Mass protest...

role in murdering several unarmed policemen a few years ago.

It is for the removal of the regime of such corrupt thugs the protest is being organized so that the security forces can be asked to quell it.

TAKING A LEAF FROM ZIMBABWE'S MILITARYASSISTED TRANSITION COULD BE A PEACEFUL WAY OUT FOR NEPAL Reporting that "Civilian support for military coups is rising in parts of Africa", author Carlos Rivero (The Conversation) has recently observed that researchers, analysts, and journalists in Africa point to "mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, economic crisis, and

state weakness as the main factors propelling military coups all over the world and, of course, in Africa". This is exactly the condition Nepal is passing through too.

One such example comes from Zimbabwe. The country's eminent revolutionary hero Robert Gabriel Mugabe, now deceased, who had the distinction of ridding his country of white colonial rule in 1980, had over the decades come out more as "a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control." Mugabe’s 37year authoritarian rule was characterized by brutal crackdowns, rigged elections, land seizures and hyperinflation that left the economy in ruins. In his last years in power, the octogenarian leader then, in his bid to get his young wife, Grace Mugabe, to succeed him, maneuvered and ousted his vice president Mnangagwa who, for fear of his life, had fled to South Africa. That was when the Zimbabwean military,

loyal to him all those years, thought that a red line had been crossed. Gen. Constantino Chiwenga, chief of Zimbabwe’s army, threatened to intervene. Mugabe's resignation came days after military tanks rolled through the capital Harare. The coup was greeted with euphoria with tens of thousands of people pouring into the streets to celebrate. Mnangagwa returned to the country the following day and was inaugurated as interim president of Zimbabwe on November

24, 2017.

The army has since gone back to its barracks again. While what the Zimbabwean army did was a coup for all practical purposes, there apparently exists tremendous intolerance against such moves by the militaries that could invite punishing boycotts etc by Pan-African organizations such as the African Union and other similar entities. In order to save such a crisis for the country, the Zimbabweans have recorded this military intervention as a "militaryassisted transition". However, with timely planning and strategic moves, Nepal's security forces could help achieve this transition more smoothly.

The takeaway here is that the security forces of any nation remain a vital national asset and Nepal must not view it differently.