Realignment Rites

A palpably rejuvenated Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala is insistent that Nepal should retain a “ceremonial monarchy”. Maoist supremo Prachanda is busy wooing foreign ambassadors (at least the ones eager to receive him), apparently cognizant that retaining power would prove far more arduous than attaining it.
Nepali Congress (Democratic) president Sher Bahadur Deuba is on a weeklong visit to India for – by his own admission – serious political consultations. Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal, sensitized by the growing camaraderie between sections of the Nepali Congress and the Maoists, has emerged as the preeminent supporter of the Nepal Army within the Seven Party Alliance (SPA).
A passionate realignment of politics seems to be underway. To be sure, the precise motives and possible outcomes remain obscure. Yet this much is clear: In the run-up to the constituent assembly elections, Nepalese politics seems to be crystallizing into republican and ceremonial monarchist camps from their hitherto tri-polar dimensions.
Prachanda seems reconciled to a transitional democracy of sorts. In an interview with a Kathmandu weekly, the supreme commander in chief of the Maoist army speaks of spearheading another revolution for a “people’s republic” in about five years’ time.
Bam Dev Gautam, Prachanda’s principal adherent in the UML, claims Nepal could do without American assistance.
Gautam was responding to Ambassador James F. Moriarty’s assertion that Washington could not recognize or financially reward a Maoist-inclusive interim government unless the rebels fully and verifiably disarmed. The interesting part is that Gautam used his address to an agriculture conference to accuse Moriarty of conspiring with the palace to subvert the budding peace process.
What could be the possible permutations of the emerging politics? Radical communists within the UML could veer closer to the Maoists, while more “moderate” comrades could rally behind a ceremonial monarchy – for a variety reasons unrelated to any royalist sympathies.
Clearly, UML general secretary Nepal’s sudden warmth toward the military is the outcome of his perception that Koirala and Prachanda have resolved to annihilate the mainstream communist party.
The fact that the UML, which already had drafted an interim constitution as part of an internal exercise, was excluded from panel entrusted with writing the statute, has heightened suspicions. Prachanda’s sustained assaults on the UML after overshadowing its general secretary at the June 16 news conference have only deepened this distrust.
Perhaps sensing the possible scenario, Prachanda has started sounding a little contrite about his declaration that the Nepal Army was never anything but a bunch of murderers, rapists and plunderers – a remark Madhav Nepal roundly criticized, triggering the speculation of a UML-military alliance.
Within the Nepali Congress, Prime Minister Koirala and Deuba could reunite their parties behind a platform of a ceremonial monarchy. Pro-republic members like Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula – if that is what he really is – could find themselves closer to the radical communists. (Although it is not entirely clear how republican Nepali Congress leaders like Ram Chandra Poudel and Narahari Acharya could seek ideological succor in the likes of Sitaula.)
The mainstreaming of “royalist” parties would be easier this time than after the 1990 changes. Although not part of the SPA the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) led by Pashupati Sumshere Rana was in the opposition camp during King Gyanendra’s 15-month direct rule. The Rastriya Janashakti Party of former prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, too, opposed the palace’s direct rule without being part of the SPA.
Over the months, the RPP led by Kamal Thapa, King Gyanendra’s home minister, and other smaller parties represented in the royal cabinet could join a broader ceremonial monarchist platform.
At a practical level, an extended period of the kind of reflection the palace is currently in would allow the monarchy to accumulate enough energy to head into the robustness of the constituent assembly campaign season.
Admittedly, the missteps and compulsions of the government would facilitate a more dispassionate assessment of the palace’s assertiveness over the last four years. Some clouds are already starting to clear in other ways. The auditor-general’s comments at a Kathmandu gathering this week, for instance, suggested that the Royal Palace fell far short of spending the outrageous proportions of the treasury its critics so vociferously contended.

A Dahlian Wave of Democracy?

After weeks of anticipation, Washington has responded to the Seven Party Alliance (SPA)’s effort to mainstream the Maoists. It is to distribute translated copies of one of the most respected texts on democracy used by students and academics around the world.
US Ambassador James F. Moriarty handed over to Local Development Minister Rajendra Pandey more than 20,000 copies of the Nepali translation of Robert Dahl’s On Democracy. The books will be distributed across Nepal’s 75 districts.
“The government is working hard to put the nation on the path to democracy, peace, and prosperity, and information about democracy itself is critical to fulfilling those goals,” an American Embassy news release said.
The effort is certainly commendable, although the record of this approach is far from inspiring. The last major democracy treatise to be translated and distributed, Samuel Huntington’s Third Wave, coincided with the gradual erosion and emaciation of Nepalese democracy.
For Washington, the current endeavor also makes perfect sense as preemptive diplomacy. The battle for the Nepalese soul is certainly going to be waged in the thousands of villages of the country.
Over the last decade, the Maoists have progressively tightened their stranglehold on rural Nepal. Indoctrination has been exacting. Since the enemy has been portrayed as ubiquitous and must be crushed at all costs, a perpetual revolution of sorts has set in.
But indoctrination has had its ideological limits. With the young and literate having either fled the villages or already become part of the rebel movement, the Maoists were confronted with forcing dogma down the throats of elderly illiterates or infants too preoccupied with their mothers’ milk. The mechanics of Marxist-Maoist prose could not always be distilled into vernacular appealing enough to become part of the general political conversation Nepalese villagers are famous for.
In retrospect, Washington gave King Gyanendra a deadline to prevent the Maoists from attaining power on their own terms. We now know that when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about events “crystallizing” soon, she was referring to the window of opportunity the palace had. Once that threshold was crossed, without much being achieved, the conversation for America narrowed down to a “messy abdication”.
Moriarty joined the SPA bigwigs in New Delhi to personally acquaint himself with the provisions of the Indian roadmap. Washington understood there was no way the Maoists could be left out of any settlement. But they couldn’t be part of one in their existing incarnation because of two reasons: they are communists and terrorists.
Students of realpolitik would easily refer to how the Americans once supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia whom they continue to castigate. But, then, that was during the Cold War. The Vietnamese-backed communist regime of Heng Samrin was a greater adversary. Moreover, the Khmer Rouge was part of a government in exile led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
The Cambodia model could have been implemented in Nepal. By sending the likes of Prachanda, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai and Krishna Bahadur Mahara into internal exile with hard labor, people like Devendra Parajuli could have led a faction of less tainted rebels into the mainstream. Not everyone seems to have what it takes to be a Hun Sen.
To cut a long story short, does Robert Dahl have a chance of saving rural Nepal from the depredations of a group that reminds America of the worst of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras?
Or, more specifically, can Dahlisms like effective participation, equality in voting, gaining enlightened understanding, exercising final control over the agenda, inclusion of adults compete with the imperatives of taking great leaps forward and letting a hundred flowers bloom?
Perhaps. The prospect of peace might draw just enough literate Nepalis back to their villages with enough time for a comparative reading of the two texts. The intrinsic value of democracy, you would think, would work against a Maoist electoral sweep in rural Nepal.
But what if the young and literate don’t return to their villages in sufficient numbers? Well, much will depend on the quality of the work Dahl’s Nepali translators have done.

The SPAM Slapstick

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s return home, after receiving medical treatment in a Bangkok hospital, is expected to unfold the next act in the Seven Party Alliance-Maoist (SPAM) slapstick.
Maoist supremo Prachanda and his No. 2 Dr. Baburam Bhattarai are back in Kathmandu after a whirlwind tour of their base areas. They have held preliminary talks with senior SPA leaders, who dubbed the eight-point accord a mistake days after signing it.
Early indications from some of those confabulations suggest that a second Koirala-Prachanda summit might not be able to paper over those differences entirely.
The dissolution of the House of Representatives, representational issues on the panel that is drafting the interim constitution, the precise status of the Maoists’ weapons before they can be inducted in a new interim government, among other things, would have to be addressed by the prime minister.
What all this means is that Koirala not only needs to attend the next post-summit news conference – on a wheelchair or a respirator if necessary – but also must take full command of the proceedings. We certainly cannot expect army headquarters to keep on rebutting the inanities Prachanda seems so eager to foist on the Nepalese people in the presence of ministers and SPA leaders intimidated into silence.
Considering how the government, in Koirala’s absence, couldn’t even present a united view on the army’s angry response to Prachanda’s denigration of the record of the Nepalese military, Koirala’s active participation in this side of the peace process becomes all the more crucial.
The fact that it took a “royalist” ex-premier, Surya Bahadur Thapa, president of the Rastriya Janashakti Party, to emphasize the long-term damage the SPA’s shallowness would inflict on the nation remains instructive.
It would be naïve, however, to believe that the Maoist leaders have returned to the capital with their foot soldiers solidly behind them. Military strategist Ram Bahadur Thapa “Badal” hasn’t broken his vow of silence. Worse, it increasingly looks like he has Nanda Kishor Pun “Pasang”, that other feared rebel commander, on his side.
The reality that both men come from the Magar community, which underpins the rebel movement but is sparsely represented in the political leadership, cannot be wished away. The eight-point accord marks a sharp climbdown for the rebels, who had declared war on both the parliamentary system and the monarchy, which is bad enough. Reports that the Maoists have watered down – if not entirely abandoned – their commitment to creating ethnically defined autonomous regions certainly cannot have gone down well with the rank and file.
Furthermore, Matrika Yadav, the most prominent Maoist leader from the Terai, has vowed to lead a boycott of the constituent assembly polls unless madhesis get their citizenship certificates. The recent House of Representatives Proclamation may have cleared the way for the distribution of citizenship papers that had been held back since slain King Birendra virtually scuttled the last legislative initiative months before his tragic end.
Whether the Koirala government, two months after its heady rise to office, can muster the political will to make such a weighty decision remains to be seen.
Of course, the SPA and the Maoists can still try to divert public attention by whipping up fears of a “resurgent autocratic monarchy”.
Both sides, however, would do well to recognize that the Nepalese people they want to empower certainly do not lack the power of good judgment, especially amid the charade of the past couple of days.

Assistant UN Sec-Gen Or Deputy Director?

“Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Kul Chandra Gautam has said that the supervision and management of arms of both the Maoists and the Nepal Army is not an easy task and that it will take time to arrange all procedures.
“Dr Gautam stated this to journalists after his two-hour long meeting with Deputy Prime Minster and Minister for Foreign Affairs KP Sharma Oli at the Foreign Ministry.”

As a compatriot, Maila Baje commends Gautam, the highest-ranking Nepalese to serve at the United Nations, for having taken such an abiding interest in advancing peace and stability in his motherland.
In the preceding excerpts, Gautam was responding to queries about the expected one-month timeframe to manage the arms. “It is impossible to complete all the formalities in one month. It takes time to allocate budget, manpower as well as to arrange other logistic details,” he added.
The extent of Gautam’s involvement, however, raises important questions. For starters, Gautam’s area of responsibility lies primarily with the UN Children’s Fund. The assistant secretary-general title is merely suggestive of the equivalence of his UNICEF position in the United Nations personnel structure, a level above the D-2 rank.
Put another way, the chiefs of other United Nations specialized agencies such as UNDP, UNESCO and UNHCR, much less their deputies, are hardly identified in any other way.
The capacity in which Gautam has been acting is relevant because his comments would carry much less significance if he were merely making them during his vacation home.
The entire peace process suffers from enough ambiguity. SPA leaders, who signed the accord with the Maoists, now say Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala acted in haste and without proper consultations. The Maoists are talking about simply demobilizing, not disarming. Even if that were acceptable to the government, how precisely would the United Nations step in? One would expect the official position of the world body to come from Mathew Kahane, the top UN representative in Nepal.
Given the UN system’s general practice of not posting an international staff member to his or her native country, the concern over Gautam’s role assumes added importance. True, Gautam made clear that he had not met any Maoist leaders during this visit and that he is not on an official visit to Nepal. But that doesn’t do much to clarify the nature of his ostensibly unofficial/informal role. Is he simply putting together an unofficial briefing paper for Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the UN chief prepares to leave office and establish his legacy? Or is Gautam updating the Nepal mission of Annan’s official representative Samuel Tamrat, something the next secretary-general would consult?
And why has Gautam allowed this entire confusion to persist? There has been some speculation on Gautam’s family ties with Maoist leader Pampha Bhusal. It also has been surmised that Gautam, scheduled to retire from UNICEF soon, may be expecting some high-profile role in the emerging Nepalese order. The Nepalese people, at the very least, deserve to know more.
While acknowledging Gautam’s impressive professional accomplishments as an international civil servant, one must not allow the ambiguity of his involvement to overshadow – and perhaps even undermine -- the peace process.

Inverted Summit And Comedy Of Terror

Things are getting weirder worse than you would have thought. The Seven Party Alliance (SPA), in the absence of its august leader undergoing medical treatment abroad, has concluded that last week’s eight-point pact with the Maoists was a mistake.
The Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) comrades, who originated the concept of an interim constitution to consolidate democracy, found themselves excluded from the drafting panel. Considering that the UML saw the “historic” House of Representative proclamation eviscerating the monarchy as a regurgitation of the communists’ contribution to the draft of the 1990 constitution the Nepali Congress and the palace jointly discarded, our mainstream comrades must feel terrible.
Not that they are missing much. Halfway through its two-week tenure, the panel is still awaiting an official letter confirming its existence so that it could start arranging office space and furniture. The attorney-general, the top legal adviser to the government, insists the commission doesn’t deserve such a letter because it wasn’t created by the government.
Women organizations, for their part, still feel the country is in the grip of “gender autocracy.” Riot police under the democratic government are still merciless against women protesters demanding a voice in the restructuring of the state. Even the worst female critics of King Gyanendra probably concede that women had better representation in power under the palace-led regime.
And the excluded and marginalized communities the Maoists claim to be fighting for? The silence of Ram Bahadur Thapa “Badal,” the military strategist of the “people’s war,” says it all.
It turns out that the “summit” between Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist chairman Prachanda was actually conducted in reverse. The summiteers met in the official bedroom of the head of government, scribbled eight points, and came out to command the SPA sherpas to append their signatures certifying the legwork.
Stunned by the secrecy, they signed first and resolved to read the text later. (After all the country has been through, could the SPA leaders have defied Prachanda?)
Prachanda’s ebullience at the post-summit news conference changed the mood. When the SPA signatories read between, under and over the lines, they realized that King Gyanendra’s ministers, the American ambassador and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in India might have been right all along. Prachanda used the SPA to achieve what he could not through a decade of armed rebellion: full recognition as the top representative of the “new state” on his way to becoming the sole leader of the country.
Eager to sell the accord to his foot soldiers in the Maoists’ base areas, Prachanda employed all the craziness he could come up with. Bourgeoisie parties like the Nepali Congress should be banned, the rebel commander in chief thundered, at one point. That prompted Nepali Congress leaders to virtually accuse Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula – the public face of the Koirala-Prachanda camaraderie -- of being a Maoist infiltrator in the ruling party.
The SPA leaders finally mustered enough courage to speak out against the accord. With Koirala convalescing from laser surgery of the prostrate in Bangkok and unable to mount a vigorous defense, it fell to Prachanda to roar against the two “conspirators” seeking to derail the deal. (Hadn’t Koirala gone to Bangkok to treat some “unspecified ailment” of the lungs related to his chain smoking? But I digress.)
The Maoist supremo named the palace as one of the plotters. The other wasn’t too hard to figure out. Since Prachanda had just praised India for forging – no pun intended – the 12-point SPA-Maoist accord last November, Uncle Sam had to be the culprit. For some in the rebel camp, Washington’s tentative we-are-with-the-Nepalese-people response to the eight-point accord was already self-incriminating enough.
To gauge how precariously perched Nepal is after the landmark accord, consider this. What if, God forbid, Koirala failed to make it back to Kathmandu alive? Or even sufficiently mentally alert to resume his “historic duties”?
And we’re all wondering why King Gyanendra seems to be a little depressed these days.