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The Prince and the PR Man
Tag it:Written by Eric Ellis
Wednesday, 01 April 2009
O brave New Paper that has such people in it
The British comic troupe Monty Python famously described Aristotle as being 'a bugger for the bottle' in their cheeky Philosopher's Song sketch.
But had the Pythons' Flying Circus set their skits in Singapore, they might've found comic inspiration in the musings of one Clement Mesenas and Nepal's deposed Crown Prince Paras Bikram Shah, in Singapore's New Paper these past few days.
There, in all its glory, was an 'exclusive' interview by Mesenas with Paras, infamously Nepal's own 'bugger for the bottle' who's now exiled to Singapore after revolutionary Maoist republicans took control of Nepal.
As long-suffering Nepalis know too well, this one-time would-be 'living god' Paras doesn't mind the hard stuff himself, preferring the transformational Johnnie Walker Black Label. The patrons and owners of various Kathmandu nightclubs know better, to their peril, for the Harley-riding prince and his friends used to let lawlessly loose on the town after a big night on the sauce at the palace. Nepalis have died because of Paras' carousing.
No longer. The grasping Shahs were removed of their entitlement, their monarchy and Nepal last year by Prachanda and his fellow ascetic travellers. But Paras was and remains one of Nepal's most reviled figures. Unlike his father, who 'retired' quietly as a commoner to a villa outside Kathmandu, Paras felt compelled to seek comfortable refuge in Singapore, where he drives an Audi and a Lamborghini (provided by relatives, he claims) and where one hopes he has developed rather more sober pursuits than the boozing and gun-toting he was notorious for in Kathmandu.
In Mesenas' interview, which seems designed to re-launch Paras as a political player in the country's tortuous struggle for power, Paras outlined a web of palace intrigues which culminated in the infamous 'Blood On the Snows' regicide of June 2001 at Kathmandu's Narayanhity Palace by, as goes the official version of the tragic events, Paras' predecessor as Nepal's Crown Prince, his cousin Dipendra.
But this wasn't just a regicide - the act of killing a monarch - in this case Nepal's popular King Birendra. It seems it was also a patricide (Birendra was Dipendra's father), a matricide (his mother Aishwarya was wasted), a sororicide (his late sister Princess Shruti), a fratricide (his brother Nirajan too), an avunculicide (his murdered uncle Prince Dhirendra) and whatever the correct 'cides are for aunts and in-laws and cousins. There were ten royal victims in total, including Dipendra himself, who survived the massacre for 56 hours to become King before succumbing to his wounds. So add another regicide as well and, per that much-disputed official version, Dipendra's suicide.
In the Mesenas interview at Paras' Singapore penthouse, Paras says he decided to open up because "the Nepali people need to know the truth." The New Paper writes that Paras "now wants to clear his name" about "the ugly rumours of his involvement in the incident."
But what truth? Such is their hatred of Paras, most Nepalis conspiratorially believe he and his deposed father, the ex-King Gyanendra, had a role in engineering the massacre of their relations as part of a power grab to put their part of the family in line in for the throne. But these seemed details too far for Mesenas, in the glossing of Paras' dubious past.
In the interview, Paras claims his royal relations had been arguing over an arms deal for the Royal Nepali army. Dipendra favoured a German assault rifle, whereas the King fancied an American supplier. Paras seems to suggest his cousin would've earned a massive kickback if the army had gone with the German weapons. Mesenas cites Dipendra's other reasons; that Birendra never consulted Dipendra in 1990 when transforming Nepal from the absolute monarchy Diprendra was set to inherit to a quasi-democratic constitutional monarchy. And then there was Dipendra much-discussed romance with a member from the Shahs' rival Rana clan, which apparently displeased his parents.
That's all very well, and the articles' publication have titillated the Nepali intelligentsia, those at least who are able to access the internet during the average four hours a day the monarchy's Maoist successors turn the power on, in one of the world's poorest and least technologically-enabled countries.
But what is more interesting about Mesenas' interview, and revealing so as to place, at the very least, a critical shadow over its credibility, was not so much that Paras was talking about the massacre publicly for the first time, it was that he decided to do so in Singapore. By all accounts not a particularly bright man, the 37 year-old Paras would at least know, or be advised (by Mesenas?), that there are few better places to have an advantageous story published about oneself than in Singapore's clubby media, where standards and placement can depend on who you know.
The Mesenas interview with Paras was not some 'world scoop' exclusive by a respected independent journalist, inasmuch as any exist in Singapore's hyper-control regime. It was enabled by a well-practiced public relations professional – Mesenas – with a history and connections in the Singapore media extensive enough that he was able to write the piece himself, and get it published. No self-respecting media outlet would publish an article with so many holes in it, and so little context, and particularly sourced from an external contributor working in public relations. But Singapore lacks the media that most of us would recognise as reliable and independent, hence it's the perfect place to get a snowjob published.
And what better person to effect that that someone like Mesenas, the director - 'editorial and advisory' - with the Singapore public relations firm Bang, which promises 'effective media communications solutions'? (Among Bang's clients is the Singapore government's Media Development Authority, which regulates and censors Singapore's media).
Mesenas' involvement with Paras raises questions as to whether Paras, or his connections, paid or retained Bang and or Mesenas to act in his editorial interest. Is this self-serving article published in a tame newspaper – the New Paper is not the New York Times – cash for comment? It smells a lot like it. The Paras article is a great many things, and journalism is not any of them.
Asia Sentinel sent the following questions to Mesenas at Bang;
1. Are you or your firm hired or retained by Paras or related parties to him?
2. Why did you, as a PR operative, write the article, and not a journalist at The New Paper?
3. Why was there no contextual discussion in the article of the reasons why Paras now lives in Singapore, not least the charges of criminality/murder directed at him?
Mesenas responded that "he wrote the story as a practising journalist" but that he also works for the PR company Bang. He says he was "introduced to Paras and checked with The New Paper if it would be interested in a story on him. They were and Murali, its associate editor, joined me for the interview with Paras."
Mesenas claims that Paras did not retain him or Bang. "I am a PR man, new to the business (5 months) and still can't get away from being a journalist (40 years)," Mesenas says. "So you might say I am an occasional practising journalist."
The Singapore media that creates operators like Mesenas likes to think itself as probing, as challenging and as independent as the world's best media, superlatives which few Singapore-watchers outside the city-state share. Critics of the government-controlled Singapore Press Holdings, which owns the New Paper, regard its titles more as government gazettes, as handbooks on how authorities want their subjects to believe and behave, much as Pravda (truth in Russian) and Izvestia (information) operated in the old USSR.
But as Russians used to say, there was little pravda in Izvestia and izvestia in Pravda, and so too Mesenas' and Paras' day out for the New Paper. Glaringly absent from the Paras interview for anyone who knows Nepal's fatal politics, such as the 30 million Nepalis who endure it, was critical story-defining context, of meaningful examination of Paras' own brushes with crime and its role in the downfall of his family's Shah dynasty, which inflicted such ongoing misery on Nepal.
The Prince and the PR Man
Tag it:Written by Eric Ellis
Wednesday, 01 April 2009
O brave New Paper that has such people in it
The British comic troupe Monty Python famously described Aristotle as being 'a bugger for the bottle' in their cheeky Philosopher's Song sketch.
But had the Pythons' Flying Circus set their skits in Singapore, they might've found comic inspiration in the musings of one Clement Mesenas and Nepal's deposed Crown Prince Paras Bikram Shah, in Singapore's New Paper these past few days.
There, in all its glory, was an 'exclusive' interview by Mesenas with Paras, infamously Nepal's own 'bugger for the bottle' who's now exiled to Singapore after revolutionary Maoist republicans took control of Nepal.
As long-suffering Nepalis know too well, this one-time would-be 'living god' Paras doesn't mind the hard stuff himself, preferring the transformational Johnnie Walker Black Label. The patrons and owners of various Kathmandu nightclubs know better, to their peril, for the Harley-riding prince and his friends used to let lawlessly loose on the town after a big night on the sauce at the palace. Nepalis have died because of Paras' carousing.
No longer. The grasping Shahs were removed of their entitlement, their monarchy and Nepal last year by Prachanda and his fellow ascetic travellers. But Paras was and remains one of Nepal's most reviled figures. Unlike his father, who 'retired' quietly as a commoner to a villa outside Kathmandu, Paras felt compelled to seek comfortable refuge in Singapore, where he drives an Audi and a Lamborghini (provided by relatives, he claims) and where one hopes he has developed rather more sober pursuits than the boozing and gun-toting he was notorious for in Kathmandu.
In Mesenas' interview, which seems designed to re-launch Paras as a political player in the country's tortuous struggle for power, Paras outlined a web of palace intrigues which culminated in the infamous 'Blood On the Snows' regicide of June 2001 at Kathmandu's Narayanhity Palace by, as goes the official version of the tragic events, Paras' predecessor as Nepal's Crown Prince, his cousin Dipendra.
But this wasn't just a regicide - the act of killing a monarch - in this case Nepal's popular King Birendra. It seems it was also a patricide (Birendra was Dipendra's father), a matricide (his mother Aishwarya was wasted), a sororicide (his late sister Princess Shruti), a fratricide (his brother Nirajan too), an avunculicide (his murdered uncle Prince Dhirendra) and whatever the correct 'cides are for aunts and in-laws and cousins. There were ten royal victims in total, including Dipendra himself, who survived the massacre for 56 hours to become King before succumbing to his wounds. So add another regicide as well and, per that much-disputed official version, Dipendra's suicide.
In the Mesenas interview at Paras' Singapore penthouse, Paras says he decided to open up because "the Nepali people need to know the truth." The New Paper writes that Paras "now wants to clear his name" about "the ugly rumours of his involvement in the incident."
But what truth? Such is their hatred of Paras, most Nepalis conspiratorially believe he and his deposed father, the ex-King Gyanendra, had a role in engineering the massacre of their relations as part of a power grab to put their part of the family in line in for the throne. But these seemed details too far for Mesenas, in the glossing of Paras' dubious past.
In the interview, Paras claims his royal relations had been arguing over an arms deal for the Royal Nepali army. Dipendra favoured a German assault rifle, whereas the King fancied an American supplier. Paras seems to suggest his cousin would've earned a massive kickback if the army had gone with the German weapons. Mesenas cites Dipendra's other reasons; that Birendra never consulted Dipendra in 1990 when transforming Nepal from the absolute monarchy Diprendra was set to inherit to a quasi-democratic constitutional monarchy. And then there was Dipendra much-discussed romance with a member from the Shahs' rival Rana clan, which apparently displeased his parents.
That's all very well, and the articles' publication have titillated the Nepali intelligentsia, those at least who are able to access the internet during the average four hours a day the monarchy's Maoist successors turn the power on, in one of the world's poorest and least technologically-enabled countries.
But what is more interesting about Mesenas' interview, and revealing so as to place, at the very least, a critical shadow over its credibility, was not so much that Paras was talking about the massacre publicly for the first time, it was that he decided to do so in Singapore. By all accounts not a particularly bright man, the 37 year-old Paras would at least know, or be advised (by Mesenas?), that there are few better places to have an advantageous story published about oneself than in Singapore's clubby media, where standards and placement can depend on who you know.
The Mesenas interview with Paras was not some 'world scoop' exclusive by a respected independent journalist, inasmuch as any exist in Singapore's hyper-control regime. It was enabled by a well-practiced public relations professional – Mesenas – with a history and connections in the Singapore media extensive enough that he was able to write the piece himself, and get it published. No self-respecting media outlet would publish an article with so many holes in it, and so little context, and particularly sourced from an external contributor working in public relations. But Singapore lacks the media that most of us would recognise as reliable and independent, hence it's the perfect place to get a snowjob published.
And what better person to effect that that someone like Mesenas, the director - 'editorial and advisory' - with the Singapore public relations firm Bang, which promises 'effective media communications solutions'? (Among Bang's clients is the Singapore government's Media Development Authority, which regulates and censors Singapore's media).
Mesenas' involvement with Paras raises questions as to whether Paras, or his connections, paid or retained Bang and or Mesenas to act in his editorial interest. Is this self-serving article published in a tame newspaper – the New Paper is not the New York Times – cash for comment? It smells a lot like it. The Paras article is a great many things, and journalism is not any of them.
Asia Sentinel sent the following questions to Mesenas at Bang;
1. Are you or your firm hired or retained by Paras or related parties to him?
2. Why did you, as a PR operative, write the article, and not a journalist at The New Paper?
3. Why was there no contextual discussion in the article of the reasons why Paras now lives in Singapore, not least the charges of criminality/murder directed at him?
Mesenas responded that "he wrote the story as a practising journalist" but that he also works for the PR company Bang. He says he was "introduced to Paras and checked with The New Paper if it would be interested in a story on him. They were and Murali, its associate editor, joined me for the interview with Paras."
Mesenas claims that Paras did not retain him or Bang. "I am a PR man, new to the business (5 months) and still can't get away from being a journalist (40 years)," Mesenas says. "So you might say I am an occasional practising journalist."
The Singapore media that creates operators like Mesenas likes to think itself as probing, as challenging and as independent as the world's best media, superlatives which few Singapore-watchers outside the city-state share. Critics of the government-controlled Singapore Press Holdings, which owns the New Paper, regard its titles more as government gazettes, as handbooks on how authorities want their subjects to believe and behave, much as Pravda (truth in Russian) and Izvestia (information) operated in the old USSR.
But as Russians used to say, there was little pravda in Izvestia and izvestia in Pravda, and so too Mesenas' and Paras' day out for the New Paper. Glaringly absent from the Paras interview for anyone who knows Nepal's fatal politics, such as the 30 million Nepalis who endure it, was critical story-defining context, of meaningful examination of Paras' own brushes with crime and its role in the downfall of his family's Shah dynasty, which inflicted such ongoing misery on Nepal.
