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Politics in a mess
- WORDS & ECHOES
AUG 03 -
Another round of voting for the new prime minister has ended inconclusively. The parliamentarians watched the absurd Sisyphusian boulder pushed uphill by two political leaders, one revolutionary and the other a social democrat representing two modes of historicism in Nepali politics. They will watch the same show again at some other date, and continue to do so as long as the mortals remain around the Constituent Assembly world. This failure of political parties to form a consensus government has put the country in a difficult position. A cabinet derelict in its duty on all the major scores clings on constitutionally.
The members of the CA are guilty of the conspiracy of silence. The major political parties, whether they abstained from voting or whether they made
inter-party political bargains, are guilty of only pushing group-centric agendas. The entire process turned out to be a drama of convenience played surreptitiously by the political parties. The big theoretical claims of bigger parties and the bravado of the so-called small parties now no longer hold any water. The interregnum following Prime Minister Madhav Nepal’s resignation has opened up very important points of debate in this country. I would like to put them as I see them.
The situations leading to the extension of the CA’s term for another year on May 29, 2010 and the following events can offer a picture of this country’s future. We can use the short period of contemporary Nepali political transformation and the real events as historiography to construct the text of a Nepali political future. A short perception of our future based on what we have seen so far is in order
Democratically elected governments will be free not to be accountable for their actions. Misrule of the country will become the norm. Highhanded coercion by government ministers, from the prime minister down to state ministers, against the in-dependent work of the bureaucracy will be-come the norm. Favouritism, siphoning off of money from the government coffers into the pockets of one’s own party workers and members of the charmed circles will be a common practice. Culprits will go scot-free.
Intimidation of various orders will discourage investors and people with entrepreneurial talent and capacity. Market economy and free trade will be the slogan of all the political parties including the Maoists, whose ideal postulates will be as diverse as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in China as ideology and economic pragmatism will be the two mantras that the communists of Nepal too will be repeating. The Maoists will remain the only
communist party. By the same token, they and they alone will have to answer the questions related to the continuity and transformation of the communist system. This challenge will give them one advantage. They will have to take important decisions regarding the
economy, political structure, independent judiciary, press freedom and
human rights. Other parties’ decisions
in these matters will matter. But
what the Nepali Congress says about these issues and how it organises itself around these principles and how it enters into political negotiations with the Maoists will largely shape the political texture of the country.
The Maoists will be debating progressive issues, but they will gradually see a slow erosion of their monolith leadership structure. As seen in their debates about leadership questions,
we can imagine a certain structure
of implosive nature making inroads
into the party. The party leadership
will try to attract people of diverse interests, nature and pursuits into the party fold. The Maoists will continue to debate whether it would be proper to dismantle their struggle-based structures as demanded by the Nepali Congress (NC) and the United Marxist Leninist (UML) and become a party without any such organisations.
C.P. Gajurel, launching a novel titled Spring Revolution written by Bimal Subedi the other day, said the erosion of the line separating the Maoists from the other parties worries them. He said it was very important to maintain the distance between the Maoists and those who had put a price on their heads, apparently the NC and the UML who were in government. But what guides politics now is not so much the dialectics of the people’s liberation war as pragmatism, which is explained by Prachanda by evoking Nepali historicism including characters who were kings and prime ministers. I have heard him allude to the spirit and vision of B.P. Koirala more than any other leader.
The UML will give space to all kinds of interests to take cover under the name of leftist ideology. A wider network of NGOs run by UML fellow travellers will offer various kinds of moral and financial succour to the party because they will need the backing of a major political party like the UML which has clout in the government and the House. The UML is a big well-organised cadre-based party. But past events, including
current incidents, show that its leaders’ modus operandi is based on sensation, personal animus and power mysticism. This party impacted political events by fielding its unelected leaders to work in the government and the party. But a strong new generation of UML leaders are fully aware of that. They will seek to correct the mistakes.
The NC proved itself to be a prestigious old democratic party when its acting president Sushil Koirala intervened to stop the formation of a militant NC youth organisation. By doing so, he frustrated the attempts of his party hawks who were trying to make a detour to make the old feudal structure led by the erstwhile monarch active again. The Nepali Congress will harbour its old anti-communist animus, but it will not allow this to affect its entire politics. As the past experience of this party, especially after Girija-babu played a decisive role in the peace process, shows that the NC will remain an important force in the days to come also. The Madhesi parties may continue to spend more time on developing dialogic strategies with other major parties than focussing on the politics of Madhes itself, which would address the interests of the groups and regions and decide what would be the realistic and important thing to do.
But the above observations are entirely based on what has happened over the years, especially at the present juncture of time when writing the constitution and consensus have become secondary issues. That is precisely the irony of the present situation. But all what is happening is a political process. The CA, though revived with great efforts and public pressure, still remains a
very strong, historical and powerful people’s House. Whoever attempts to undermine the strength of this
House is either an enemy of the people or of the democratic process which is underway. But to create a healthy political culture tomorrow, we should not take the present fluid context lightly. What we practice today may become the norm tomorrow.
Abhi Subedi
abhi@mail.com.np
Posted on: 2010-08-04 07:31
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