That’s one bad idea
Alexander Pope in his philosophical poem “Essay on Man”, wrote, “For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administer’d is best.” And I cautiously agree. It is true that an excellent formal structure of the government cannot produce good governance unless administered with integrity, but it is also equally true that one sort of government may inhibit or promote good administration, stability, enhance governability and increase effective decision-making than the other. Thus, the form of government is important; but the question what governmental structure should Nepal choose still remains unanswered.
Leading commentators, constitutionalists, scholars and CA members have identified the perils of an executive president, discussed cabinet instability inherent in parliamentary democracy by instantiating 1990s Nepal as a case, and have pointed to the lack of cohesion between the prime minister and the president for rejecting the mixed semi-presidential model.
Besides these three models, there is a fourth alternative proposed by a phalanx of Nepali Congress leaders. The innovation proposed by these leaders is direct election of the prime minister, who would be popularly elected in the presidential fashion, giving a presidential twist to the governmental structure. Although the institutional configuration of this proposed model is yet to be disclosed, one thing is clear: Unlike a true presidential or a semi-presidential model, the directly elected PM will have to retain an absolute majority of the votes of confidence in parliament to continue to hold office.
Nepal is not the first country debating the installation of a direct popular election of the PM as a form of governance. To rectify, in particular, the problem of unstable cabinets and the malady of horse trading for coalition formation, established parliamentary democracies like Israel, Japan, Italy and even the UK and the Netherlands have debated this issue. But Israel alone undertook this institutional change in 1996, only to abandon it and revert to the traditional parliamentary system in 2003. I will point out why the stint with a directly elected PM was catastrophic in Israel, and argue against the adoption of this model in Nepal.
Israel introduced the system of direct election of the PM in 1996 to centralize political activities around the person holding the office of the PM. The directly elected PM, in the eyes of the electors, would have far greater legitimacy in forming the government. He would have overbearing standing vis-à-vis the potential coalition partners giving him or her an upper hand in the coalition-building process. It was believed that governance under a directly elected dominant PM would reduce intra-party factionalism and diminish the coercive ability of smaller parties in coalition formation leading to a durable, stable and a cohesive cabinet. Overall, it was hoped that the danger of frequent cabinet crises could be averted by limiting the role and influence of the smaller parties in government formation.
However, this institutional change failed to achieve the desired outcome of a more stable and effective government, and it was abandoned in less than seven years of implementation in 2003. As anticipated by the Israeli “reform”, the directly elected PMs of Israel — Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 and Ehud Barak in 1999 — could not muster the ability to build a strong and stable coalition. Most parties frequently backtracked from the coalition, and this period also witnessed a large number of ministerial resignations and dismissals.
This was due to the leverage garnered by small single-issue parties in Israeli party politics. Since separate but concurrent elections were held for the position of PM and the Israeli parliament (the Knesset), the electors split the votes for the premier and voted for smaller parties representing a specific agenda for the Knesset. As a consequence, there was a sharp increment in the number of representatives from the smaller parties at the Knesset and a corresponding decrease in the number of members from the larger parties. This raised the bargaining power of the smaller parties in formation of the government, making it increasingly difficult for the directly elected premier to form and sustain the coalition.
Since the 2008 Constituent Assembly election, a large number of small parties have dominated cabinet formation in Nepal. They have been exercising a relatively higher degree of bargaining power in comparison to their size; and it is likely that they will continue to do so in the future. As the failed Israeli experiment evinces, the direct election of the PM model cannot be a substitute for traditional parliamentary democracy.
Keeping the coalition intact will be far more strenuous in the direct election of the PM model than in traditional parliamentary democracy. Further, the direct election of the PM model remains the most untested governance model, and Nepal should not become a guinea pig in this regard. With regard to the remaining three, presidentialism, semi-presidentialism and parliamentary democracy, I completely agree with Alexander Pope.
Dahal is an advocate and holds an LLM from the University of Nottingham, UK
Posted on: 2012-01-30 08:52
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