Splitting The Difference Within The Split

Like much of what has been going on in the country, the severity of the latest eruptions inside the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) tends to depend on who you are asking. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, the putative senior co-chair of the ruling party, and his partisans see a vast conspiracy brewing against the government. Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the NCP’s executive co-chair and titular head of the rival faction, considers these developments a customary character of a democratic party.
The proximate causes for the discontent that has gripped the NCP since its creation two years ago through the amalgamation of the mainstream Maoist and Marxist-Leninist factions keep changing. The underlying reason is the sheer fraudulence of that unity that is obvious to the point of obliviousness.
While maintaining the façade has served the protagonists, the putrefaction continues to ooze out of sundry orifices. Bam Dev Gautam, recently promoted to party vice-chair, wants a seat in the upper house of parliament, despite having lost the last election to the lower chamber. The recent elevation of NCP spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha to the upper chamber despite having also lost the election to the lower house may boost Gautam’s claim. But, then, the latest brouhaha cannot be comprehended without appreciating the shifts in the goalposts.
The last time the issue came up, Gautam had memorably refused to enter the upper house without a guarantee that he would also become prime minister. This time around, Oli torpedoed Gautam’s prime ministerial ambitions by thwarting the NCP’s scheme to devise the necessary constitutional amendment. But the premier seems to have suffered a setback in his effort to block Gautam’s path to the upper house.
Dahal et al., citing the NCP’s secretariat’s overwhelming decision in favor of Gautam, have made the issue one of insubordination if Oli refuses to recommend Gautam’s name to President Bidya Bhandari for formal nomination. Oli continues to demur, insisting that he had forwarded Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada’s name to the president well before the NCP secretariat’s decision.
However, Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokharel – a steadfast Oli loyalist – has confirmed that the government would follow the party decision, but conveniently left out a timetable. And not before Surya Thapa, Oli’s press adviser and the man Gautam blames for engineering his electoral defeat, wondered aloud why the NCP has become so capricious since Dahal became executive chair.
Of the Dahal-Madhav Kumar Nepal-Jhal Nath Khanal-Shrestha-Gautam quintet arrayed against him, Oli sees Nepal as the most malleable link. But Nepal is proving to be a harder nut to crack this time. Dahal has raised the stakes by issuing his most direct statement against the Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement with the United States which Oli is pressing parliament to endorse in its original form.
Pushed so tightly against the wall this time, Oli has not lost his inventiveness. He has put such a price on loyalty that it has become the sole arbiter of who is and isn’t corrupt and malfeasant. Moreover, if Oli sees this period as the most propitious for his much-needed kidney transplant, his instincts can’t be faulted.
Will a chastened Oli ultimately succumb to his rivals? Or will he dissolve parliament and call fresh elections, giving himself as well as Khatiwada a six-month reprieve in a devious tweak to the NCP’s ‘win-win’ compromise? What about President Bidya Bhandari, who is said to support Oli? Whatever she decides, she won’t find the aftermath entirely ceremonial.
President Bhandari may not go to the extent of imposing a state of national emergency – although, in all honesty, the body politic increasingly warrants one. The head of state could seek the advice of the Supreme Court on whether someone defeated in direct elections to the lower chamber can be constitutionally appointed to the upper house during the same legislative term. Shrestha, after all, was elected indirectly. Determining whether Gautam’s elevation through presidential nomination represented the apogee of arbitrariness or routine administration of state might even help plug a major breach in our constitutional edifice. How many new ones it may create is a different matter.

Sleaze, Sophistry And Systemic Succor

The man may have infuriated much of the country through his spoken and body languages, but you couldn’t deny that he always went all the way in defending the government. Maybe that’s why Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli seemed more loyal to Communication Minister Gokul Banskota than the other way around.
It must have been with a heavy heart that Oli showed Banskota the door after the minister was heard negotiating millions of dollars in kickbacks in an old audio recording freshly leaked by the would-be briber. At a deeper level, the sympathy for Banskota – no doubt a smidgen at best – is perhaps understandable. Could he have had the audacity to do what he did without confidence in his mentor's support?
Without that audio recording of a conversation between Banskota and Bijay Mishra, the local agent for a Swiss company vying for a government contract regarding the security printing of passports and other sensitive material, we would still be talking about the acquittal of former speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara of allegations of attempted rape.
Even before the court delivered his verdict, Mahara was the beneficiary of growing public perceptions that he was being punished for refusing to put the Millennium Challenge Corporation compact to a parliamentary vote.
The criminal justice system’s refusal to entertain the alleged victim’s claim that she had made the allegations against Mahara only under duress, too, helped the cause of the accused. As Mahara charts his political rehabilitation, we cannot forget how he was caught in a leaked recording of a telephone conversation with a Chinese individual on the money needed to ‘manage’ legislators in changing the government.
There is little – if any – evidence of a connection between the fresh cases of Banskota and Mahara. Still, it is hard to escape is the similarities between the men in terms of their respective relationships with Prime Minister Oli and Nepal Communist Party co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. Both were not only fiercely loyal to their individual mentors but were also important bagmen.
If Dahal and Oli have any reason to feel they are now ‘even’, the former Maoist and Unified Marxist-Leninist satraps are not showing such a sentiment. While Dahal laments how power has tended to corrupt Nepali communists, Oli touts his firm and unequivocal record on ensuring good governance. Neither seems to see himself as part of the problem.
Thus, it is the alleged would-be briber who makes the strongest case for ending systemic corruption. By inflating costs, rejigging specifications and other contractual legerdemain, the political-bureaucratic nexus generates kickbacks that are intended primarily not to line their pockets but to lubricate the body politic.
The centrality of sleaze to a functioning state system has long been the subject of casual conversation. An elected official effortlessly narrates how he won a seat in parliament spending less than what he did earlier on a losing mayoral race. Another expresses his readiness to relinquish his public office if he were to be reimbursed the millions he spent to get elected.
Maybe there is logic to why two former prime ministers and the incumbent general secretary of the ruling party evaded prosecution in the Balwatar land scam while people tangentially involved were caught in the anti-corruption dragnet. Despite heavy suspicion of guilt, the big fish are too important to the well-being of our political system.
Subliminally, then, that may also explain why Nepalis who rail against the party in power are also those who vote for it in the first by-elections.
A whirlwind of a week this was indeed – and a teachable moment as well.

All In It Together – In Life And Death

The silver jubilee of the eruption of the ‘people’s war’ provided an opportunity for its erstwhile supreme commander to shed some more light on the shadier parts of the saga.
Addressing a special function at Nepal Communist Party headquarters in the capital to commemorate the anniversary, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, among other things, sought to explain how the Nepali Maoists could have perished the way of their Peruvian counterparts had they not chosen to land safely in the peace camp a decade later.
While illustrating the contradictions of the period, Dahal recounted how Nepali Congress titan Girija Prasad Koirala would regularly suggest the Maoists to carry out major attacks against state installations. “We were in regular contact, almost every day,” Dahal told the audience, adding: “To my bewilderment, he used to provoke me to launch military attacks on district headquarters.”
Predictably enough, that remark infuriated the opposition Nepali Congress. How dare Dahal seek to tarnish the reputation of a man who dedicated his life to peace and democracy, party spokesman Bishwa Prakash Sharma roared in an official statement. Nepali Congress leader Shekhar Koirala – who was reputedly clued in on his uncle’s interactions with the Maoist chief – condemned Dahal’s remarks as ‘reckless and deplorable’.
Amid the brouhaha, Baburam Bhattarai – Dahal’s one-time deputy and chief propagandist – said the former Maoist supremo was exaggerating things. Girija Prasad Koirala had only urged the Maoists to escalate attacks against the state to thwart the undemocratic elections the royal regime was pushing through. In other words, destruction for democracy.
So, what’s going on here? Would Dahal speak ill of the dead just for the fun of it? True, the dead can’t be slandered. On the other hand, Dr. Bhattarai’s clarification presupposes some element of truth in Dahal’s assertion. And truth is the best defense when it comes to defamation.
Once again, the ball is in our court. The people need to put things in context against the public record. By his own later admission, Girija Prasad masterminded the hijacking of a Royal Nepal Airlines plane from Biratnagar to Forbesgunj and the looting of Indian Rs. 3 million in state funds in 1973.
The Nepali Congress made attempts on the lives of kings Mahendra and Birendra and continues to honor the executed would-be assassins as martyrs. Dahal – like the rest of us – recognizes that the Maoist ‘people’s warriors’ and the Marxist-Leninist headhunters never quite reached that level of dastardly audacity.
Dahal may not always choose his words carefully. But he does know how to put even bad ones to good effect. Consider his plight today. The one-time Fierce One has become a subject of either ridicule or pity. He celebrates the anniversary of a ‘people’s war’ conducted by a party that no longer exists. He does so as co-chair of a party that feels so uncomfortable that the other co-chair – the sitting prime minister – feels compelled to stay away.
Dahal’s peers within the power structure want to blame him for the ills of a system doddering before our eyes, while erstwhile allies outside accuse him of betraying the revolution. But, as his speech in Gorkha the very next day seemed to suggest, he won’t be the fall guy. They are all in it together – in life and in death.

The Art Of Faking It

If the recent central committee meeting of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) was indeed a blow to Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, the other party co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ is strenuously trying to show that he isn’t the beneficiary.
Buoyed by the election of loyalist Agni Sapkota as speaker of the House of Representatives, Dahal seems content with the reconfiguration of NCP equations. For how long, though? It’s not as if sharing the party leadership with Oli is anything akin to replacing him as premier.
Oli doesn’t look or sound like a broken man, according to many who have met him after the crucial NCP meeting. Things are good and are about to get better, the prime minister appears to suggest. Barriers have been broken, and national energies are being unleashed. If no one else can see this, well, he’s not the nation’s chief ophthalmologist.
Dahal, for his part, doesn’t seem to want to rock the boat – yet – if his subdued comments are any indication. In a speech in Kathmandu the other day, the NCP co-chair conceded that the Oli government’s claims about its performance were at wide variance with the people’s perceptions.
But he was careful to qualify that criticism – if it even did amount to one. “Our intention might not be ill, we might have tried to do something good,” Dahal said before going on to explain that motives ultimately didn’t mean much to the people. This was a good time for introspection, Dahal said, especially since being communists did not automatically guarantee the people’s trust.
While he poked fun at Oli’s short-necked fiddle show he happened to miss, Dahal was careful to maintain that it was not out of malice. He was too busy with party work.
As with that fraternity pretty much everywhere, you can’t really tell what’s going on among our comrades. If they could fake unity well enough to win an electoral landslide, what makes us think that they are bad at feigning discord and division?
It’s hard to put a mathematical framework to factionalism where neither ideology nor loyalty are fixed quantities.  For all the gains Madhav Kumar Nepal is supposed to have made in the party, can we be sure how that might impact Dahal – or Oli, for that matter – especially in view of the gaping holes in the Lalita Niwas corruption case that are growing bigger?
Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Bam Dev Gautam’s politics knows that his empowerment as NCP vice-chair changes a lot. Still, can we contend with that fact without factoring in the wild card called Jhal Nath Khanal? Narayan Kaji Shrestha’s election as a member of the upper chamber is just one of the myriad imponderables.
It’s hard enough to keep up with the frequency and swiftness with which ex-Maoists are joining hands with ex-Unified Marxist-Leninists and vice versa without the capriciousness of it all. And if it’s any consolation, those inside the NCP are as bewildered as those of us on the outside. Our comrades must be happy to have the MCC Compact and other subjects to camouflage their real disarray.