Please do visit www.sukulgunda.com for more!

Seniority at the Supreme Court!

We will soon have a new Chief Justice (CJ) in town, finally months after the previou one went home when he celebrated his 65th birthday! But our old school jholeys and the shitty old media are crying over the Balen government's move to appoint a junior judge to head the Supreme Court (SC). If six candidates were recommended for the job then what's up with the seniority rankings?

The old vultures tell us that this government has broken the tradition by not appointing the most senior judge as the SC. That would have been Sapana Malla Pradhan, who was appointed to the Supreme Court from the 'UML' quota and if she had gotten the job to head the SC then she would have to go home in 2028 while the new CJ is one lucky person, who will be in office for a cool six years, the full term and he will still not be even 65 when he retires! But it's either six years or 65th birthday, so he can't choose both!

Now, let's talk about the Constitutional Council (CC) and its recommendation to appoint Judge Manoj Kumar Sharma as our next Supreme Court Chief Justice. The CC has six members and is chaired by the PM. The CC recommends appointments to our constitutional bodies. And the recent Balen government's ordinance push now allows the CC to hold meetings with only four members out of six and 3 votes is enough to do the job instead of the previous 4!

Well, let's do the math because the jholeys and the old chor media wallahs have also been whining about the reduced quorum of 4 members. We don't need a 100% attendance. And even 4 is more than 51% out of 6 and 3 out of 4 votes needed to recommend appointments to the constitutional bodies is still 75%.

I don't know why our media wallahs never held a grudge or even talked about transparency and accountability or meritocracy for this matter, for the past three decades, but suddenly with the Young Guns in town, the Old Sheriffs are shitting their pants!

Manoj Kumar Sharma will not face a hard time at the parliamentary hearing for his appointment as the CJ. Once he clears that, then our old President will have no choice but to welcome Sharma as the CJ! He will be our 33rd Chief Justice and it comes with a basic Rs 1.2 lakhs salary per month and free house and vehicles and staff and all the perks as well.

The old media and jholeys tell us that this is a dictatorship and how on Earth can a person who is fourth in the seniority roll head the Supreme Court? Well, the Balen government wants not 'Afno Manche' but a 'Ramro Manche' who will not be some old school party jholey!

Most of us expected the senior-most person, Sapana Didi, who was the acting CJ, to get the job! Well, she didn't, and let us not make it a big issue out of it. We had our first woman CJ when Sushila Karki was appointed years ago. She was also fortunate to head the interim government after the Gen Z massacre!

The Judicial Council had sent the names of six Supreme Court Justices for the CJ position in March and if only seniority were the only requirement, then they should have only sent one name! So, why did it take us almost two months to even recommend someone to be our CJ?

Well, After the March election, we had to elect a Speaker, then a Deputy Speaker, and the old chor Nepali Congress took some time to elect their Leader of the Opposition (LoP) as well to fill in the six-member CC. Then, we have the Chairperson of the National Assembly and the PM and the Chief Justice. Since there was no CJ at the time, the Law Minister got to fill the quorum!

The Chairperson of the National Assembly is Comrade Prachanda's brother. The LoP is from Nepali Congress, and both of them decided to vote against the recommendation but their votes didn't make any difference! Their note of dissent doesn't count at all. It's not like PM Balen decided to recommend his brother, like Prachanda did for his brother at the National Assembly!

Our next CJ did his LLB from Nepal Law Campus, then his LLM from an Indian University in Pune. Indian media wallahs will once again have a field day, trying to take some credit or boast about the Desi education links of our people in power! He was appointed as a Supreme Court Judge in 2019 and he will be the CJ till 2032!

For the first time in many decades, we will have someone in a top government position completing the full tenure! Otherwise, it would be someone for two years or six months, like in our Nepal Police, strangled by its 30-year service rule. We don't want CJs or IGPs every other year and add more burden to our national coffer with their perks and pensions.

The haters will hate the Balen government for trying to do the right thing because for the past three decades, the same old chors have been doing everything wrong! Let's hope the 22,000+ backlogged cases will finally get closure by the time our new CJ retires!

And if the senior thing still bothers our Bhogatey and his UML gundas and the extortion racket crowd (our media wallahs) then just look at America. Back then in 2005, Johnny Boy became the youngest CJ of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in over two centuries at the age of 50 when he was appointed by Dubya even though he was junior to all existing justices at the US Supreme Court! Well, we are not America but it's time we had a system like theirs and Balen will make sure that we are the United States of Nepal at least, unlike Harka, who is going to choke on his dhunga someday!

*******
Send your suggestions to vomit @ sukulgunda.com