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Just do your job
JUN 17 -
The people had ordained in the formation of the Constituent Assembly (CA) that there was no other way than an all-party consensus in the formulation of the new constitution. That was the clear message of the hung CA where no party has a majority. There was to be a coalition to run the government, and the spirit of making the constitution expected a unanimous conclusion. It was given a two-year term which would have been adequate to draft the constitution had the spirit of consensus not been abandoned. But all that turned out to be a wild wish.
At the end of the given two years and the failure to draft the constitution, it is now being mooted that the government should be seen as a caretaker arrangement. The fact of the matter is that the government should have been seen from day one as a caretaker agency. The whole thing was designed as a transitional means. The constitution itself was a transitional document, named rightly the Interim Constitution, not a permanent document. The CA was given the mandate to formulate a new constitution. As the constitution was being drafted at the end of a decade-long conflict, there was a corollary function of the conclusion of sustainable peace. The government’s job was to provide the needed support to the CA, apart from running the day-to-day administration, maintaining law and order and meeting emergencies if any.
But the villain of the hunger for power in the parties broke the spirit of consensus from the very beginning. The spirit of consensus was abandoned by inserting a provision of the majority factor, with the additional provision of a two-thirds majority in the case of making the new constitution. If this principle had been maintained from the beginning, we would still have seen the new constitution. The first coalition was in a position to easily mobilise the support of two-thirds of the members of the CA. But the Maoist party which led the coalition lost the support of the majority because of its own behaviour. The making of the constitution was not given priority. The Maoists started to extend their hands beyond the given agenda. The supporting components left the coalition one after another protesting the high-handedness of the Maoists and the coalition fell apart.
Polarisation had started with the adoption of the majority factor and the NC’s refusal to join the Maoist-led government. The fall of the Maoist-led government accentuated the polarisation process, culminating in the formation of a 22-party coalition government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal. This coalition survived on the hate Maoist agenda, with both the parties knowing that the task of writing the constitution was being derailed. The consensus approach was deliberately abandoned and the two-thirds majority would technically never materialise without the cooperation of the Maoists. There was no sincere approach to patch things up, and the whole time for writing the constitution was eaten up in widening the gulf. It is, therefore, surprising that these antithetic parties agreed to end the deadlock and extend the tenure of the CA by one year. The country was once again given the hope that the constitution would eventually come at the end of the extended period.
However, in the aftermath of the fresh agreement to extend the life of the CA, the power game has even worsened instead of improving. The controversy of who will be the next PM after the promised resignation of Madhav Nepal has been the major debacle. This has three dirty sides to it. First, the same old preconditions are being repeated for the resignation of Madhav Nepal. Second, the three major parties — the Maoists, the NC and the UML — have not sorted out their differences. Third, there is friction within each party regarding the choice of a candidate for the PM instead of agreeing on a particular leader. This trend will definitely have an adverse impact on the expected approach of consensus. It is not certain when this row will end, and there will be an agreed PM for the duration of one year. All this is eating up valuable time that should have been spent on writing the constitution.
Who becomes (or has become) the PM is not a subject of importance for the interest of the nation. Whoever becomes the PM will have to understand the limits that the people have set for the government. The government is there only to help the writing of the constitution. First, there is the limit of one year’s time. Even the extension of one year was an arbitrary decision of the CA which failed to carry out its mandate in the given two years’ time. That was tolerated by the people because any other alternate route would have taken longer and the country would have been fogged in political uncertainty. But if it is not done again within the extended time, the people will not tolerate it. Every element of the CA will lose the trust of the people completely.
Another limit is that the finalisation of the constitution is concomitant with the finalisation of the peace process. The government or any other party cannot postpone the conclusion of the peace process until after the promulgation of the constitution. That was the spirit in which the Maoists had entered the comprehensive peace agreement. They have no longer the status of belligerency, and the combatants are the responsibility of the state. The combatants do not fight the state’s authority anymore. The state is being restructured after the promulgation of the constitution. Finalisation of the restructuring should rest on a permanent solution for the combatants.
Then there are processual limitations of a government in transition. The government has to take up the responsibility of maintaining internal security and external defence in any period of transition. But because of its very transitional nature, it cannot indulge in any action having a long-term impact on the nation. The day-to-day work of the government has to go on, but it is not supposed to introduce any changes in policy beyond what has already been decided by the nation. That applies to the terms of development projects. Development has already been put on the backburner as a result of the decade-long conflict. The new republic, in whatever shape it is determined by the CA, will set new development goals and develop appropriate programmes for the attainment of these goals. The transitional government cannot, therefore, initiate new programmes that will require more time than is available. It cannot impose its decision on the future course of the republic.
Given the present mistrust among the parties, particularly among the three major parties, it is not likely that the expected spirit of consensus will emerge easily. There are still some issues of state restructuring that will need more attentive deliberations. For example, the case of dividing the nation into viable units of federation is the most contentious issue. The formation of the State Restructuring Commission will be of help if it is not delayed like in the past. The issue of distribution of resources between the centre and the federal units is equally contentious. All these issues require the undivided attention of the major components of the CA. It is hoped that the leaders of the parties who are members of the CA will start giving it the expected weight and attend its sessions regularly. Most of the top leaders may also be involved in the government. If they avoid diversion from the expected path, they can sort out their differences through mutual consultation.
If a lesson can be learnt from past mistakes, it is that the government cannot afford to neglect the task of writing the constitution any more.
knsad66@yahoo.com
Posted on: 2010-06-18 08:44
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