Launching popular Jana Andolans and making anew the democratic political formation is not enough. The political leadership should be able to consolidate and institutionalise the spirit of such Jana Andolans — democracy — as a way of life in day-to-day real practice. The leaders were able to create political forming against the Rana oligarchy in 1950 and against the Panchayat regime in 1990. And, yes! The leaders were also able to make anew formation against the autocratic monarchy in 2006. The political leaderships succeeded in defeating the hurdles to democratic formations all three times. However, the leadership has repeatedly failed to consolidate democracy each and every time in the past. Now, as we have entered the federal republican era, optimism has been displaced by frustration and cynicism among the masses due to the leadership’s detour from standard democratic practices and the institutionalisation of democracy once again. The increasing disagreements and confrontations among political forces are telling us bitter chronicles of another possible failure of political leadership right now. Why do leaders fail to consolidate, institutionalise and deepen democracy frequently? It is high time to cogitate the causes behind it.

Less than a year after the avowal of the republic, the titular president has become the most controversial political institution in Nepal. The Maoists are claiming that they are agitating to correct the presidential mistake in the chief of army staff (CoAS) row.  We habitually tend to interpret the constitution and laws for our own convenience and to fulfil vested interests. The executive often intrudes into the jurisdiction of the judiciary and can take many controversial decisions in a sub judice matter; conversely, the resolution motion on the president’s step in the CoAS row could not enter the legislature, saying simply it was a sub judice matter. None of the so-called constitutional experts bothered to say this was a wrong tradition. Why? The answer is very simple — the politicians and so-called experts all are hypocrites, double-standard people.

Though political culture is a subjective term, it affects the extent to which and the ways in which societies and politics achieve or fail to achieve progressive transformation, economic development and democratisation. Democratic institutions are the hardware, which we borrowed from the western genealogy of governance; however, we fail to obtain the software as a “political cultural remittance” to operate the hardware compatible with the software in Nepali politics. The unconstitutional and unethical political step of the president on the CoAS row is an archetypal example of such incompatibility between the institutional hardware and the political cultural software. Guatemalan sociologist Bernardo Arevalo made an apt observation on his own country’s political culture, “We have the hardware of democracy but the software of authoritarianism.” His observation fine tunes in Nepal also; a totalitarian psyche disguised as democratic. The software counterfeiting commonly rendered like the CoAS controversy. 

Long before, I read Bernard Crick somewhere, “Democracy is everybody’s mistress, and yet somehow retains her magic even when a lover sees that her favours are being, in his light, illicitly shared by many another. Indeed even amid our pain at being denied her exclusive fidelity, we are proud of her adaptability to all sorts of company.” I think our experiences with democracy are similar to Crick’s observation, and Nepali politicians making our democracy their mistress.

It is commonly said that the central democratic truth is that it is political culture, not politics itself that determines the success of the economy, society and polity of any nation-state. Another democratic truth is that politics can change a political culture, shape and reshape it and save it from itself. The leaders were able to change the politics many times in the past; however the political leadership couldn’t change the political culture.

The dichotomy exits in the political culture. The first is development and transformation-prone political culture, and the second development-resistant political culture. The first one is desirable for institutionalisation of democracy. However, the tendency of our leaders is towards the latter.

Though several factors such as geography, climate and history of society determine the political culture, a few aspects which we say are political cultures, in democracy, are universal in nature. There is substantial relationship between political culture and political institutions. Dainel Etounga-Maguelle rightly said, “Political culture is the mother and the political institutions are the children.” Wrong nurturing of the coming generation produces a wrong future generation. If nobody starts the institutionalisation of democracy and democratic culture, then how could it be established in our society?

Political culture is difficult to deal with both politically and emotionally. It is also difficult to deal with intellectually because of problems of definition and measurement. However, there is consensus among scholars that there are few political cultures which are prerequisites for the success of democracy in any country. They are attitude, belief, mores, norms/values and orientation.

Norms/values fall within the province of political culture we call “ethics”. The political behaviours of some political leader who acts out of respect for intrinsic values formerly accepted at will and later incorporate as an inner imperative is called “moral” in standard of political behaviours. A person is moral when answering to intrinsic norms/values. We have democratic institutions and antidemocratic norms/values. It is time to consider what needs to be done to change the course and speed of the political cultural value system to strengthen democracy and arriving at the opposite pole to today’s political norms/value system. Political malpractices are not the fault lines of the democratic institution itself, rather they are the fault of the politician’s state of mind, and that determines the political behaviour of politicians. If Prachanda and Madhav Nepal have a bit of such culture, they don’t look like two naughtiest school children fighting each other verbally. 

K.P. Oli lost his constituency in the CA election and party chairmanship in the national congress; however, he is probably the strongest leader of the CPN (UML). Can one like Oli in Nepal be able to become a party leader in other countries? Madhav Nepal and Sujata Koirala both lost their respective constituencies in the CA election, and they are prime minister and foreign minister respectively right now. Can one imagine such phenomena in a democracy anywhere else? If Mr. Nepal has some democratic norms/value, mores and belief, then he would have refused to become a CA member only. However, these kinds of phenomena are possible only in Nepal because politicians have no "ethics" and "moral".

Orientation is an important political culture and is of two types. The first is ascription orientation in which a person can hold the position on the basis of inheritance, dynasty and legacy. Giraja Koirala’s attempt to establish Sujata as a leader is a handpicked example of ascription orientation. Conversely, in achievement orientation, one can hold the position on the basis of knowledge, skill and personal capacity to influence the masses which is desirable in a democracy. Vertical and horizontal social mobility is must copiously possible in a democracy. A black man Barack Obama can hold the position of the U.S. presidency. Could we imagine that it can be repeated in Nepal? Anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista said a long time ago that we have suffered from afno manchhe (one’s own people), chakari (sycophancy) and bhagyabad (fatalism) which are principal hurdles to transforming to modernisation. The culture of ramra manchhe bhanda hamra manchhe (rather own people than good people) is deeply rooted due to the ascription orientation in our politicians’ minds. Whatever best be the constitution, in the absence of a democratic culture, democracy cannot be consolidated in practice. Disguising authoritarianism and totalitarianism in a democratic veil will repeat doggedly, and it is a Nepali’s common destiny.

(The author is editor of the book The Political Economy of Fiscal Federalism in Nepal published by the Nepal South Asia Centre)

Bhim Prasad Bhurtel

bhurtel_bp@hotmail.com

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