Insulted, Infuriated And Invigorated

We don’t know what kind of healing Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba got in Singapore for the unspecified ‘stomach ailment’ that took him there a few weeks ago. But the former prime has undoubtedly come back with more fire in his belly.
Of all the things that could have pushed Deuba’s buttons, the most mundane seems to have set him off.  After leading the charge in blocking Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli from addressing parliament, Deuba has taken much time to warn the government and the ruling party of the perils of dissing him so dishonorably.
Admittedly, respect is a primeval human quest that has been validated by current liberal/left thinking and action as an integral part of the dignity of personhood. But, c’mon, it’s not like Deuba has been singled out for insult and humiliation by those in power.
Oli’s government has perfected the art of flouting others. Heck, the prime minister doesn’t listen to most members of his own party. Why should that kind of treatment sting Deuba so much?
Yet it does. After threatening to pull down the Oli government if it persisted with its all-round highhandedness, Deuba actually held an extended meeting with ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP)  co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. Of course, both sides were careful not to divulge too much about what was discussed. Clever more than careful, perhaps. By letting our collective imagination run wild, Deuba and Dahal both hope to mount pressure on Oli.
On the shenanigans within the NCP, no one knows what might happen next. We’ve all seen the power-sharing deal between Oli and Dahal that preceded the unification of the Unified Marxist Leninist and Maoist factions. But, then, it’s turned out to be barely worth the paper it is on.
Organizationally, the churning process continues unabated where once diehard Dahal allies are flocking to Oli and vice versa. For now, the accepted wisdom is that Oli could pre-empt Dahal by calling mid-term elections, while Dahal could split the party to gain the premiership.
Amid all this, Deuba’s infuriation could have been exacerbated by the realization that his routes to relevance are dwindling. The Nepali Congress is in such organizational and ideological doldrums that Deuba recognizes he continues to head the party only because his rivals are busier fighting one another than opposing him. With the Rastriya Prajatantra Party now having coopted B.P. Koirala and his national reconciliation agenda, the Nepali Congress will have a harder time figuring out whether to turn left or right.
Ordinarily, the Nepali Congress might have wanted to sit back until the next election and watch the NCP dig itself in a deeper hole. Amid the imponderables Deuba faces within, that course of action has become a big luxury. It would be nice for Deuba personally to get back to being premier. Power and patronage would allow him to consolidate his position in the party. The immediate imperative, however, is to do something – or at least project the perception of such.
Aiding and abetting Dahal’s unsheathed pursuit of the premiership would allow Deuba to regain a part of the initiative. As Dahal expresses helplessness at his party’s inability to identify the murderers of Madan Bhandari before fearing for his own life, he can read the scowls and smirks on Oli’s face. Deuba, for his part, can vent the annoyance and anger that Dahal himself finds expedient not to unleash personally. The former Fierce One wears a calm and collected demeanor while the consummate consensus-builder has more than the grumpiness of, well, a hungry tiger. Who’s dissing whom, really?

Round Table, Reconciliation And Restlessness

Beset by relentless criticism of rank opportunism, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) seems anxious to project itself as the party of solutions.
Just before the anti-government Guthi protests hit a crescendo, RPP president Kamal Thapa proposed a round table conference accommodating all political forces between former king Gyanendra and Comrade Biplav to pull the country out of its current morass. That proposition couldn’t gain much traction amid the political frenzy the creeping threat of government control of religious trusts whipped up.
Now the RPP has decided to incorporate Nepali Congress icon B.P. Koirala’s national reconciliation policy together with Prithvi Narayan Shah’s Divine Counsels and King Mahendra’s nationalism as the party’s guiding philosophy.
It would be easy to mock the man taught in the tradition that disparaged B.P. on the airport tarmac that cold December day 43 years ago when the Nepali Congress leader ended his Indian exile with a message of reconciliation with the monarchy for the greater good of Nepal. But, since then, we’ve seen too many bizarre turnarounds for our own good.
Thapa himself isn’t probably too bothered either to find himself remembering B.P. Koirala more often than the Nepali Congress does these days. A man who won the admiration of many diehard republicans for the tenacity with which he stood behind the monarchy during those trying years following the April 2006 Uprising, Thapa was rewarded by the people – albeit indirectly – in the election to the second constituent assembly. Amid the fractured popular mandate, Thapa found himself on ever higher rungs of power.
The RPP leader tried hard to convince the country that his party’s participation in successive republican governments was a principled effort to push its agenda of restoring the monarchy and Hindu statehood from within. With the collective Nepali mind weighed down by far more intricate political convolutions at virtually every turn, the RPP’s linguistic legerdemain could only be comprehended as a guise for political unscrupulousness.
These days, Thapa is saying what a lot of Nepalis are saying and want to hear more of. Addressing a meeting of the party in Kathmandu the other day, Thapa said that democracy in Nepal is under threat because of the political parties’ wrong policies and corrupt tendencies.
“The Nepal Communist Party (NCP) is using its mandate to capture state power, instead of addressing the concerns of the people,” Thapa declared. “The government handpicks people to appoint them to constitutional bodies, educational institutions, foreign missions and security agencies.”
While all this is happening, Thapa lamented, the main opposition does not have the will and the determination to confront the government. Exalting B.P. Koirala may be one way in which the RPP is doing the Nepali Congress’ job for that moribund organization.
But Thapa really needs to address and overcome his underlying restlessness over somehow not being able to earn enough credit should the monarchy and Hindu statehood be restored. Doubtless, without the RPP, the monarchy and Hindu statehood would not have remained at the center of our political discourse.
It is equally true that the NCP and the Nepali Congress would rush to assert their ability to compromise for the greater good should those institutions be restored. That shouldn’t mean Thapa should still be sticking his finger in the wind to figure out whether to concentrate more on the monarchy or Hindu statehood on a given day.

Does Anyone Like Anything Here Anymore?

With the government aggressively assaulting the past and present in the name of newness, dissenters are emerging from different quarters with matching defiance. That’s bound to happen when predicting earthquakes and doing satirical film reviews on social media begin landing you in jail.
A bill seeking to replace the existing Press Council with a media council led by a government-appointed chief with extensive powers to impose fines up to Rs 1 million on editors, reporters or publishers found guilty of defamation has consumed Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli’s administration for the better part of two months.
In its innate sense of wisdom, the government decided to add fuel to the fire by unveiling a Guthi bill that seeks to amend the law governing religious and private trusts in order to bring their property and management under a government-controlled authority.
What’s more, the Guthi bill has drawn dire predictions of the demise of the existing system from ruling-party circles. Normally, such controversies tend to go to the extent of threatening the government of the day. Yet the government is reacting in a way that risks hastening systemic termination.
True, Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokharel, acting on behalf of his boss traveling in Western Europe, has sounded a more conciliatory note of late. But the pronouncements of Prime Minister Oli and his Communication Minister, Gokul Baskota, in particular, have acquired a repulsiveness and explosiveness otherwise inherent in suicide vests in another part of the world.
More and more Nepalis seem to be realizing that republicanism, federalism and secularism were not part of the agenda of those who rose up in April 2006. Even the few that still argue the agenda of Nepali newness did contain those three pillars concede they didn’t expect the ancien regime to cast such a long shadow.
Royal regalia looks nice on royalty, not commoners elected to the highest office. Federalism was supposed to decentralize power, not raise the people’s taxes and officialdom’s perks. Secularism was never meant to elevate the various schools of Christianity at the expense of Hinduism and other faiths. When Muslims say they felt more secure practicing their belief under the decades of official Hindu statehood, that says a lot.
External powers are no less peeved by our poses and postures. The Chinese don’t like the way we’re hyping the imminent arrival of trains from the north and, more broadly, the extent of Beijing’s overall support to Nepal vis-à-vis other international and regional powers.
The Indians, who drove the current process over a dozen years ago to align Kathmandu more closely with New Delhi, don’t like the way Mandarin is being made mandatory in certain schools. (And Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t even spoken at any length on Nepal in terms of his second term, as if relishing in the way we are roiling in our fears and hopes.)
Just a couple of months ago, the Americans flustered us by extolling our potential contribution to easing Washington’s tensions with Pyongyang, now don’t like the way the North Koreans are behaving in Nepal. Does anyone like anything here anymore?

Fools, Or Played For Ones?

Before embarking on his European excursion, Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli gave us something to chew on, something that seems to be gnawing at him with growing ferocity these days. In this day and age, how could there still be ‘fools’ in our midst who want to bring back the monarchy?
The roots of our premier’s bafflement are not new. Oli’s contention that the monarchy kept the country dark, dank and destitute conforms with the prevailing political narrative. The intrinsic worth of an institution in which an individual – regardless of ability or qualification – could inherit the crown as a matter of birthright has been questioned for eons.
It might not be reasonable or fair-minded to equate someone so enamored of honorary academic degrees with shallowness and superficiality. As someone who continued to exhibit sympathy for the ancien regime until very late in the day, Oli may still be contending with unresolved issues within. Still, the prime minister could certainly benefit from some deep diving here.
It would be a gross injustice to history to go along with the conventional wisdom that the people threw out the monarchy in April 2006. For argument’s sake, though, let’s accept the premise. The next logical question would then be why the people would look back to the bad old days with such fond intensity as to cherish its revival. Without the seriousness of the situation, the prime minister wouldn’t be bringing up the issue in a public forum, even if to denigrate its votaries.
Our republican constitution has not relegated the crown to, so to speak, the dustbin of history. Lately, Rastriya Prajatantra Party leader Kamal Thapa has been pushing the idea of including the former monarch and Comrade Biplav as part of a round table conference to address the country’s real problems.
From all indications, the Nepali Congress is waiting for the most propitious moment to announce that its abandonment of the monarchy was a grievous self-inflicted wound. In whispers, many communists can be heard wondering whether it was all worth the while.
A united communist party enjoying a two-thirds majority in parliament controlling six out of seven provinces amid a feeble political opposition should be doing things that matter to the people’s daily life. Instead, the prime minister incessantly boasts of the imminence of enchanted trains and ships to the point where the Chinese ambassador – representing the country supposed to be building the tracks, engines and wagons – feels compelled to tamp him down. The Indian ambassador seems have a greater tolerance for our internal inanities. But our premier prefers to go after those who refuse to regale in his tales, oblivious to the disarray his party is in.
Sure, the monarchy spent much time and resources on extracting adoration and indulging in ostentation. An interminable desire to establish the system’s democratic credentials and reckless rush to silence critics alienated the people.
What’s changed, though? At least the people then got roads, bridges, schools, health posts, agriculture centers and industries and a modicum of respect in the comity of nations.
So, Mr. Prime Minister, fools, or played for ones?

Dahal’s Dilemma Of Enquiry And Learning

Barely done fulminating about the purported power-sharing deal predicating the unification between our erstwhile Maoist and Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) factions, Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ wonders what all the fuss is about.
There should be no debate on whether Khadga Prasad Oli will remain prime minister for the Nepal Communist Party’s full five-year term, the former Fierce One says. Whether Oli would do so would depend on, well, circumstances, Dahal adds. All the former Maoist supremo says he did during that touchy TV interview was fondly reminisce over how the NCP was created against all odds.
Oli’s predicament is quite understandable. His departure from the country always seems to precipitate some robust debate over who should be leading the government and when.
In the latest iteration, at least, former prime ministers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhal Nath Khanal have stood behind Oli and Dahal respectively. The main protagonists, for their part, know that any alliance is purely one of convenience.
The middle and lower rungs are where the real action is. And it is pretty clear there that the NCP is in a flux. Some of Oli’s worst critics today emanate from the former UML stream while Dahal has lost key allies during the ‘people’s war’ to the prime minister. This floor-crossing is bound to continue amid the deep resentments and rancor gripping the NCP.
Considering the number of times and ways he has broached the subject, Dahal is quite convinced that different people should lead the party and the government. When one party co-chair also happens to head the government, the other can barely be construed to be equal. As a transitional mechanism, such an arrangement might be palatable. What do you do when the transition becomes so interminable?
Ever since he emerged as a peacemaker, Dahal’s personal life has suffered a series of blows. He barely dodged the transitional-justice bullet in Washington DC earlier this year. Patience is a virtue in politics only when it is pursued as a means to an end.
Amid all this, Dahal is less clear about the job he wants. Control of the government would matter little for someone schooled in the supremacy of the party. Yet the government is the storehouse of pelf and patronage so essential to control of the party.
The longer the dilemma persists, Dahal seems to sense, Oli’s morbid antics risk plunging the party deeper into the abyss of unpopularity. What good would it be for Dahal then if he happened to gain control of both the party and government? Yet he can’t seem to seize the initiative from a ground that is continually shifting. Every trial balloon he floats blows up if not in his face, then very close.
So, one day Dahal swaggers about how he enjoys such excellent relations with both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The next, he characterizes the Biplav bombings as a prelude to peace. The show must go on, irrespective of the content and context.