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?

Empowered And Imperiled

A group of reporters takes their woes to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and come out of the meeting all the more anxious. Collapse of this government, the former rebel-in-chief tells them, would be tantamount to the failure of the state.
Few Nepalis expected their first post-monarchy premier to sound like Louis XIV. But Dahal, too, lacked the bravado normally associated with such assertions over the ages. Our prime minister sounds genuinely worried about the fate of his government. And why shouldn’t he be?
The Nepali Congress has intensified its warning against creeping totalitarianism of the extreme leftist variety. Any working alliance with the Maoists is now limited to bringing out a popularly drafted constitution. The most strident criticism has come not from the Nepali Congress’ anti-communist wing but from friends like Dr. Shekhar Koirala.
Excoriated for having bent over backward to the Maoists during the first two years of the peace process, Koirala ostensibly has had enough. Now he warns the ex-rebels that Nepali Congress members in the constituent assembly would collectively resign once they get the first whiff of a people’s republic. How much of Dr. Koirala’s latest rants stem from the Maoists’ breach of their reported pledge to honor Uncle Girija as the country’s first president remains unknown. But Shekhar Da looks like a commander of a multi-pronged attack.
The main opposition party is asking Defense Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’ to explain his assertion that President Ram Baran Yadav had cancelled his trip to China for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics under pressure from foreign powers. Now, if Badal meant the United States, he wouldn’t have hesitated to name names. Whatever he says or doesn’t say will reflect on his boss. The two major coalition partners are becoming more of subversives. (And we haven’t even touched upon the rivalries deepening within the erstwhile people’s warriors.)
The Unified Marxist Leninists’ K.P. Sharma Oli asserts that the Maoists would be wiped out in eight years. General Secretary Jhal Nath Khanal, although sounding less intimidating, has lowered the bar. He believes the UML would beat the Maoists in the next election. Ordinarily, the two UML men might have been hailed as statesmen, considering how far away that exercise seems. But eyeing the next generation before warming up to constitution making is a gross abdication of responsibility.
Khanal’s predecessor, Madhav Kumar Nepal, doubts Dahal’s patriotism after the premier chose to extend an olive branch to India moments after returning from China. Whatever the precise reasons the Maoists reneged on their pledge to support Nepal as their presidential candidate, the former general secretary at least could blame his defeat in both constituencies in last April’s elections. By inducting fellow loser Bam Dev Gautam in the cabinet as his No.2, Dahal has added double insult to Nepal’s injury. Gautam has now become the only UML leader to serve twice as deputy premier, a distinction he will use to bolster his politics well into the future.
Madhesi Janadhikar Forum chief and Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav has asked his cadres to go after the Young Communist League. Nothing like the Gaur carnage is about to ensue. But Yadav has synthesized domestic and diplomatic pressure on the Maoists. By blowing hot and cold on India’s exact responsibility for the Koshi disaster, Yadav has already put Dahal on the defensive before his Delhi visit. Reports of a second prime ministerial visit to China can be of little use here until the state media announces the itinerary.
October may be a couple of weeks away, but the air is bound to acquire added chill when revolutionaries in power feel they are imperiled.