Why Rock The Boat(s) When You Don't Want To Swim?

As the unification/power ritual deepens on our theoretically triumphant left, the Nepali Congress-led government is exhibiting fewer signs of having been beaten.
The Maoist Center, the putative half of those so eager to push Nepal’s red-hued rejuvenation, still holds on to ministerial berths although its representatives have had no assigned responsibilities for months.
If, amid the luxury and leisure of power, the Maoists seem to have developed second thoughts on the virtue and value of unification with the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML), we would do well to remember that the adherents of the Great Helmsman have been riding two boats for quite some time. 
The Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, which the other day blamed its alliance with the Nepali Congress for its poll debacle, sees no reason to quit the ruling (albeit caretaker) coalition, either. The fact that the party’s internal post-poll recriminations even managed to spill into a cabinet meeting is being taken as a matter of course. (Unless party chief Kamal Thapa is busy trying to blame anything other than his celestial stars for the collective curse.)
Upendra Yadav, president of the Federal Socialist Forum Nepal, put things in succinct perspective the other day when he said the architects of the constitution have been ambushed by their invention. This probably makes it safe for would-be premier K.P. Oli to keep waiting in the wings a little bit longer.
Nepalis are increasingly reconciled to beholding that grand amalgamation on the left when it actually happens. That makes it easier for the UML and the Maoists to continue portraying unity as inevitable without having to do anything much about it.
As to the assumption of power, there are potentially unpopular decisions that need to be taken relating to the naming of provinces and establishing their capitals, among other things.  You don’t have to be an old-school cynic to realize how well it serves Oli & Co. not to have to tackle them as their first item of business in Singha Durbar (more likely in Baluwatar). Letting Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba take care of any fallout would make perfect sense for a fraternity theoretically in the midst of a splendid ideological consolidation.
Playing the victim, in the meantime, would be prudent politics. Around the world, communists have been on the defensive for so long that a new generation of lads and lasses (and everyone in between) has begun wondering whether they could be so bad. It’s one thing for the Nepali Congress to be a sore loser. But to be snobbish too?
Yet victimhood has its limits. Oli can remind the country all he wants how the Nepali Congress in 2008 had refused to hand over power to the Maoists for three months. The Nepali Congress, for its part, can recall how the Maoists had reneged on their pledge to nominate Girija Prasad Koirala as the first president of Nepal. (A pledge that many in the Nepali Congress and outside still claim persuaded the Grand Old Man to turn republican after having stuck out his neck so far for some space for a ceremonial monarchy.)
In another day and age, we might have justly debated whether one wrong could so brazenly justify another. Alas, we have come too far trying to reconcile our relative truths.

When Does Order Matter?

Now that we have been so sternly schooled in the scope of practice of a government entrusted with holding elections, can we hope to be more sensible in our general expectations of what may come ahead?
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his Nepali Congress were supposed to slither away in utter electoral humiliation once the scale of the leftist alliance’s dominance in the first-past-the-post category became apparent. Instead, the premier and his party still profess to be working on tasks required for an efficacious transfer of power.
We’ve been reminded, meanwhile, that we have a bicameral legislature in place, the upper house of which still needs to be elected. With supposedly more hardline Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Center counseling conciliation on how that body should come into being, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) couldn’t afford to be seen as a spoilsport, especially amid all its post-poll smugness.
A full-scale retreat being more unpalatable, UML chief and putative premier K.P. Oli has taken to stressing that while the related ordinance per se may not be unconstitutional, the manner in which President Bidya Devi Bhandari was impelled to authenticate it was.
For now, the accepted wisdom is that it will take at least two more months for the new government to take office. That’s probably not much of a problem for the Maoists, who are already in power albeit without officially designated portfolios. (Ministers with portfolios aren’t faring too well these days, considering the shouting matches in the last cabinet meeting.)
If the sense of exhilaration generated by the three-tier elections seems to be abating somewhat, it’s probably because each day seems to consume our attention with its new promise and peril. The merger of the UML and Maoist Center doesn’t seem as imminent as it did, say, a week ago. When UML leader Ghanashyam Bhusal suggested that the eras of People’s Multiparty Democracy and Maoism both were now over, growls erupted from both sides. If the obvious is so indigestible, then maybe burned bridges are meant to be rebuilt to find your way back.
We have a hung parliament in which the UML, Nepali Congress and the Maoists are the three biggest groups. More ominously, the fourth and fifth largest parties – the Federal Socialist Forum and Rastriya Janata Party – aren’t even fully behind the Constitution. Naming of provinces? Designation of provincial capitals? Divisions of resources and responsibilities? And the hefty bill?
More broadly, the Indians are intent on making up lost ground. The Chinese don’t know what to do with the windfall they’ve supposedly just reaped. The Americans? They’re still figuring things out, but want us to curb corruption in the meantime. And we’re not sure just how mad they are with us on that pesky UN vote on Jerusalem.
But, hey, we’re now fully and irreversibly republican, secular and federal. By the way, does the order matter?

Seeing What We Don’t See

Behind the demonstrable post-election squabbling may lurk any number of things. The leftist alliance’s resounding poll victory has laid bare the perils of political preemption as an electoral strategy. The unification of the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist factions of our communist fraternity is proving trickier than their votaries made it out to be.
In retrospect, the one-constituency-one-comrade formula may have done more to garner seats for the comrades than any abiding eagerness among voters to see the creation of one dominant communist party.
Top leaders of both factions have begun voicing their disenchantment with the unification process, but have so far kept their words measured. Our putative prime minister, K.P. Oli, continues to use his trademark allegories and parables. His presumed successor two and a half years down the road, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ insists on the historical inevitability of unification because, well, the parties have burned their bridges back home.
The Maoist chief concedes snags in the formal unification process. But informal efforts have produced consequential results that should be apparent any day. So much so that it has given Dahal the humility to acknowledge that he is second only to Prithvi Narayan Shah as an agent of change.
Probe any further and Dahal, true to form, resorts to deflection, accusing the Nepali Congress of backtracking from a prior agreement on the modality of National Assembly elections. The Nepali Congress, if we are to believe our top comrade, refuses to abide by the understanding flowing from the State Affairs Committee in Parliament to adopt the majority system for the polls to the upper house.
Maybe the Nepali Congress, in advocating a single transferable voting system today, is breaching that understanding because it feels entitled – like everyone else seems to do in the changed political context  – to second and third thoughts.
Dahal believes the Nepali Congress about-face stems from its fear that it might not win a single seat in the upper house. So he wants Oli to show enough magnanimity that would result in that party getting two or three seats and elevating the discourse in that chamber.
But who knows what the real hindrances are? Maybe our comrades are being made to provide assurances and commitments to alien quarters that are in substance extraneous to the imperatives of our air and water. After all, President Xi Jinping has intimated that he may, after all, pay a visit to Nepal once the communist government take office.
And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it a point to club together Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, Oli and Dahal in a congratulatory overture aimed more at the process than the outcome of the election. The other international players of substance are too entangled in their own contradictions vis-à-vis Nepal’s profoundly divergent neighbors. That doesn’t mean those third players aren’t eyeing their own interests.
We will have a new popularly elected government sooner or later. It would all depend on how soon our comrades succeed in providing those aforesaid commitments in a way that seems both plausible and enforceable to the recipients. In the meantime, let’s savor the public posturing in all its (dis)ingenuity.

Flashback: 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.

Originally posted on Monday, July 14, 2008

Tangling Anew With Tilts And Tugs

The geo-strategic narrative that was gradually building in the run-up to our elections has begun to boom across the neighborhood and beyond.
If the Chinese are as thrilled about the leftist sweep in our federal and provincial polls as we are being told they are, they certainly won’t be showing it. They are more likely to continue their admonitions to the Indians against reading too much into the electoral psychology of Nepalis.
In the coming days and weeks, the results will be dissected in all their glory and gore. For our purposes here, let’s begin by accepting the prevailing Indian premise that Nepalis have voted en mass against India. Is a northward Nepali tilt a foregone conclusion? Instead of ‘Bhutanized’, have we all suddenly become ‘Maldivized’?
Will Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government learn from not having let Nepalis be Nepalis and back off a bit? In style, perhaps. But hardly so in substance. The Indians aren’t about to give up on their most advantageous flank in their stepped-up rivalry with China. If anything, New Delhi may decide to become more creative in its dealings.
The canvas may be quite conducive. A Nepali Congress licking its wounds will have a mind working in different directions. Throw in those party luminaries who will always have a hard time believing the scale of their rout.
Gagan Thapa and his ilk may well blame Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ram Chandra Poudel for the fiasco all they like. They will find Deuba and Poudel’s fingers already pointing to the late Girija Prasad Koirala and Krishna Prasad Sitaula. (Isn’t the irony irresistible here? The man who did the most to hitch the hitherto monarchist Nepali Congress onto the republican Maoists was defeated by a royalist supported by the Maoists and the Marxist-Leninists).
Will the Kamal Thapa and Pashupati Shamsher Rana factions and all the royalists in between suddenly realize how badly they squandered their last chance and mend their ways? Fat chance. Counterintuitive as it may sound, the people happiest at the royalist/Hindu statehood rout are the royalists (the real ones, one might add).
If the monarchy/Hindu statehood-restoration agenda moves forward at all, it will now do so on a wider berth inclusive of a Nepali Congress looking wistfully at its roots. Even before the first votes were cast, Deuba and other Congress leaders were warmly espousing Hinduism in public. There’s a fair chance that the Two Necks In A Noose Theory will enjoy some kind of revival.
The regional groups may find themselves busy pursuing their agenda within the regional structures, if they are not distracted by a more immediate imperative to regroup amid the new political realities.
In retrospect, Deuba may have grossly overplayed the communist threat. That doesn’t mean the left will be looking over its shoulders with any less apprehension. They own the place – including whatever they bake and break. Alluring as the prospect of monopolizing credit for success is, they know they won’t have anyone to kick around when the going gets rough. But let’s not prejudge our comrades.
However, there is enough that permits us to delve deeper into the China tilt storyline. Khadga Prasad Oli, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and most of the folks on their end of the political spectrum may have their personal preferences in terms of our two neighbors. Yet they have the political savvy not to forget their debts to the south. And they must be thinking of their future. If, God forbid, something happens and they need to take a hike, the trek southward will prove far easier.
It’s not only geography. Our comrades are conditioned by history. The northern experiences of Bahadur Shah, Bhimsen Thapa, Jang Bahadur, Chandra Shamsher, kings Mahendra, Birendra and Gyanendra convey a definite dismal pattern. Dahal and, to a lesser extent, Oli are familiar with the unsentimental pragmatism the mandarins up north have mastered as a tool of foreign policy.
On the other hand, our comrades have seen the hospitality the Indians have accorded Mohan Shamsher Rana and ex-king Gyanendra individually, even after having exhausted them institutionally. Politics is the art of the possible. Without self-preservation, can there be many possibilities?