Comrades (Up) In Arms

Newly bestowed executive authority seems to have straightaway shifted the outlook of Nepal Communist Party (NCP) co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ – and quite significantly.
A man who barely two weeks earlier was warning of hounding all remnants of the ancient regime into oblivion now fears for the political system he sits atop. And nowhere does he cite a vast right-wing conspiracy this time. Instead, Dahal rues the way royal pretensions have crept into the ways of those driving republicanism. Of course, he is quiet about his own role in the development and display of this disfigurement.
The party Dahal has to run for the next couple of weeks in the absence of Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli is in a real mess. Barely had the controversy over the distribution of NCP departments been resolved than the issue of seniority clawed its way back into a bigger storm.
At a party meeting intended to extend best wishes to Oli on his latest medical trip to Singapore, senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal and the prime minister descended into a sordid kindergarten brawl. They have since expressed regret at their conduct, we are told through intermediaries, and pledged to work together. However, the episode was all too emblematic of the effect of the individual arrogating himself above both the party and the state.
The other protagonist, Jhal Nath Khanal, a one-term former prime minister like Madhav Nepal, was in China pledging to go after those bad-mouthing the Belt and Road Initiative. Yet he has little to celebrate after recovering his rank from Madhav Nepal, if that is indeed what he has done.
The proposal to appoint Bam Dev Gautam – who has been eyeing the premiership for the better part of three decades under three systems – to a newly created vice-presidency of the NCP not only elevates someone else to third position but also underscores the broader realignments under way in the party. No one seems to know how the eventual equation might unfold and its implications for the party and state, thereby sharpening individual insecurities and aspirations.
In fairness, Madhav Nepal has a point. Oli and Dahal today speak of consensus as if it were an integral characteristic of the party and seek its firm application. That wasn’t how the NCP was formed, though. What went on during all those one-on-one sessions between the two putative co-chairs? Most key lieutenants of both are still in the dark about the power-sharing deal underpinning the unification of the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist factions. The rank and file can flaunt their ignorance citing that the Oli-Dahal deal not being a party document is immaterial.
Oli and Dahal, for their part, couldn’t even get the name of the new party right, much less its guiding philosophy. Marxism, Leninism and Maoism were aberrantly fused into a political platform that succeeded in winning massive votes but couldn’t begin to govern. Today, after so many self-inflicted wounds, all factional leaders seem to agree that the NCP will complete its five-year term, although they can’t agree under whom. Yet they have the nerve to complain of indiscipline?

Chasing Ghosts in Ghoulish Clothes

Is Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli deliberately trying to destroy the system he represents? The question is no longer sacrilegious. In fact, it is becoming starker with each pronouncement he makes.
Oli affirmed in parliament the other day that he would continue for a full five-year term, warning his opponents not to ‘daydream’ about toppling the government. The fact that such resoluteness came just days before the mid-point in his constitutionally mandated term is significant.
With abundant clarity, Oli has rubbished reports that he is bound by any understanding to trade executive power with Nepal Communist Party co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ as part of the deal leading to the unification of the Unified Marxist-Leninists and Maoists factions last year.
But, then, Oli hasn’t been quite credible lately as a communicator of such affirmations. For starters, what’s really going on with his health? Earlier this month, the premier extended his stay in Singapore even after having his aides tell us he was in perfect health. Did he have to wait to sign his discharge papers?
Barely had the prime minister returned home than reports began to surface of another imminent medical trip to the city-state. As a key Oli adviser rejected those reports, the prime minister cryptically told the nation that nothing would happen to him for another 20-25 years. (And making a pitch for Cetamol.) Now, the Singapore trip seems to be on.
Was apportioning the NCP departments that important to the efficient functioning of the government? Or was rearranging the power balance in the ruling party the real motive here? More importantly, how do we know that Oli’s departure-arrival-departure isn’t part of the ‘broad consultations’ everyone seems convinced is going on abroad but unable to comprehend?
There was much Oli could have said in his address to the House of Representatives by way of assuaging the country’s anxieties. Apart from avowing his staying power and enumerating minor policy priorities, the only other thing the prime minister did was demonize those seeking a restoration of the monarchy. If that cause is indeed such a lost one, surely Oli need not have spent precious time in the august assembly emphasizing the obvious.
The prime minister may have desisted from the kind of threats and vitriol Dahal unleashed on the former monarch a week ago upon gauging the backlash it produced. Or maybe Oli is inherently more charitable than Dahal.
Yet the premier was all over the place on the subject. If monarchists are trying to resuscitate a ghost from the graveyard, wouldn’t letting them revel in their delusion be the best response? Instead, Oli vowed to unleash the full force of the government against such royalist conspiracies. Not without, however, pleading for unity among democratic forces to overcome traditional regressive forces attempting to jeopardize democracy.
Well, what is it, Mr. Prime Minister, that you see right, left and center: a puerile paroxysm or a clear and present danger? If you and your cohorts can’t make up your minds, maybe that signals the system’s time is truly up.

What’s Cooking In Whose Kitchen?

Our olfactory senses don’t betray us. And they haven't been on such a heightened state of alert in a long time.
Foreign personalities with peculiar reputations land in Nepal openly as well as opaquely. Our top Nepali leaders fly abroad with abandon for pleasure, personal errands and medical treatment. Can they really be so callously oblivious of our underlying predicament?
If destinations as varied as Dubai, Bangkok and Singapore should reassure those inimical to New Delhi’s traditional monopoly in the driver’s seat, the amorphousness of the current course cancels things out. Compared to this, Delhi Compromises I and II were as clear as day(dreaming). Small wonder, then, that we are acting out in our uncanny ways.
Nepal Communist Party co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, barely back from holidaying in Dubai, tried his best to be coherent. When he started out his public speech after inaugurating a bridge in Ramechhap district, it sounded like he was responding to former coalition partner, Rastriya Prajatantra Party chairman Kamal Thapa. A day earlier, Thapa had said it was time to seek an alternative to the current political system, which was certainly enough to infuriate its chief internal architect.
But then Dahal went on to warn former king Gyanendra that the people might force him to vacate government-provided Nagarjun Palace. The former monarch hasn’t said a thing, although he has brought out a book. In the past, when ex-king Gyanendra has upbraided his successors, Dahal has kept quiet. An eviction notice for the former monarch for meeting individually with a trio of PhD’s united in their disdain for the current dispensation and can’t stop telling us what they talked about?
Sharper minds are convinced Dahal spoke with a purpose. When the pedal hits the metal, the ex-Maoist supremo can always invoke the imperative of acknowledging ground realities and exercising maximum flexibility.
But, then, Dahal is no longer the smartest guy in the room. If acting Prime Minister Ishwar Pokharel really didn’t visit Nirmal Niwas, why did he have to park his vehicle in the vicinity of the ex-monarch’s private residence? Pokharel has now challenged reporters to either prove that he held private talks with the former king or apologize.
Maybe our deputy prime and defense minister feels calumniated by perceptions of skullduggery at a time when Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli is convalescing in Singapore. Or maybe in his capacity as defense minister he did meet with the ex-king, who was supreme commander of the Royal Nepal Army.
Perhaps Pokharel as the head of Nepal Trust, which is entrusted with using the property of King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and their family for the welfare of the nation, sought a meeting with the nation’s most prominent ex-royal to update records. Given Pokharel’s days-long silence, however, you can’t quite let go of the feeling that even if he didn’t exactly enter Nirmal Niwas, he did want to keep his arch-nemesis Dahal guessing.
Admittedly, the ex-monarch’s departure for Bangkok just as Oli announced an extension of his stay in Singapore has thickened the plot. Ordinary Nepalis are caught between public figures confident of the imminence of the monarchy’s restoration and those equally convinced that the institution has receded deeper into anachronism.
Any word trickling out on ingredients, cooks, kitchens would make our existence less excruciating.

The Art Of The Visit, Redux

Nepalis are still waiting for Chinese President Xi Jinping to make good on his promise to come avisiting ‘soon’. Well entrenched in his second term as leader of the People’s Republic with powers rivaling – if not surpassing – those exercised by the Great Helmsman, Xi and his cohorts continue to dangle the carrot of a Nepal visit at every opportunity.
As noted in an earlier iteration on the subject, etiquettes of good neighborliness aren’t the primary sentiment driving yours truly here. It is a quest for an assurance that Nepal-China relations are moving in a positive direction. In that spirit, it may be worthwhile to update that earlier post in view of the broader developments that have occurred since.
True, China’s engagement in Nepal has steadily deepened and become more diversified since the collapse of the monarchy. However, a palpable negativity has crept into the process from the outset. Regional and international rivalries always simmered and stirred under the current in terms of our bilateral engagements. Yet, during the second half of the 20th century, there was a sense that Nepal and China had crafted and started enjoying relations as sovereign and independent nations. The monarchy always played a crucial part in that process.
Measured against the fact that it took 17 years for an Indian prime minister to return to Nepal, President Xi’s reluctance to take the plunge is perhaps a bit understandable. Bold Indian reiterations of New Delhi’s abandonment of its ‘one China’ policy since the election of the Narendra Modi government in 2014, with its obvious implications for Tibet and thus Nepal, met with harsh realities at Doklam three years later. From there, the road to Wuhan wasn’t too difficult to build.
The growing convergence of Sino-Indian views on the messy geopolitical fallout from Nepal’s republican, secular and federal order must either crystallize or crumble over time. In the meantime, China’s reluctance to overtly challenge India while having made such remarkable gains in encroaching upon India’s strategic space in Nepal is understandable, even within the ambit of Beijing’s unsentimental foreign policy.
The opportunities and ambiguities surrounding Sino-Indian relations against the backdrop of Washington’s pivot to Asia and India’s warming up to Japan and Australia pointed to the wider dynamics at play. The swiftness with which Nepal has been sucked into the imperative of building a free and open Indo-Pacific cannot be divorced from India’s deepening eagerness to exercise strategic autonomy on the Trumpian doctrine as well as the Quad.
Chinese apprehensions at Nepal’s drift westward may be diminished somewhat by their satisfaction with India’s disquiet.  Still, the cumulative tensions being generated should sensitize Nepalis.
The current political establishment long castigated the monarchy for having brazenly played the China card at every opportunity in an ostensible effort to achieve its autocratic ambitions. That canard suited New Delhi well, as it was the principal party aggrieved by growing Nepal-China engagements.
Oppositional elements in Nepal no doubt were instinctively tempted to parrot the Indian line. But perhaps they should have been cognizant of the imperative of preserving their freedom of action if and when they assumed power.
If today’s leaders have allowed the relationship to devolve into one where Beijing feels comfortable in asserting Nepal’s independence and sovereignty only as part of its engagement with India, they have only themselves to blame.
In the best of times, democratic maturity has not automatically translated into geostrategic vision. Amid Nepal’s political puerility, foreign policy foresight remains elusive. After all, who can forget the mishandling of then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit by the Baburam Bhattarai government from start to finish?
Valid as Chinese grievances may be over their persistent inability to trust Nepal to uphold its commitments to the bilateral relationship during these increasingly turbulent times, the mandarins up north should understand that the feeling is quite mutual. Only then may they be able to begin pondering why.