Lead International organized half day Discussion program on “Good Governance and Rule of Law” in association with Bikalpa an Alternative and Aims College Biratnagar at the venue of Aims College Biratnagar dated on 26th Feb 2018. Mr. Nirmal Tamang (President of CAN Morang) and Rupesh Koirala (Lawyer) were invited as Local Resource Person to the program. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Basanta Adhikari, Co-founder of Bikalpa an Alternative. The format of the event allowed each guest speaker to address the audience for 20 minutes, followed by a question and answer session with the audience.
Mr. Nirmal Tamang opened the discussion about Good Governance System. On his opening remarks, He spoke about the elements of Good governance, stating that the practice that inculcates Rights –based approach in economics and politics is governance. One of the main pillar of good governance is legal frame work. In democratic system government good governance play vital role in prevailing the rights of citizens. If there is not good governance then citizen cannot expect anything from state machinery. He also shared prosperity for any country is nightmare without absence of Accountability, Transparency and rule of law in country. He ended his speech encouraging the students to take an interest in various social or national issues and try to bring about change. Also, this program is the first step of knowing governance and way forward to good governance
Following the discussion on “Rule of Law” Rupesh Koirala started by making an observation on “origin and Role of State”. He covered a wide range of ideas in his address. He talked about how Rule of Law come into existence in history. There is no one above the rule of law. Every People are treated equally in the eye of law. Without Rule of Law there is no Peace and stability in the society. State has a goal to achieve prosperity and for that rule of law is necessary. Whether you excel in studies or not, that is secondary, but are you being productive for the nation or not; that is extremely important for the society. Good governance also means one government entity (judiciary, parliament, executive) not interfering with the other. They should be able to work independently. They should be monitoring each other to work in tandem for a better governance. This is good governance.
During Question and answer sessions, the students raised many questions related to Good Governance. Guest speakers also quenched their quest appropriately. The speakers also welcomed the students for further discussions whenever possible and stated that they would be happy to answer any questions in future as well.
The discussion spanned over an hour and a half. After the question answer session, the event concluded with a vote of thanks by Basanta Adhikari. 42 students participated in the program.
Challenges faced during the program
We didn’t encounter any challenges. However, we were expecting over 50 participants for the program but only 43 showed up. And we were expecting 1:30 minutes discussion but it went 1:45 minutes due to the long interaction.
