professional –
Mesenas – with a history and connections in the Singapore media
extensive enough that he was able to write the piece himself, and get
it published. No self-respecting media outlet would publish an
article with so many holes in it, and so little context, and
particularly sourced from an external contributor working in public
relations. But Singapore lacks the media that most of us would
recognise as reliable and independent, hence it's the perfect
place to get a snowjob published.
And what better person to effect that that someone like
Mesenas, the director - 'editorial and advisory' - with
the Singapore public relations firm Bang, which promises 'effective
media communications solutions'? (Among Bang's clients is
the Singapore government's Media Development Authority, which
regulates and censors Singapore's media).
Mesenas' involvement with Paras raises questions
as to whether Paras, or his connections, paid or retained Bang and or
Mesenas to act in his editorial interest. Is this self-serving
article published in a tame newspaper – the New Paper is not
the New York Times – cash for comment? It smells a lot like it.
The Paras article is a great many things, and journalism is not any
of them.
Asia Sentinel sent the following questions to Mesenas at
Bang;
1. Are you or your firm hired or retained by Paras or
related parties to him?
2. Why did you, as a PR operative, write the article,
and not a journalist at The New Paper?
3. Why was there no contextual discussion in the article
of the reasons why Paras now lives in Singapore, not least the
charges of criminality/murder directed at him?
Mesenas responded that "he wrote the story as a
practising journalist" but that he also works for the PR
company Bang. He says he was "introduced to Paras and checked
with The New Paper if it would be interested in a story on him. They
were and Murali, its associate editor, joined me for the interview
with Paras."
Mesenas claims that Paras did not retain him or Bang. "I
am a PR man, new to the business (5 months) and still can't get
away from being a journalist (40 years)," Mesenas says. "So
you might say I am an occasional practising journalist."
The Singapore media that creates operators like Mesenas
likes to think itself as probing, as challenging and as independent
as the world's best media, superlatives which few
Singapore-watchers outside the city-state share. Critics of the
government-controlled Singapore Press Holdings, which owns the New
Paper, regard its titles more as government gazettes, as handbooks on
how authorities want their subjects to believe and behave, much as
Pravda (truth in Russian) and Izvestia (information) operated in the
old USSR.
But as Russians used to say, there was little pravda in
Izvestia and izvestia in Pravda, and so too Mesenas' and Paras'
day out for the New Paper. Glaringly absent from the Paras interview
for anyone who knows Nepal's fatal politics, such as the 30
million Nepalis who endure it, was critical story-defining context,
of meaningful examination of Paras' own brushes with crime and
its role in the downfall of his family's Shah dynasty, which
inflicted such ongoing misery on Nepal.
Paras is one of Nepal's most reviled men. Many
Nepalis believe it was Paras' excessive, and untried, criminal
behaviour that was one of the primary reasons for the Shahs'
demise, and the turmoil Nepalis now endure at the hands of their
dysfunctional government. This is crucial background to the Paras
story, and precious little of it was discussed in the Mesenas-led
piece, mostly dressed up to the unsuspecting reader as royal
titillation barely a step removed from the likes of Hello Magazine.
When in Kathmandu, Crown Prince Paras of Nepal was not a
living god to trifle with, especially after he'd had a big
session on the bottle. Johnnie Walker Black Label is his preferred
tipple and when word used to course around the bars and restaurants
of Kathmandu's fashionable Babar Mahal Revisited that the
37-year-old Paras was drunk again astride his black Harley-Davidson
and cruising – often armed - with his thuggish outriders, down
would come the shutters on nightspots. Some clubs even employed
Paras-watchers to keep an eye on his palace gates and the Babar
carpark, lest the royal posse show up drunk and looking to party.
Kathmandu's nightspot owners got a little sick of calling in
the interior decorators the day after Paras and friends had been out
on the razzle.
Nepalis know that Paras has form but his killing of
Nepali folk singer Praveen Gurung is perhaps the most outrageous of
the many incidents involving him. In August 2000, witnesess described
a drunken Paras manhandling a waitress he wanted outside a Kathmandu
casino that his father part-owned. Praveen gallantly came to her aid
and, according to many witnesses, Paras was none too pleased. Paras
ran Praveen over in his SUV and killed him, before he headed back to
the morning-after sobriety in the sanctuary of the palace. A
half-hearted police investigation into the hit and run took no
action.
Mesenas, who refers to the ousted royal as 'Prince
Paras' throughout his series, airs a very different take on the
incident. "One rainy day, he knocked down one of Nepal's
most popular musicians. The musician was riding a motorbike at the
time. According to Prince Paras, the motorbike swayed suddenly in
front of him, and though he stepped on the brake, he could not stop
in time. He attended to the man and took him to the hospital, but he
was pronounced dead on arrival. The contrite prince visited the dead
man's family the next day. "I paid his wife compensation
and took care of his two sons, putting them through school," he
says. Mesenas and Murali then write 'all that is in the past."
Every Nepali knows that Paras killed Praveen. Some
600,000 people, their outrage uncorked by the Maoists, signed a
petition to Paras' father Gyanendra days after the incident
demanding legal action against him. But none was forthcoming, except
a request to the errant son to reign in his drinking. A week after
Praveen's death, and two days after Paras' residence was
surrounded by Maoist-organised student protesters, the Nepali Patra
newspaper wrote somewhat portentously;
"The murder of well-known singer and musician
Praveen Gurung could prove to be costly for the Royal Palace."
"This is the third time someone, who, as member of
the respected Royal Family gets an annual allowance of Rs 300,000
(his wife, Himani, gets Rs 75,000), has killed a commoner. Earlier in
1997, a Pajero driven by Paras hit and killed taxi driver Sanukaji at
Putafi Sadak. A year before that, a drunk Paras driving his jeep
caused a similar accident in Bharatpur, Chitwan. The people have also
not forgotten the other excesses of Paras. In 1996 Paras assaulted a
traffic police officer who had gone up to him to inquire about the
lights used in his vehicle. About a week later, after hitting a
motorcycle near Hattigauda, he went around beating people assembled
at the site of the accident. The same year, he drew out a pistol and
spread terror at Hotel Soaltee and then drove to the Everest Casino
where he fired several rounds in the air. A year later, he drove to
the police headquarters and beat up a sentry on duty. Again in 1999
he struck a police officer with the butt of his gun and drove away
after threatening him with a machine gun. A month later he went to
the Durbar Marg police station and thrashed the policeman standing
guard. On election day in May last year he went around driving his
car threatening all police officers he came across."
Paras is not a nice man. Not that his Singapore cipher
Clement Mesenas – or the New Paper - seem to want anyone to
know that.
Then again, maybe Mesenas is simply being a PR man,
looking after his new friend. Or is it his client?
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
