Real Change In The Works

The principal political forces have struck a balance – or at least a semblance of it – in our post-monarchy state structure. The Nepali Congress has the presidency, while the Maoists control the premiership. The Unified Marxist Leninists (UML) hold the constituent assembly, while the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) controls the vice-presidency.
How factional dynamics within these parties play out remains the key imponderable. And the spotlight falls squarely on the Nepali Congress. Sher Bahadur Deuba suddenly jumped into the ring after Ram Chandra Poudel was touted as the token challenger to Pushpa Kamal Dahal for the top executive job. Why did a three-time premier agree to such a conspicuous losing proposition? 
Was this the outcome of last-minute confabulations among diplomats from countries traditionally influential in Nepal? Or did it stem from Deuba’s desire to live up to his given name in front of the man he once called brave? Or to reinforce the message that, come what may, he is the pretender to the premiership?
How long will the Nepali Congress deign to stay in the opposition? The UML’s populist Nine S’s program instantly goaded the party into alliance with the royalists. Although royalty has departed, sections of the Nepali Congress-friendly media have reached out to ex-royalist Prakash Chandra Lohani of the Rastriya Janashakti Party to endorse their view that the Dahal government cannot, by any definition, be considered consensus driven.
The Maoists would love to know what the Nepali Congress is really up to, but their own house remains messy. When Dr. Baburam Bhattarai issued that hard-hitting statement defending his nationalist credentials, it became clear that the former rebels have much more than residual resentment from the purge of 2005. 
Dahal, for his part, has resigned as chief of the People’s Liberation Army to become the entire nation’s premier. The analogy may not hold, but our new premier, under protection of the state army, must find himself counting Pervez Musharraf’s travails once he shed the uniform in Pakistan.
The UML remains the wild card, especially since it has four former deputy premiers constantly itching for the top job? Khadga Prasad Oli and Bam Dev Gautam may be tugging the party in opposite directions, but general secretary Jhal Nath Khanal has other ambitious comrades to worry about.
The MJF is an amalgam of rightists, leftists and centrists that ran old Nepal. In a party that still calls itself a forum, members are perhaps at greater liberty to ventilate their disagreements without having to own up ideologically relevant consequences. Yet the fault lines in the MJF appear more debilitating to the nation.
Despite such murky portents, the state can no longer postpone the process of writing the new constitution. Madhav Kumar Nepal, the former chief of the UML, and Bishwanath, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, seem to be the leading contenders to head the drafting panel. 
You could question the choice, since both were the principal architects of the doomed 1990 constitution. In a spirit of conciliation, however, you could also argue that these men desire to set things right this time. Upadhyaya, in particular, can be expected to exhibit more seriousness on the issues of language and ethnicity he had summarily dismissed during the 1990 drafting process.
The process is not going to be pretty. Those seeking inclusion in state structures have already sharpened their swords. What about those resisting exclusion? It would be a mistake to laugh off the recent call for an alliance between Bahun-Chhettris and Rana-Shahs. In the battle for survival, history offers a sobering lesson. It’s not how the Ranas and Shahs joined hands after the 1950 change. It’s how the Gorkha Parishad, supposedly the party of the Ranas, joined hands with the Nepali Congress after the royal takeover a decade later. As for the priestly caste, the kumai and purbia bahuns could finally settle their scores, now that we no longer have royal preceptors. Where do jaisis and khatris fit in all this?
Hindi, as Vice-President Parmananda Jha recently stated, could end up as an official language in the constitution. Could Urdu be a less credible candidate, considering the prominence of our Muslim minority? (Going by Indian media reports on the mushrooming of madrassas along the border, Arabic could be an equally potent contender, though.)
Still, real change may be in the works. During our last brush with democracy, all three elected assemblies died a premature death at the hands of ambitious prime ministers. Considering the strenuousness of its task, this one could get extensions ad infinitum. New Nepal, indeed.

Staying Sane Around Smarmy Spoilers

When Ram Raja Prasad Singh starts blaming India for his defeat in the presidential elections, you are, at first, forced to question your own sanity. Actually, Singh only voiced suspicion over India’s role in his defeat. Still, the distinction does little to dilute our astonishment.
After the 1985 bombings outside Narayanhity Palace and the Rastriya Panchayat and inside Hotel Annapurna, rumors swirled for quite some time that palace hardliners had paid Singh to claim responsibility for their acts clearly aimed at thwarting the Nepali Congress’ non-violent agitation.
Singh spent the next five years across the southern border as a hunted man. He wasn’t your conventional exile, though, having domiciled himself on both sides of the Jange Pillars.
Even in the midst of the openness the spring of 1990 unleashed, Singh couldn’t establish his relevance. It was no small matter to castigate the palace and campaign for a republic during those partyless decades. Singh’s rants contained little beyond the regular after an entire nation had risen up against a politically preponderant palace.
As the Maoists gained ground, Singh would make public statements in support of the new push for republicanism. Beyond that, you heard very little from the man. Some reports suggested Singh was too ill to be a serious political contender, while others believed he was training a new corps of revolutionaries.
The prospect of republicanism sparked by the collapse of royal rule in April 2006 brought Singh to national prominence. It was only after the Madhesi agitation gained steam that he rose in stature. At a meeting in Patna, Singh declined to become titular head of the disparate agitations in the Nepali plains. That was surprising considered the permanence of the “RAW agent” tag he did so little to tear.
The ball started rolling once more after the constituent assembly voted to abolish the monarchy. “I met with Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood at the inauguration ceremony of the Narayanhity Palace Museum,” Singh confirmed in a recent newspaper interview. He [Sood] was brought by a person and he introduced himself.” Sood stated that Singh was going to have great responsibilities on his shoulders soon and congratulated him in advance.
The Maoists got the message and nominated Singh as their presidential candidate. That choice tarnished the ex-rebels’ nationalist credentials. Singh’s defeat gave the Indians the space to operate under deeper cover. “Many countries wanted to see the revolution defeated….maybe India wanted that, too,” Singh told the newspaper. 
His subsequent revelations exuded much more than traces of suspicion. Insisting that his relations with India were never smooth, Singh said he felt there was nothing in them that could deteriorate further. “The Maoists knew this fact very well.”
Then came this bit that the country did not know too well. “I never supported the New Delhi-sponsored 12-point agreement between the mainstream parties and the Maoists. If the agreement had been signed in Kathmandu, I would have definitely supported it with an open heart”.
Until now, it sounded as if Singh’s objection was to the venue not the value of the alliance. But he reframed the debate. Singh said he had met with Maoist chairman Prachanda for the first time in New Delhi and had told him not to compromise. “I always believed that in a revolution there is no such thing as compromise… however, they compromised”.
Yet Singh had no qualms about becoming the compromise presidential candidate of the Maoists and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum. The swiftness with which that alliance unraveled must have heightened Singh’s soreness. “If I say that I was not hurt after the defeat, I would be lying. But now, I have controlled my composure”. Good for him.
When the newspaper asked Singh directly whether he thought India was behind his defeat, the pioneer republican refused comment. 
After all that Singh said in the course of the conversation, why did the reporter have to spoil the interview? 

Ceremonialism By Executive Order

President Ram Baran Yadav remains in a state of volatility on matters ranging from official abode to administrative assistance. The way he appears to be redefining the role and reach of the highest office of the land thus becomes all the more remarkable.
Contrary to the purely ceremonial role envisaged by most architects of New Nepal, Yadav seems set to acquire executive influence. His high-profile political consultations in connection with the formation of the new government have angered sections of the Maoists.
The president’s direct participation in the activities of the Nepal Army has alienated some quarters on the other end of the ideological spectrum. In conveying best wishes to soldiers heading for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and expressing hope that they would carry out their duties with discipline, Yadav hardly departed from the tradition established by his predecessors as supreme commander. The president’s physical presence at Panchkhal sparked a queasiness among some that remains unmitigated by the realization that he would, in all probability, never don the uniform.
Overall, this overt exhibition of republicanism has set off speculation of an emergence of a political co-habitation practiced by that other former monarchy, France. Former king Gyanendra Shah’s overtures to Yadav have put in new perspective the possibility of a broad nationalist platform.
As such, geopolitics has lost little time in entering the debate. President Yadav’s understandable preoccupation with the construction of the long overdue post-election government forced him to cancel a visit to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Scribes across the southern border scurried to put on a sinister spin. Yadav knows he did not snub the Chinese, at least not deliberately. Deep down, the mandarins up north must have known he was in no position to break with tradition and pay them a visit first.
Indian ebullience on this count came after the media there went gaga over Yadav’s supposed Indian roots. Admittedly, the physician turned politician shares fewer such links than, say, his former boss Girija Prasad Koirala, who was born in India. But that piece of reality did not fit the operative narrative of the reporters and editors – and the officialdom patronizing them – down south.
Yadav’s 11th-hour ascension to the top job has evidently satisfied the Nepal Army, whose reluctance to take orders from a presumptive Maoist protégé fueled rumors of an imminent political accident. Yet talk of a military coup has acquired greater resonance since Yadav took his oath. And not only because of his deputy’s choice of language at the swearing-in ceremony.
Should Sujata Koirala win the by-election through the active support of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum’s Upendra Yadav, who vacated one of last April’s keenly contested seats, the non-communist bloc will have gained significant ground.
Efforts to marginalize the Maoists from monopolizing the state would see President Yadav’s active participation. Endeavors to tame the former rebels, too, can be expected to feature Yadav in the central role.
With Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah and current president Pervez Musharraf having entered the core of Nepal’s political lexicon, the non-left cluster would do well to examine another analogy.
In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party named one of its senior leaders, Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari, as candidate for president. Ensconced in office, Leghari ended up dismissing Benazir and her government in 1996 (while, one might add, our own star-crossed Sher Bahadur Deuba was paying an official visit as premier). The head of state is, after all, expected to rise above the party. A sobering thought indeed for the Nepali Congress.

Dignity As A Diplomat’s Refuge

In his agonizingly belated response to allegations of New Delhi’s mounting interference in Nepalese affairs, Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood put up a fascinating defense. “I will not dignify the question with an answer,” he told a Kathmandu-based Indian reporter.
The question related to the claim by Chandra Prakash Mainali, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Marxist Leninist, that the Maoists’ last-minute decision to break a pact with the communists to propose Ram Raja Prasad Singh as president had come under Indian pressure. That, of course, was before the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) broke its deal with the Maoists to support the Nepali Congress’ Ram Baran Yadav for the highest office of the land.
Mainali claimed that the Maoists had nominated Singh under pressure from India, which had become disenchanted with Koirala. Koirala had realized that India was trying to turn him into another Lhendup Dorji, who as prime minister of Sikkim played a key role in the merger of the Himalayan nation with India, according to Mainali. Once Koirala began to resist New Delhi’s pressure, he was no longer acceptable.
Sood’s rejoinder was bound to be viewed in the context of India’s predominance in charting Nepal’s future after the collapse of the royal regime in April 2006. His predecessor, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, had made Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s official residence virtually his second home.
Mukherjee was rewarded for his accomplishments in Nepal with ambassadorship to Britain despite unsavory allegations swirling around his spouse, which the Nepalese media considered too scorching to cover. Still, Mukherjee’s tenure paled in comparison to that of his immediate predecessor Shyam Saran, who subsequently superseded 10 people to become foreign secretary.
Sood’s persona preceded him to Kathmandu. His nomination hit the headlines after months of speculation that Jayant Prasad was getting the job. Prasad, the son of another controversial Indian ambassador, Bimal Prasad, would have set a record in his own right. But Sood’s resume seemed more compelling in view of the task at hand.
Having wrested Afghanistan out of Pakistan’s sphere of influence, Sood assertively landed in Kathmandu with a brief to score an encore. He blew his horn a little too stridently. Even before presenting his credentials to Prime Minister Koirala, Sood embarked on a series of high-profile meetings with Nepalese politicians.
He must have gathered from his briefing books, that, as far as straight talk vis-à-vis the Indians goes, Mainali is a class of his own. He criticized the November 2005 12-point pact between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists. Weeks later, he said his concern was only over some “procedural matters” and then pledged full support to the accord.
Months later, Mainali accused the Indian establishment for flaring up the Terai crisis, claiming that the top representative at the Indian Consulate in Birgunj was personally disbursing millions. The Indians did not have a Nepal policy, he went on. They just wanted concessions from Nepal and were using the Terai crisis as a bargaining chip.
A couple of months later, Mainali excoriated ruling alliance leaders for allowing the Nepali Congress’ Amresh Kumar Singh to attend a meeting. Singh, who shot to prominence after the fall of the royal regime, remains the modern-day avatar of Bhadrakali Mishra. Mishra, it may be recalled, arrived from almost nowhere to join the Rana-Nepali Congress government in 1951 and ended up alienating almost every party and politician well into the 1990s through his southward proclivities.
With this record of intrusiveness, what else but dignity could Sood have invoked to deflect the issue?

Wackiness In Our Out-Of-Whack Times

These last couple of weeks must rank as some of the wackiest in Nepal’s politics. Caretaker premier Girija Prasad Koirala exudes a palpable sense of relief when he asserts the onus for solving the nation’s problems lies with his presumptive successor, Prachanda. Yet Koirala, demanding the presidency as the price of relinquishing the premiership, lectures us on the virtues of political morality.
Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) general secretary Jhal Nath Khanal, calling February’s accord between the government and the agitating Madhesi groups flawed, claims that no agreement is ever etched in stone. The UML’s chief whip, Ram Chandra Jha, accuses Madhesi leaders of following in the footsteps of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. To avoid any religious connotation to the analogy, Jha, himself a Madhesi, also throws in Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The separatism slur too much for Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) leader Bijay Kumar Gachchadar. He accuses the UML of trying to divide the madhesis. Now look who’s talking. Isn’t the elevation of Gachchadar, a Tharu, as the MJF legislative contingent’s chief a blatant effort to split one of the principle groups against the One Madhes One Province demand. Who can forget Koirala’s tap on Gachchadar’s shoulder in the assembly chamber following his resignation speech that wasn’t, which set off the post-monarchy bedlam? Or, for that matter, Gachchadar’s defiant claims till the very last minute that he would never abandon the Nepali Congress?
The Maoists, wearied by this war by other means, finally agree to consensual politics before any resort to majority governance. Nepal could head toward disintegration if it does not stick to the path of consensus, Prachanda concedes. Hard to quibble with that, although it would have been nice to see that realization while the unelected interim legislature was busy foisting that overly liberal citizenship law on the country.
The Nepali Congress immediately scents a Maoist-Madhesi alliance (Remember the Maoists’ self-proclaimed “restraint” after the Gaur carnage?) Bolstering the NC’s suspicions is the Madhesi reps’ boycott of the legislative session to allow the fifth amendment to the interim statute to be adopted. In doing so, the Madhesi MPs retain the right to agitate at will and, by extension, provoke a wide array of other Nepalis as the Pandora’s Box lets out its most vicious apparitions.
Army chief Gen. Rukmangad Katuwal, underscoring that matters had not reached boiling point as far as Nepal’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were concerned, nevertheless suggests the moment of reckoning may not be so far off.
Then comes the stunner. Paraphrasing UML chief Khanal, Kamal Thapa, president of the only avowedly monarchist party in the assembly, emphasizes the interim nature of our nascent republic. While his Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal continues a campaign to reinstate the monarchy during the drafting process of a full-fledged constitution, Thapa also foresees cooperation with the fiercely republican Maoists on issues of nationalism. Bewildering as that balancing act appears, it remains consistent with our out-of-whack politics.