Monday, February 26, 2018

On PM Oli's Choosing of a Finance Minister

Prime Minister Oli has chosen a finance minister and an industry, commerce and supplies minister (source: setopati.net) today. The importance and unpredictability associated with finance and commerce would suggest that the ministers that go into ministries related to finance and commerce are themselves predictable, orderly and such. This could be a reflection of personal character, but also the current status and aspirations of the political party that they represent. Is this rationale apparent in PM Oli's choices today? That the finance ministry itself won't “dissolve” is evidence of a basic order in Nepali politics, but it may not be evidence of a system wide order and predictability, only that some “elements” in the political system are, or behave, in an orderly and predictable manner.

Furthermore, a study on the history of the finance ministry and other Nepali ministries is needed to evaluate their endurance; given that there is no prominent existing administrative element that actively sustains and manages the division of ministries on a day to day basis, the endurance of a ministry seems dependent on how it originated: What events led to its origin? Can we even say that some ministry like the finance ministry had an “origin” which is fully the result of Nepali politics, when its main task seems to be to act as a stable and predictable element in the wider  financial system?

What is the endurance of the ministries, given that they arose it seems not from a day to day delaying of their end, but from an elaborate planned project, which means that their endurance is projected, for five, ten or fifteen years, given the measurement of their capacity to withstand resistance or challenges? In an unpredictable field like finance, a field which needs as much stability and predictability as possible, is it the case that the ending of the finance ministry is extremely accurately defined?

No comments:

Post a Comment