Japan withholds details on envoy nominee as hearing committee faces November 5 deadline

The Parliamentary Hearing Committee has until November 5 to decide whether to endorse Jigyan Kumar Thapa as Nepal's ambassador to Japan, and the information it asked for has not come. Japanese authorities said they could not provide details about Thapa because they concern an individual's privacy, according to foreign ministry officials quoted by the Kathmandu Post on October 30.

What the committee asked

The committee held Thapa's hearing on October 14 but put his nomination on hold. It then wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which passed the request to Nepal's embassy in Tokyo, asking two things, according to Setopati and Onlinekhabar: whether Thapa has given up his permanent residency (PR) in Japan, and whether he received salary or benefits from Japanese government funds.

At the hearing, Thapa said he had already renounced his PR, Onlinekhabar reported. Lawmakers questioned when he did so, in light of Article 291 of the Constitution. Thapa also acknowledged that his wife still holds Japanese PR and that a house in Japan is in her name, according to Onlinekhabar. Committee chair Bodh Narayan Shrestha told Kantipur that the nomination had raised questions of a possible conflict of interest; the directive on ambassadorial appointments requires that candidates hold no residency permit abroad and have no conflicting interests in the country they are sent to.

"We have asked the ministry to send us a written response on the matter," Shrestha said, after learning from ministry officials that Japan would not disclose personal information.

The 45-day deadline

Under parliament's rules for joint committees, the committee must decide on a nominee within 45 days of receiving the name; if it does not, the nomination is treated as approved. For Thapa, that period ends on November 5. Committee secretary Tul Bahadur Kandel said a meeting had been proposed for Monday to discuss and decide on the nomination, the Kathmandu Post reported. Shrestha said the committee would not let the deadline pass, and would either reject or endorse Thapa within 45 days.

The government recommended 13 ambassadors in September. On October 14 the committee endorsed 10 and rejected two: Giri Bahadur Sunar, proposed for Saudi Arabia, and Chudamani Kharel, proposed for Malaysia. That day's meeting was suspended when Thapa's nomination came to a vote, after lawmakers from the ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party argued that it should be rejected, according to the Kathmandu Post.

A wider debate

In an opinion piece, Nepal Press argued that parliamentary hearings should test a nominee's qualifications, experience and integrity rather than publicly air past private matters with no bearing on the post, and called for clear criteria for ambassadorial appointments that balance transparency with personal dignity.