Talking Straight In The Shadows

Chalk one up for cruel candor, if you will.
With one word put in vicious context in one interview, Prime Minister K. P. Oli has provoked the Indian commentariat into probing his means, motive and opportunity.
In his interview with the South China Morning Post, Oli made wide-ranging observations on Nepal’s relations with its two giant neighbors. However, it was his desire to deepen ties with China and gain more ‘leverage’ with India, expressed halfway through the 1200-plus-word text, which drew New Delhi’s almost exclusive attention.
From the reactions emanating from across the southern border, you get a feeling that Oli really rubbed it in this time. Clearly, the audacity inherent in our premier’s articulation, more than the substance of the subject, has irked the Indians.
Some sections in New Delhi seem to believe they may have gone overboard in seeking to woo Oli, to the point of emboldening his already pronounced rhetorical boldness. Is this what you get after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s phone calls and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s personal exertions? Others have sought to put on a brave face, counseling faithful patience in the Nepali Congress’ inevitable revival, tinged with intimations of the availability of other options.
Keeping Bhutan largely within the fold amid the Doklam/Donglang face-off was a triumph for India. But landlocked Nepal veering in the direction of islands and archipelago like Sri Lanka and the Maldives? From that standpoint, you could even make the case that India’s reaction has been subdued.
But, then, can you really put too much premium on what transpires in public, as far as Nepal and India are concerned? The South China Morning Post no doubt has been reflecting Beijing’s thinking more closely with every passing decade of Hong Kong’s reversion to Chinese sovereignty. Yet it is not in the league of the Global Times.
Moreover, the Indian byline accompanying the story may have served to confer on its content a degree of independence and credibility. But the reality that it was a non-Han who interviewed Oli could equally signify much more in different directions.
Oli probably did not compare notes with Chinese representatives in Kathmandu before opening up to the SCMP reporter. But he isn’t someone apt to shoot from the hip, either. Having hugged him hard with smooches all over, the Indians could easily understand Oli’s desperation to breathe free for a while. A head fake in the media would give official New Delhi enough cover to pursue its real policies vis-à-vis our new government, while letting the spores of apprehension germinate further north.
The Chinese, for their part, certainly won’t commit too much to the preponderance of the left here without properly sizing up Oli. A key test would be the swiftness with which our prime minister follows through on some of the things he said in the interview, such as reviving the Budi Gandkai dam project.
As Beijing widens its gaze, the Nepali media, in playing up US President Donald J. Trump’s otherwise routine congratulatory message to our prime minister, may have given Beijing something more to ponder.

Change Is The Only Constant

If Khadga Prasad Oli’s return to the premiership was inevitable after his party’s sturdy performance in last year’s elections, the timing of his ascension appears to have been conveniently crafted.
While the ‘China’s gain, India’s pain’ narrative will be assiduously held, New Delhi appears to have ensured sufficient safeguards against any significant ‘contrariness’ from the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) chairman this time around.
Not long after Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj invited herself to Nepal to give him that so palpably asphyxiating embrace, Oli finds himself at the helm of a minority government. The much-ballyhooed grand leftist unity is still marred by almost willful obfuscation from the principal protagonists. The Maoists could have sent a minister or two as a confidence-building measure.
Ideology, power sharing, personal predilections, or any number of other things could be standing in the way. For now, all we hear is the word ‘inevitable’. Beijing might be happy at the change of guard in Kathmandu, but it will certainly be hard-pressed to identify what there is really to cheer about.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most formidable opposition to the UML-Maoist Center unification is emanating, not from so-called ‘national and international conspirators’, but from within the two parties. Of course, the distinction may be feebler than it sounds. But you cannot disregard the reality that others get to play only because those within allow them to.
If Oli is facing antagonism, if not outright insurrection, from factional chieftains like Madhav Kumar Nepal, the Maoists are not in exactly pristine form, either.  Once-acquiescent lieutenants like Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Ram Bahadur Thapa, Barsa Man Pun, Janardan Sharma and Top Bahadur Rayamajhi are becoming more assertive in the organization as the aura of chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal continues to fade. The fact that these second-rung leaders come from different directions and have yet to fully pursue their own rivalries only complicates matters. 
On the other hand, caretaker prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba seems to have taken enough care to ensure that Oli’s journey would be anything but smooth. How many decisions will the new prime minister have to undo before he can start taking his own ones. And, then, who really knows how many – and what kind of – other ‘inopportune’ decisions the Deuba cabinet might have taken that have not hit the headlines.
Then there’s that innately human element. Oli had really stuck his neck out long and hard northward last time. What did the Chinese do for him when the inevitable backlash arrived? He was thrown out like a door mouse. More importantly, how many of us who ceaselessly commended his ‘nationalist’ stand during the Indian blockade do to bolster him in his hour of need?
To cut a long story short, where’s the evidence that Oli won’t be a changed man this time around as far as his geostrategic orientation goes? Dahal’s 180-degree flip was softened to an extent by the distance between his two premierships. The relative closeness of Oli’s tenures will perhaps make any such somersault more extraordinary, but it will certainly be no less explicable.

Edginess, Attitude & Course Correction

Restiveness over the style and substance of the unification of Nepal’s two principal communist parties has begun to pervade the Maoist faction. The rank and file there seem to have woken up to what the rest of the country has grasped. This is not unification between two organizations in the customary sense of the term. It is a hostile takeover of the Maoist Center by the Marxist-Leninists.
Maoist Center chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ assiduously denies that differences pertaining to sharing of power and posts is impeding formal unity. The no-bridges-left-to-walk-back-on routine persists on both sides. But Dahal has also begun issuing thinly veiled auguries.
Just the other day, he said that he could embark on an entirely new course if he concluded that the current route was unlikely to take him to his destination. Never mind the elusiveness of Dahal’s destination. He’s never been one to etch one in stone. The forewarning alone should be enough to shake our body politic.
Countless one-on-one private sessions Dahal has held with Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist chairman K.P. Oli have only served to muddy the waters. Did the two leaders just spend time together in private over edibles and entertainment?
The Maoist base’s quandary is real. If Oli seems so unwilling to accommodate subgroups led by fellow UML ex-premiers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhal Nath Khanal, why should the former rebels believe he might be eager to bestow respectful positions on them? Oli’s fellow Jhapa headhunter of the 1970s, Radha Krishna Mainali, warned us the other day how the UML chief has a habit of pledging things on credit, so to speak. The Maoists should have every i dotted and t crossed in triplicate, he counsels.
A few days earlier Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Democratic) president Pashupati Shamsher Rana was emphatic that the two communist parties could never unite. Now, you’d think Rana should be the last person making such prognostications when he couldn’t foresee the divisions so close to home. But, then, such an enduring political player must have had his reasons for saying so.
Couple that with the fact that caretaker Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has begun showing a degree of decisiveness that he lacked during his more rightful tenures over the decades. The idea that the caretaker government is even preparing to nominate three members to the upper house cannot bode well for the incoming Oli government.
The broader picture isn’t too sanguine, either. Many of the same Indian newspapers that advocated the abolition of the Nepali monarchy as a matter of their national interest today headline the ex-king’s religious undertakings in Orissa in a way that suggests he still sits on the throne.
Perhaps it would still be unrealistic to expect either faction to clearly come out against unification, at least without enough credible ground to blame the other for the fiasco. But it’s looking likelier that Oli will head the largest party in a hung parliament with all the attendant hazards Nepalis are familiar with – and much more. That would certainly suit some around us. Domestically, politics will continue to be the art of deal-making. And not an altogether bad position to be in today’s Trumpian times.

Willing The Good Of Whom?

We don’t know who invited her or why she came. Yet from most accounts emanating from her side of the border, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent whirlwind visit to Nepal was a success.
The series of ‘group audiences’ Swaraj granted to party leaders during her ‘goodwill’ visit lost much of its ability to revolt us. Nepalis have seen shoddier examples of collective obsequiousness before.  Nor was her breezy ‘I-just-dropped-in-on-friends’ demeanor that nauseating. Backslapping has become an inextricable parallel of the frontal variety when it comes to India’s outreach.
The disaffection expressed by some of our leaders over the ill-timed character of Swaraj’s arrival was remarkable indeed. But those raising their voices the loudest there are the ones who have the least to lose. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, although elected to parliament, is virtually a one-man show, notwithstanding his Naya Shakti gyrations. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center)’s Narayan Kaji Shrestha, who lost to Bhattarai, is a former deputy prime and foreign minister – and that’s about it.
Rastriya Prajatantra Party chairman Kamal Thapa, who as a senior member of caretaker Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s government, probably feels betrayed by Swaraj. It’s not that far away in time when, as then Prime Minister K.P. Oli’s foreign minister, Thapa and Swaraj came up with four points on a piece of paper that carried enough ambiguity to help the Indians maintain that their blockade was not a blockade.
Regardless of the validity or otherwise of his grievances, Thapa has come out as petty. He would have made more of a mark had he chosen to oppose Swaraj’s visit before she landed, even if that meant quitting the cabinet. If naiveté was behind the miscalculation of the normally astute Thapa regarding the motives of the Indians in 2015, then the less said, the better about the man who was home minister in the royal regime collapsed amid New Delhi’s shenanigans.
Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist insists that Swaraj arrived on a fence-mending visit, a stance shared by Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ as well as sections of New Delhi’s foreign policy establishment. If so, did Swaraj utter anything approximating an apology for having subjected Nepalis to collective punishment for those many months? If not, did she express any other form of contrition?
Or did she really land in Kathmandu to admonish the leaders the incoming government about how South Asia’s geo-strategic landscape had changed since the embargo? Maybe she packaged a not-so-diplomatic intimation of her country’s Doklamian-Trumpian-Quad-infused confidence that would not countenance Kathmandu’s tilt northward?
Maybe Swaraj didn’t have to do any such thing. At this point, merely sowing doubts in the Chinese mind as to what her Nepali interlocutors might have vouchsafed would count as success from India’s vantage point. If Dahal could learn his lesson and reverse his regional orientation during his second stint as prime minister, what makes us think Oli is under any obligation to stand firm?
After all – just as in Dahal’s case – the Chinese weren’t terribly eager to shield Oli from Indian opprobrium and eventual exit for having the temerity to try to redefine Nepal’s geo-strategic persona.