By Shastri Ramachandaran, DNA
Democracy in Nepal has more lives
than a cat. It never fails to revive every time it is proclaimed dead. And,
that has happened many times since multi-party democracy was institutionalised
with a popular mandate in 1990.
In fact, the over-confidence of
political forces — that Nepal can now never be pushed back into an autocratic
or authoritarian mould — may well be responsible for their reckless
adventurism.
In this republic of nearly 30
million, electoral politics is so much sport. The stakes are the impoverished
majority, who can truthfully say that they know of worse fates than the tyranny
of a monarchy.
That may explain why, and how, for 16 of the 21 years since the dawn of
multi-party democracy, the Maoists have been the leading political force.
For 10 years, from 1996 to 2006,
the Maoists waged a “People’s War”; for two years, in transit, they negotiated
entry to parliamentary politics; and, since the election in 2008, until the
“demise” of Nepal’s 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA) on May 27, the United
Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M), continued to call the shots.
Paradoxically, even now, as Nepal
is stuck in a constitutional, political and legal vacuum, the UCPN-M is
pressing for elections to be held on November 22. The ‘mainstream’ parties,
which are opposed to the Maoists, are working overtime to oust the Maoists as a
caretaker government, and to get the Supreme Court and/or the President to
intervene.
The UCPN, of Prime Minister
Baburam Bhattarai, remains in office, even though it failed to deliver the
draft constitution before the May 28 deadline, because the Supreme Court did
not extend the CA’s term.
Hence, the government is not
without legal basis.
The President has no choice but to abide by the Court’s ruling and its consequences. With no constitution to define their respective roles and responsibilities, President Ram Baran Yadav, who belongs to an opposition party, and Prime Minister Bhattarai are bound to have areas of disagreement. Any attempt to drive a wedge between them, can only compound the crisis, vitiate the political climate further and delay coming to terms with the situation for finding a way out.
Yet that is precisely what the
other big parties, mainly the Nepali Congress (NC) and the CPN-Unified
Marxist-Leninist (UML), in the hope of further alienating the UCPN government
at home and discrediting in the eyes of the world at large. To make matters
worse, some of the foreign missions in Kathmandu seem to be fishing in domestic
politics by showing their inclination for a particular individual or inciting
certain tendencies.
The NC, UML and the Madhesi
parties are no less responsible for the crisis in which Nepal finds itself.
This needs to be underscored and accepted by all the 22 parties which are now
demanding Bhattarai’s ouster as a precondition for elections. Even the worst
critics of the Maoists agree that the mess is not entirely of their making.
In the last four years, every
party has had its stint in government, playing at drafting the constitution and
extending the term of the CA. The Maoists, however, are responsible for the
last straw -- insisting on “ethnic federalism” and refusing to settle for
anything less than this in the draft constitution. And, it is the differences
on “federalism” that pushed the process to breaking point.
As is often the case in such
situations, the effort now is to get back to the pre-breaking point stage, and
explore how some measure of consensus can be achieved for going forward as a
parliamentary democracy; and, for creating conditions for elections which give
a fair and fighting chance to all contenders.
In the absence of a constitution,
whether it is Nepal’s budget or elections, the first step is for the President
and the prime minister to be in agreement. For that to happen, the minimum is
an all-party government of national unity. But that’s not happening yet.
Far from coming together, the
main parties are either splitting or hostage to factionalism. The ruling
Maoists have split with UCPN’s senior Vice Chairman Mohan Vaidya Kiran breaking
away to form a new party – Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. He claims the
support of nearly a third of the Central Committee members and two-thirds of
the heads of frontal organiaations.
The Madhesi parties are also
splitting, and the NC and UML have never been cohesive at the best of times.
There were four key players when
Nepal plunged into a vacuum. Now there is a coalition of 22 parties, including
the biggies and not including those breaking away to form new ones. Unless they
agree on what needs to be done to create conditions for the election, a new
parliament, a new constitution and New Nepal appear distant.
Courtesy:
DNA, July 11, 2012
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