Editorial»
No, minister
AUG 10 -
The fact that Nepal’s political leaders have “politicised” the bureaucracy and other state organs,
thus rendering them pliant and loyal but at the same time destroying their cohesion and effectiveness has long been known. Any analysis of the ills of parliamentary democracy as practiced in the 1990s includes this as an important factor as to how the political system them became dysfunctional. Two recent examples regarding the encounters of ministers with civil servants at the highest echelons of their ministries, however, reveal a far more curious phenomenon. It now appears that high-ranking civil servants have assumed a degree of autonomy from their bosses—the ministers—and consider any direction from the latter a matter of unwanted interference rather than guidance. This has naturally provoked the ire of the ministers in question. First, Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala has refused to take the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) deal, which the Foreign Ministry has decided to give to the French company Oberther, for approval to the Cabinet. This is because she was kept totally in the dark throughout the process during which the company was selected. Second, Energy Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat has claimed that the Executive Director of the Upper Tamakoshi Project was selected without his knowledge. He has thus asked for clarification from the Secretary of his ministry how this came to happen.
The details in the second case have not yet become clear, and it is thus difficult to state with any certainty why exactly the director of such an important project was selected without any input of the minister. In the case of the Oberthur deal, however, it is by now well known that Foreign Ministry officials were fed up by attempts by Minister Koirala to interfere in the MRP selection process, probably with the intention of granting it to some group proximate to her. Soon after the resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, the ministry has intensified efforts to complete the deal, as officials there felt that this would be a good time to avoid any kind of political interference.
The phenomenon of the bureaucracy functioning
independently of the guidance provided by elected representatives will continue if the high degree of political instability that has characterised central-level Nepali politics remains. With rapidly changing governments and with the energies
of political leaders spent more on conflicts with other
parties than on running the ministries they are supposed to, those in control of government are losing their authority
in the eyes of the public and among their subordinates. Civil servants are beginning to feel that the ministers have no vision and that it doesn’t make any difference if their directives are ignored. This is, however, a dangerous process and to the detriment of democracy.
Posted on: 2010-08-11 07:48
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