Sunday, January 28, 2018

Taking Care Of Tomorrow

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his Nepali Congress have improvised an innovative coping mechanism for the party’s dismal electoral performance.
By exhibiting its version of Churchillian magnanimity in defeat, the caretaker government has begun to agitate the incoming leftist administration. The series of populist measures Deuba has taken in recent weeks – including a reduction of the qualification for old-age allowance from 70 years to 65 – promises to saddle the new government with a financial burden on something that wasn’t even part of its electoral platform.
K.P. Oli, our prime minister in waiting, has vowed to reverse all such decisions. Yet the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) knows the likely perils of doing so. The Nepali Congress, having hit upon this new scope of its caretaker status, remains defiant. A party that has done so much to fatten the public treasury can certainly take care of the people in every way it deems fit, one Nepali Congress luminary was heard arguing the other day.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre, has now joined Oli in equating the Deuba government’s munificence with democratic malfeasance. For most of us, it may not be too hard to remember how the UML ushered in populism as stratagem during its short-lived minority government under Manmohan Adhikary. And it might have helped the UML secure its own majority in the elections Adhikary had called, before the Supreme Court stepped in to thwart him.
Oli, having resigned himself to the reality that the premiership still may be some time away, wasn’t probably too thrilled with the call he got from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sure, Modi spoke to Oli in the latter’s capacity as the next premier. But the next premier of what kind of government? Of a united communist party? In coalition with other parties should unification fall through? Or one that is too busy undoing its predecessor’s acts to implement its own agenda?
The UML-Maoist Centre unity process doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, despite the hours-long sessions Oli and Dahal have held alone. Both leaders acknowledge that elements within their respective organizations may be working to subvert unification. More than a few Nepali Congress leaders have openly suggested that their mission now was to prevent leftist unity.
When Deuba asserts he had nothing to do with the removal of the monarchy and positions himself as a supporter of Hindu statehood, a private meeting between the former king and the chief minister of a bordering Indian state (albeit a man of cloth heading the largest province down south) is bound to acquire political significance. More so when it subsequently emerges that the former monarch had either sought approval from or merely informed Deuba and Oli of his brief detour across the border.
It looks like Modi made that call to Oli after being satisfied that New Delhi had done enough for now to correct the incoming Nepali government’s perceived northern tilt. The Chinese can continue funneling all the money they want into Nepal as long as the Indians keep calling the political shots.
Our three-tiered elections that were supposed to fully institutionalize the republican, federal and secular constitution have served to expose the document’s fragilities. Oli may well become the next prime minister pretty soon. But can we really be sure about the rest of the deal?

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Mergers & Acquisitions: Creating Value For Stakeholders

Just as the unification of our supreme comrades appeared to have gathered pace, the only communist ex-premier outside the process has likened it to the merger of two banks.
K.P. Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the leaders of the Unified Marxist-Leninists (UML) and the Maoist Centre respectively, engaged in a three-hour one-on-one session the other day. What actually transpired during those talks remains murky, but it is nevertheless perceived as having provided a much-needed fillip to a course of unity that had begun to fizzle.
Yet, in Naya Shakti chief Baburam Bhattarai’s view, such negotiations are nothing more than something what two banks would hold to determine the post-merger chairman and chief executive officer posts.
Clearly, Messrs Oli and Dahal have a wide variety of interests in pursuing unity. Considering the recent election results, the prospect has caught the people’s imagination. If the UML seems to be the dominant force here, it’s understandable why the Maoist Centre would acquiesce. Divisions and disaffection have weakened the once formidable entity. Yet the specter of the International Criminal Court (ICC) – at least theoretically – looms as large today as it did in the immediate aftermath of the ‘People’s War’.
International supporters of the political transition in Nepal are a weird lot in this respect. The pro-accountability/anti-impunity subset wants Nepal to be a success story in their cause, now that African nations have started pushing back.
As the supreme commander of the erstwhile ‘People’s Liberation Army’, Dahal knows that this is far from an equal fight. Who really believes the international community is going to haul the state army before the ICC or any related international tribunal on equivalent charges. The Nepal Army is a primary, if less palpable, pillar of the polity. Compared to that institution, the Maoists are has-beens. Dahal’s counterpart on the battlefield, the former king, will continue to symbolize the potential for change/correction lest our political establishment veer off course internally or geopolitically.
So when Bhattarai uses the corporation analogy, he may be more right than he knows. Once the Maoists cede their existing legal existence, they will have added an extra layer of protection against prosecution. But would that be security enough?
Such apprehensions don’t seem to clutch Bhattarai as much. Unlike Dahal, he wasn’t a soldier. Like Joseph Goebbels, he was the chief propagandist of a cause. Bhattarai spilled ink, not blood. Now, that defense never got to be tested at the Nuremberg Trials because Goebbels took the easier way out by voluntarily perishing along with his boss in that Berlin bunker. However, considering that Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop – a civilian who used diplomacy to pursue his cause – wasn’t spared the noose, Goebbels wouldn’t have stood much of a chance.
Bhattarai, for his part, has rolled the dice. He recognizes how his Naya Shakti is emblematic of the eternal newness that animates the Nepali consciousness. Over the past dozen years, whenever the existing promise of newness has appeared unfeasible, he has deftly shifted the goal posts. Moreover, the extent of Bhattarai’s external benefaction is probably more enduring than Dahal’s. So if he thinks Nepal still needs him more than it does his other former Maoist colleagues – the ICC or not – could you really fault him?
And, as to the broader question, aren’t mergers and acquisitions supposed to create value for the stakeholders?

Sunday, January 14, 2018

The Fraternity Begins To Fight Back

The latest whirlwind involving Dr. Govinda K.C. and Chief Justice Gopal Parajuli marks a critical turning point. Our political fraternity, long fed up with pinpricks from what it considers the periphery, has decided to speak out.
Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist leader K.P. Oli used his customary banter to convey his disaffection with the political scene, drawing in Dr. K.C. as a crude allegory. If Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav is so confused about post-election procedures, maybe he should start consulting the esteemed orthopedic surgeon. Unsurprisingly, Oli’s broadside outraged Dr. K.C.’s supporters, who vowed to wage a moral struggle against our prime minister in waiting.
The Nepali Congress’ Ram Sharan Mahat had no time for such indignation. He cautioned Dr. K.C. to make sure his campaign against Chief Justice Parajuli did not obstruct the rule of law so vital to any society’s ability to function. The Nepal Bar Association, too, came out in support of the chief justice.
The culmination of Nepal’s dozen years of drift – the local, provincial and nation elections – has no doubt fired up our professional politicians. They may win or lose elections, but they aren’t going to listen to sermons from men and women who they consider should be paying more attention to their own jobs.
Indeed, civil society’s overreach began unnerving our politicians not too long after the People’s Movement I in 1990. Granted, lawyers, doctors, engineers played a prominent role in the fight against three decades of palace-led partyless rule. But when it came time for the palace to compromise, it did so with politicians, as it certainly should have.
If the newly empowered politicians began betraying the people, elections were supposed to take care of that. If they were corrupt, there were legal and institutional remedies. Civil society could play the role of a watchdog, but that canine couldn’t expect to be in the driver’s seat.
By the time of People’s Movement II in 2006, civil society had almost arrogated to itself the role of arbiter of the nation’s destiny. If civil society seemed to lead the politicians then, it was because the political class lay discredited. So the political fraternity had good reason to thank civil society. When the political process resumed after the royal reinstatement of the legislature, it was time for civil society to step back.
Yet the hectoring didn’t stop. Our politicians, their plates full, were reluctant to fight back. Defying most doomsayers, including Maila Baje, they negotiated the tempestuous domestic political terrain as well as the turbulent geopolitical waters to promulgate a new constitution and to consecrate it through elections, underpinning the progression with enough popular legitimacy and support.
If all it took to purify the polity were an individual’s moral crusade, things would have been a lot easier for everyone else. After all, in a revolution, as they say, the most difficult part to invent is the end. And, as has been said in this space previously, doesn’t this penchant for starving yourself go against the Hippocratic oath every doctor, we are told, is supposed to breathe in and out at all times?
Now, Dr. K.C. isn’t his own patient so that oath doesn’t count, you might say. Okay. But, still, why does such a prominent medical expert get to harm himself, regardless of the nobility of the cause, when millions of Nepalis are in dire need of his healing touch?
Again, far more people have the ability to deprive themselves of vital nourishment at will than to use surgical and nonsurgical means to treat musculoskeletal trauma, spine diseases, sports injuries, degenerative diseases, infections, tumors, and congenital disorders. What happened to the concept of optimizing the utilization of a nation’s scarce resources?
No criticism of Dr. K.C. can diminish the personal sacrifice and commitment he has made in the cause of cleansing the body politic. However, people like Oli and Mahat are emboldened to speak out today because of their eagerness to remind us that people like Kunwar Indrajit Singh, Keshar Jung Rayamajhi, Tulsi Giri and Ram Baran Yadav shed their white coats to become full-time politicians in that mucky and muddled – albeit appropriate – arena.

Sunday, January 07, 2018

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.