What Lies Beneath?

Bam Dev Gautam’s prime ministerial ambitions are notorious. What’s new about it is the fact that some of his colleagues in the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) are equally itching to see him get the top job. The possibility of a constitutional amendment is being discussed to facilitate Gautam’s ascension to the premiership from the upper chamber of the national parliament. Do we really want to go to such lengths for one man?
Gautam, whose political trajectory has long stalled at the roadblock called deputy prime minister, has consistently refused to go to the National Assembly without the top executive job. Pathetic as that insistence and the NCP’s readiness to entertain it are, the real tragedy perhaps lies in having to point that out.
In retrospect, the proposal last year to have the sitting NCP member for Kathmandu-7 constituency resign to make way for Gautam’s candidacy in a by-election to the lower house was more respectable. That trial balloon was shot down amid the growing camaraderie between Gautam and NCP co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal as senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal mounted a virtual insurrection against Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli.
That Gautam would be back so soon to trigger such a blatantly disgraceful national debate is beside the point. There must be some deep-seated dynamics in our systemic set-up that keeps bringing such things up.
Poor health or poorer optics, Oli has made clear he won’t quit the premiership even if you tried your best pulling him off his seat kicking and screaming. Extricating him after he’s cold and stiff – God forbid – isn’t something political – much less human – decency would permit us to contemplate. Letting Oli complete his five-year tenure and allowing the voters to decide would be the most prudent course. But apparently not to our NCP satraps.
The just party can’t think straight. Some former Maoists want the speaker’s post as a good-faith demonstration that they have been wholly taken over by the former Unified Marxist-Leninists. Many here must be excited by the ongoing developments, regardless of who or what Gautam represents. Other ex-Maoists, including many senior ones, seem happy as long as they enjoy the spoils. Who knows how many among them believe Gautam can butter their bread more lavishly?
Many ex-UML members are outraged at the inability of the former Maoists to be content at the 40-percent threshold they agreed to during the party’s unification. Then there is the continuing process of leaders switching allegiances between the two camps that aren’t even supposed to exist, shamelessly camouflaging individual considerations as ones of ideological urgency.
In such a scenario, you can understand the reluctance of people like ex-premiers Jhal Nath Khanal and Madhav Nepal to throw their hat in the ring while Dahal’s is sitting right in the middle.
Still, you can’t avoid the eerie sensation that if Gautam is so anxious to get his turn and has the kind of backing in his party that merits talk of amending the constitution, things must be moving in all directions beneath the surface.

Sweet Reasonableness And Resolute Seriousness

Having overseen a momentous year in bilateral relations, Chinese Ambassador Hou Yanqi used the advent of the new decade to chart the contours of the future. Fortified with a hefty dose of facts and figures at a news conference, she invoked imageries of unprecedented partnership.
By taking aim at “some western countries [that] don’t want to see a prosperous China”, she spoke in the tradition of Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones, Xi had said during his visit to Nepal last year. Hou’s rhetoric was far more restrained. While there was no threat to China’s security and national interests from Nepal, the ambassador said, some elements inimical to the cordial relations between China and Nepal posed a risk.
Describing events in Hong Kong as ‘violent crimes’ that have challenged the bottom line of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle and those in Xinjiang as terrorism aided and abetted by domestic and overseas forces, she urged Nepalis to see them as such. Terrorist or freedom fighter, it all depends on the beholder. Moreover, Nepalis can’t be terribly excited about democracy in China, given how our repeated struggles have turned out.
In the past, Chinese politicians and diplomats would repeat their country’s pledge to defend Nepal’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Our sovereignty continues to erode and, amid the broader Kalapani dispute with India, China is even seen as complicit in the violation of our territorial integrity. Yet today, Chinese leaders and envoys use Nepali territory to warn third countries against waging anti-Beijing policies.
Perhaps in response to the changing times, China sent a different kind of ambassador in 2018. Hou can dress up and dance in traditional Nepali fashion as easily as she can pose for the camera in Patan Darbar Square in support of our Visit Nepal Year campaign. Her approach to drawing followers on Twitter was, so to speak, business-like.
This projection of soft diplomacy has not diminished her ability to pursue the hard variant. Assignments in Pakistan and the United States, together with tenures in the security and administrative tiers of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asia Department, have prepared her well for the ambassadorship in Nepal.
Few expected Hou to advise Nepal to reject outright the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant. It was up to Nepal whether to accept the US grant, she said, adding that the Government of Nepal was capable of taking a positive decision. The Phase 1 trade deal between Washington and Beijing must have eased things a bit for China in Nepal as must have India’s preoccupation with protests surrounding proposed changes to citizenship laws. Hou said what she said. We are the ones who have to act. That distinction becomes scarier the more we ponder whether Hou’s reaction is as innocuous as it appears. In other words, we can gauge non-reciprocity in bilateral relations and its perils from our side. Chinese murmurs on Nepali non-reciprocity have grown into a chorus if not out-and-out shouts, as the range of expectations has grown.
Let’s say the MCC wins legislative endorsement and US money starts flowing in ways Nepalis find unhelpful. (Or the Chinese find unhelpful and persuade enough of us that it is against the national interest.) Will Beijing stop after conveying a customary we-told-you-so? Or would the MCC end up being the proverbial straw on the Chinese camel that broke our back?

Our Real Millennium Challenge

Talk of missed opportunities.
Just imagine if we had the kind of patience and resolve on Kalapani the Indians have demonstrated in the latest iteration of the long-running dispute. We chose to squander our national energies on tangents, while the Indians zeroed in on the issue, alas, to oblivion.
Today, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on the defensive domestically and regionally on the question of citizenship, we might have at least stood a chance of securing an appointment for our ‘special envoy’.
Indian opinion-makers – particularly those reflecting official opinion – have consistently dismissed the Kalapani protests as part of seasonal outbursts of anti-Indianism our national psyche needs to survive. Unfortunately for us, today India feels vindicated. New Delhi is now blaming us for allowing anti-Indian elements to cross the border and fan unrest. (Translation: learn to take care of the territory you own first.)
Deliberate or otherwise, Prime Minister K.P. Oli’s retweeting of Indian opposition leader Sonia Gandhi’s searing message on the controversy has pushed us deeper into the pit. No worries, though. We’ve done what we do best and moved on: to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant the Americans are begging us to take.
The Nepali Congress sees the endorsement of the relevant agreement as its single-point agenda for the winter session of parliament. The main opposition party probably thinks it’s being responsible here. It was during its stint in power that the two countries made an official commitment to take the money. However, the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) is demurring. Not because it is prejudiced against its predecessor. The CPN still can’t figure out whether the MCC grant is or isn’t part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) Nepal has or hasn’t joined under its watch.
The head honcho of the Millennium Challenge Account Nepal, a body the government formed to eventually manage the programmes, has urged the government and parties in Parliament to endorse the agreement, arguing that it is not part of the IPS. Maybe not officially. But, then, China’s Belt and Road Initiative hardly has ‘debt trap’ stamped all over it, either.
Let’s assume the impossible: that the MCC grant has no overt or covert military/strategic strings attached. Does it mean that it is truly free of considerations that could constrain Nepal’s sovereign options in any shape, manner or form? Does it make sense for us to take the $500 million because it is supposed to be free? Haven’t we learned from the past how more stringent conditions for grants are than for interest-based loans? Should we be committed to spending $150 million on our own on the inane premise that energy and infrastructure connectivity would boost regional peace and prosperity?
How did Nepal suddenly qualify for the program – as astute observers such as Dipak Gyawali have pointed out – after having been told for years not to raise its hopes? In view of the scorecard publicly available, is the money actually free? The three broad conditions of eligibility: commitment to ruling justly, encouraging economic freedom, and investing in people may sound innocuous enough. Let’s not even pretend to comprehend what might be inherent in the font, size and spacing of the fine print.
Moreover, how unreliable could the disbursement tap become amid divergences in perceptions of compliance? You can get a fair idea from the fact that Nepal gets passing grades in corruption today. What extraneous considerations may or may not sway the evaluator on the other indicators?
This is not to say that offers of assistance from the Chinese, Indians or anybody else are somehow more benign. We need to figure out what’s good or bad for us ourselves – regardless of whether it is free or for a fee. We shouldn’t stop trying just because we haven’t been good at doing that so far.

Look Around And Look Within

If you expected the recent by-election results to force the Nepali Congress to sit up and think, well, there has been a spasm of sorts. Except, all the factions have decided to dig in their heels deeper.
The main opposition party has developed an odd capacity for observation. It sees its loss in Kaski-2, the contest most approximating a referendum on the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) government, as a victory, insisting that local dynamics played out there. The Nepali Congress’ victory in Dharan’s mayoral contest, where local issues did predominate, is projected as having national implications.
Where party president Sher Bahadur Deuba sees sabotage, his principal rival Ram Chandra Poudel sees staid stewardship. While the lesser factional chieftains have competing interpretations, they are united in singling out the incompetence of the party president. And the Nepali Congress wonders why fewer and fewer Nepalis are taking the party seriously.
Deuba thinks appeasing Poudel – in full glare of the media – can rejuvenate the party. Poudel still sees rejectionism of the status quo as the roadmap. In the process, the party is rapidly squandering the capital history has bestowed on it.
The Nepali Congress’ current strategy of letting the Nepal Communist Party government dig itself into a deeper hole might have made sense if the main opposition party were less crude in exhibiting its infighting. As the man who headed the party to its worst electoral defeat, Deuba could have taken moral responsibility and resigned as president in 2017. But, then, Deuba was elected by his party convention.
Moreover, there is a point in Deuba’s refusal to succumb to the morality imposed by people who lost in the general election, when he was among the few party leaders who won. Krishna Prasad Sitaula served the party’s purposes in a specific context which does not exist today. The Koirala cousins need to conclude their internecine battles before they can hope to rejuvenate the party. Minor scions like Prakash Man Singh and Bimalendra Nidhi need to do much more than switch camps in the afterglow of family legacy.
If the factionalism is too deep to paper over, then maybe Nepali Congress leaders should stop making public pronouncements on seminal subjects. One day the party is in favor of restoring Nepal’s Hindi identity, the next day it refuses to entertain advocates of that agenda at a key meeting. Soon thereafter general secretary Shashank Koirala comes out loud and clear in favor of revisiting republicanism and federalism as well before claiming the next day that he was misquoted.
If history is what drives the party, why not draw the right lessons. The Nepali Congress cannot out-left the left any better than it can out-flank the right. It is in the right place and at the right time. When it had perceptive leaders, the party firmly stood by constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy in good times as well as bad. It did so not out of personal predilections or prejudices but because it believed it was in the nation’s ultimate interest.
Today, that conviction is maturing among the masses amid a spontaneous appreciation of our collective values, attitudes, needs and expectations. Yet this is the only part of Nepali Congress history the party continues to repudiate.

Marveling At Our Mawkish Instinct For Survival

Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli’s discernably declining health has led to rival theories on succession.
The first – and quite peculiar – school involves the appointment of Bidya Devi Bhandari as head of government. Whether she would step down – quite literally – from the presidency to take a more active role in leading the country or hold the two offices concurrently is unclear. Either way, it would mark something unforeseen by our Constitution. (Not that the humble basic law of the land stands in the way of anything these days.)
As trial balloons go, advocates of this line – albeit no one is openly identifiable with its genesis yet – contend that it is part of the innovation Nepali politics has been compelled to undergo as part of our own circumstances. Moreover, since Nepalis tend to know what they do not want better than what they do, eternal experimentation alone can be the most encouraging way forward.
This ostensible effort to empower Bhandari is also a clear attempt to checkmate Nepal Communist Party (NCP) co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s chances to return to the premiership. Oli’s presumed successor – presumed most strongly perhaps by himself – has been making his own moves. After skipping what was deemed a crucial visit to China – citing reasons so amply varied to be equally plausible – Dahal has been amplifying his contention Nepal would be internationalizing the Kalapani dispute with India at its own peril.
While that would certainly be music to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ears, it might not be enough to salvage Dahal’s prime ministerial candidacy from that end. And it’s not if Dahal is about to publicly chastise Oli for attempting to send a special envoy to Modi without ascertaining whether the Indian premier would receive him. If Oli and the special envoy – Madhav Kumar Nepal – both have eggs on their face, Dahal surely doesn’t see the urgency of extending facial tissues. He has more pressing matters.
The crucial first party meeting Dahal convened after acquiring executive powers as co-chair of the NCP wasn’t too solid on either symbolism or substance for him. The fact that key members stayed away didn’t give Dahal a strong start. The futility of waiting for biology to honor his prime ministerial power-sharing deal with Oli having been so unexpectedly exposed, Dahal can hope for the Bhandari experiment to fail. That might even help to materialize his long-held desire to become executive president of Nepal.
Ordinarily, the Bhandari option would have merited all-round derision if not outright dismissal. We’re here today because a constitutional monarch empowered by the then-constitution to safeguard the basic law dared to assume executive powers to conduct local and national elections and hand over power to an elected government in three years. A ceremonial president taking over a government enjoying a near-two-thirds majority is something that can happen only when there are too many contenders in the ruling party cancelling out one another. The fact that Dahal couldn’t place himself as the front-runner among the NCP’s list of ex-premiers emboldened a former deputy prime minister, Bam Dev Gautam, to advance himself as the best candidate.
The prime minister is sick, the speaker is behind bars and the chief justice is entangled in the contradictions of the judiciary. Yet all is well, we are told. Maybe it is. After all, who is to say that Oli can’t or won’t name an executive/co-premier as he strengthens his survival instincts, politically and physically?