Spreading a rumour to cripple state finances

Spreading a rumour to cripple state finances:

Around the end of the third phase of the People’s Revolution, Sharachchandra Osti, a reporter working with Gorkhapatra, Nepal’s national daily came upon an idea – a strategy to cripple the state’s financial position. He shared the idea with Supreme Leader Ganesh Man Singh, and after his approval, published the following notice:

“To suppress the ongoing movement for democracy, the current government has been continuously withdrawing large sums of money from the financial institutions across the country. In the past 35 days, the government has withdrawn more than one billion rupees. In the upcoming week, the government is applying pressure to withdraw at least two billion rupees. We, the workers are unable to prevent such activities, and are being threatened with jail sentences if we deny them the withdrawals.

If this is to continue, Nepal’s banks will become bankrupt within the next ten days. We cannot sit and watch this happen to your hard earned money because we have taken the moral responsibility to safeguard your money. The withdrawn amount is being deposited in several international financial institutions, and our helplessness is causing our souls to burn.

Therefore, we appeal to all account holders to immediately withdraw their money from the banks. We are forced to issue this appeal as we cannot sit and watch the people being looted of their own money. Please heed to this warning, and do not come back to tell us that we did not warn you once the consequences are to be borne.

Come; withdraw your money from the bank before the banks become insolvent”.

This information spread like wildfire, and the next day, before the banks could open, there were long queues of people outside all banks waiting to withdraw their money before the banks could open.

Plans to establish a radio station:

By the time the revolution reached its third phase, the situation was changing rapidly. Public support had swollen, but there was a lack of synchronization. The lack of synchronization was attributed to the lack of a media portal to release their voices. Therefore, a few journalist friends came up with an idea of opening and operating a low-cost radio station. The radio station was to disseminate the voices and the addresses of the pro-democracy parties, and give regular updates on the situation within the country.

However, because the state would not issue a license to such a radio station, the engineering of the radio station was to be  done secretly.

A few journalist friends such as Sharachchanda Osti and Mathbar Singh Basnet with experience in radio and media began the task of assembling a radio station. Ghanendra Purush Dhakal was given the responsibility of arranging NRS 1 Lakh for the same purpose.

King Birendra replaces Marich Man Singh as Prime Minister:

With growing resentment across the country, King Birendra was forced to take action. He called in a meeting of the Council of Ministers, and took stock of the revolution’s development. The situation was deteriorating rapidly.

Therefore, in a second meeting, he took the decision of replacing Marich Man Singh as the country’s Prime Minister. He subsequently appointed Lokendra Bahadur Chand as the PM. He also reshuffled the cabinet and appointed Nain Bahadur Swar, Pashupati Shumsher J B Rana, Achyut Raj Regmi as ministers.

The above cabinet was decided upon because they had a prior connection with Nepali Congress, and King Birendra hoped with the cabinet changes, he would be able to discuss a peaceful resolution of the ongoing People’s Movement.

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