It’s All About Optics

The realities and restraints of open and competitive politics have considerably chastened our one-time Fierce One.
Sure, Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal still tends to breathe rhetorical fire at times. But the chairman of the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is no longer capable of persuading us of the limitlessness of our possibilities.
In general, hopey-changey politics simply doesn’t have sufficient constituency of suckers to ensure an extended shelf life. Bitten ever so often, Nepalis possess more pronounced skepticism than the rest.
However, it was hard not to give Dahal the benefit of the doubt in the spring of 2006. When he first emerged in public as the leader of a violent rebel movement who was now committed to waging peace, Dahal seized the country’s imagination – because there was so much we didn’t know about him.
As prime minister, we remember how he insisted on visiting China first, insisting that the circumstances warranted a sovereign nation’s making its choices without fear or favor. We tend to forget that within his first 100 days in office Prime Minister Dahal had met the presidents of the United States (even if in the form of a brief handshake on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly) and China as well as the Prime Minister of India. Nepal was on its way to making a clean break from business as usual, we were told. It started to look like it was.
Confronted with his first major crisis – President Ram Baran Yadav’s decision to reverse the prime minister’s decision to sack the army chief – Dahal chose to resign. His party had the best-organized cadre base on the streets and retained a distinct fear factor. By resigning, though, he sought to burnish his democratic credentials. You couldn’t say he failed.
In interviews with the Indian media, he sought to dispel the notion that he was somehow stepping into the same spiral of anti-Indianism popular with Nepali politicians out of power. Although skepticism had deepened by his tendency to speak in keeping with the audience, Dahal still enjoyed the support of those who considered his post-premiership remarks as a good-faith effort to explain the geo-strategic dimensions of governance.
Soon after, things began going downhill. Once he realized that his return to the premiership was now hopelessly encumbered, Dahal began publicly regretting his decision to step down.
Now, instead of advancing the search for the right balance between our two neighbors, Dahal began pitting Beijing and New Delhi against each other in order to bolster his personal politics.
The Chinese, having invested so much in the Maoists, tried working with second-tier leaders. The Indians, who were still seething at what they considered the monarchy’s brazen tradition of waving of the ‘China card’, turned nostalgic for the decency and dignity with which the palace pressed on that course.
Dahal eventually allowed his deputy, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, to become premier thinking that it would be the second best thing. Instead, the party split, the Maoists lost considerable ground in the second Constituent Assembly elections and Dahal was almost left without a job. The Maoists became just another chapter in the sordid history of fusion and fission of Nepal’s communist politics.
The Maoist interregnum did serve to bolster the credibility of the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist. Maybe their kind politics is the norm. The two parties, having squandered the public trust, are living their second lives with reasonable élan. (Life on the sidelines has been an extremely useful popularity booster for our ex-monarch as well.)
Dahal must have learned a lesson or two here. But his fighting words? He is just too much of a political animal to restrain himself. The other day, the Maoist chief insisted that he was ready to go to jail and even lay down his life for the cause of identity-based federalism. In fairness, he probably still believes in the cause. But he surely can’t believe much of the country still believes in it as well.
He can’t abandon the idea in the same way he can’t abandon the constituent assembly, republicanism or secularism. Going to jail or getting out of this world wouldn’t place the burden of achieving identity-based federalism on Dahal. The optics would be good. And, yes, to be a successful Maoist these days, you have to be careful about appearances.

Tightening The Tent Of Tentativeness

Now that a top leader of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has publicly ruled out the return of the monarchy in Nepal, you would expect our political establishment to redouble its efforts to promulgate the overdue republican constitution.
Some leaders, to be sure, have been issuing remarkably upbeat prognoses on the process. Beneath the surface, however, you get a palpable sense that the stars still have not yet aligned properly.
Superficially, the issue of federalism continues to haunt our march towards New Nepal. Everyone knows that without addressing the expectations of inclusiveness the Maoists heightened – and the other parties jumped onto as a political ploy late in the day – the document is doomed. Yet no one seems to be able to find that formula for fullness that would also be in keeping with the principles of national and geopolitical viability.
While federalism has come to embody the quest for completeness, it only masks the other dimensions of our identity and institutional crises. In recent weeks, we have been rudely awakened to the appropriate role of the courts and the media in our emerging polity. International lessons abound when it comes to establishing a dignified relationship between the citizen and the state. The much-maligned air-and-water theory of adaptation still hovers over the national discourse.
Here’s the rub. A new constitution would set the parameters of our politics in ways that cannot be fully grasped today. Deep down, this uncertainty haunts every political party and player, major or minor. The people may be clamoring for finality, especially considering the repeated upheavals they have endured within a single generation. The political establishment cannot be ready for conclusiveness unless each constituent can be assured of its place and prospect.
Still, politicians feel obliged to assure us of their abiding commitment to fulfilling the mandate of Constituent Assembly II. And they are looking for novel ways of doing so. So much so that politicians whom you would not normally consider weirdoes end up making wild assertions.
Speaker Subhash Chandra Nembang said the other day that enacting the new constitution by January 22, 2015 would be the greatest tribute to late prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala. Nembang, in fairness, was addressing a program commemorating the 90th birth anniversary the Nepali Congress titan and thus had to be polite. But personalizing the vital undertaking as an act of homage to Girija babu? What happened to the martyrs? Or our collective wisdom as a nation?
Minister for Law, Justice, Constituent Assembly and Parliamentary Affairs Narhari Acharya, for his part, claimed that Nepal would witness political stability once the new constitution was promulgated. But political instability is not exactly our problem, is it? At least not compared to the 1990-2002 period of parliamentary democracy.
The political class has been remarkably subdued now when it comes to pursuing the proverbial warfare by other means. Perhaps this is because each party is mired in internal battles. Surely, Acharya could have been more convincing by conveying the urgency of completing a task long overdue at considerable public expense.
In order to comprehend the tentativeness of our political class, Maila Baje chose to re-read BJP leader Vijay Jolly’s remarks, which one English daily had headlined: “Monarchy won’t make a comeback: BJP leader”.
Professing respect for the Nepali people’s desire for change in 2006 – which he said he had personally witnessed in Kathmandu at the time – Jolly said the BJP had actually supported the removal of the monarchy. Yet when it came time to be categorical in our midst about the future, Jolly’s precise words were: “I don’t think monarchy will make a comeback in Nepal”.
How many provinces are we contemplating, again?

Generalspeak: Platitude Or Portent?

An already ailing prime minister diagnosed with another serious malady has reignited a leadership struggle in the principal ruling party, pitting its dynastic claimants against the plebeians.
The other major coalition partner is mired in a party convention wherein the two prime contestants for leadership are slinging mud over who brings more royalist baggage to the ring.
The once-feared rebels, splintered, exhausted and relegated to third place, insist the two ruling parties are bent on restoring the monarchy and unitary state by reinstating the previous constitution.
And when the only avowedly royalist party in the elected assembly insists it would not accept any constitution that did not formally accommodate the monarchy and Hinduism, even the most committed republicans do not pretend to rise up to offer a rebuttal.
So when Gen. Gaurav Shamsher Rana, chief of staff of the Nepal Army, reminded us other day that the armed forces were the last line of defense, he created a flutter.
In the best of times, such platitudes would have been easily shrugged off. Even in the worst – like today’s – a been-there-done-that attitude should have sufficed. Yet the attempt to read between the top general’s words persists. It’s an age-old syndrome: When you don’t know what you really want, you try to seek meaning in everything.
A little history lesson may be in order. The last time our top general gave the same message, stirrings of change were in the air. Except it wasn’t the kind we expected. When the entire family of the supreme commander of the then Royal Nepal Army perished inside the heavily fortified palace perimeter, the same army chief wanted us to be believe that his organization was not responsible for the royals’ security.
Clearly, army bosses pushed then king Gyanendra to seize full control of state powers in February 2005, confident in their ability to control the situation. Superficially, the monarch confronted a two-front battle. In reality, though, the mainstream parties were still discredited and the monarch initially had the people’s palpable – if wary – support. Why then could the army, unencumbered by the political imperatives inherent under party rule, make no dent against the insurgents? If the shortage of arms and ammunition resulting from the post-takeover embargo was the reason, what did that say about the generals’ political acumen?
Admittedly, you could accuse the monarch – as so many continue to – of squandering the brief window of opportunity by packing his cabinet with discredited politicians from the partyless and multiparty past. What else could he have done amid the sustained boycott mounted by the mainstream parties? Name key generals to top cabinet positions?
In the end, you could say the generals persuaded the monarch of the impossibility of his enterprise and encouraged him to step back. To assert that claim, the generals would have to inject some honesty to the discourse.
The army ultimately absolved itself by undergoing a name change and distancing itself from the palace. Any new such adventure would be far more perilous to the armed forces and, by extension, to the nation.
Now, if Gen. Rana’s intention was to assure us that the armed forces, which unified Nepal, sustained Bhimsen Thapa’s thirty-year autocracy before underpinning a century of the Ranas’, and went on to bolster the democrats, the panchas, multiparty practitioners, royalists and republicans of a still independent nation, then he should not have taken the trouble. If anything, we’ve wizened up to our history these past few years.

Consensus On Sharing Censure

Those of us scratching our heads so hard the past few days as to why our fragmented and fuming Maoists have suddenly chosen to forge a working alliance now have something to work on.
The major objective of the emerging alliance is to pull Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist out of Constituent Assembly, Chandra Prakash Gajurel, vice-chairman of the CPN (Maoist) said at a public interaction program the other day.
Published reports suggest Matrika Yadav’s CPN (Maoist), Mani Thapa’s Revolutionary Communist Centre and Pari Thapa’s CPN (United) also desire a common voice on key contentious issues before the new constitution is drafted.
Come to think of it, our Maoists are in a real fix. The parties inside the constituent assembly have emerged as the biggest impediments to the promulgation of a new constitution.
No single entity is prepared to assume full responsibility for this impending failure. Collectively, though, they are willing to share the blame. (Provided, of course, each party/faction/coterie reserved the right to point fingers at its rivals.)
This shared stance within the assembly has deprived the parties outside of a credible and coherent agenda. Since they cannot play spoilers, they have projected themselves as saviors.
“Yeah, we thought the constituent assembly, as the ultimate embodiment of popular sovereignty, would salve the Nepali soul,” your average Maoist comrade might assert. “But little did we know that a butcher selling goat meat behind a display of goat heads still had several tricks up his sleeve.”
“On top of that,” another might add, “it takes guts to accept where you went wrong.” If the street is where sovereignty of the people resides, then let’s try to ensure its triumph from there. That’s the philosophical part, more or less. What about the operational side? That’s what Gajurel is talking about.
Dahal recognizes that his war and peace were dictated largely by factors extraneous to the so-called objective conditions inside Nepal. The set of these external circumstances across the southern border circa 2005-2006 that culminated in the advent of republicanism here have largely dissipated and the drivers no longer possess the power to push the agenda forward.
On the other hand, the new handlers, while cognizant of their own national-security imperatives and core interests, are not necessarily wedded so sentimentally to republicanism and secularism in Nepal. Truth be told, who really knows how many people there, or elsewhere in the near abroad and beyond, continue to see those two attributes in Nepal as conducive to their national interests?
Despite Baburam Bhattarai persisting as the perennial thorn on his side, Dahal must continue pretending that he is still the ‘fierce one’ of lore. So he threatens to pull out of the assembly, decrying the ‘regressive tendencies’ of the ruling Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal-Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML).
However, if Dahal were to withdraw from the assembly unilaterally, Nepalis would feel vindicated in seeing him and his party as escapists. If parties outside the assembly could pull him in their direction, Dahal and Co. would be exposed to an acceptable, if not equal, distribution of denunciation. The core of political consensus, if you will.

Stray Thoughts On A Stirring Celebrity

She seemed to fit in the ambience so perfectly. Specifically, whatever she wore – her clothes or ours – she looked like one of us.
As the international media zeroed in on Selena Gomez’s personal travails while covering her recent visit to Nepal, we were happy to find the country on the entertainment pages for a change.
As a UNICEF ambassador, Selena arrived for an in-depth observation of the organization’s work in Nepal focused on education, nutrition, health and protection. “This visit to Nepal was extraordinarily powerful – at times, devastating and heartbreaking, but also incredibly inspiring,” she said in a press release.
For Maila Baje, the visit offered an opportunity to gaze beyond the daily grind. Selena Gomez has grown up into what an earlier Selena might have become, had she not been murdered on a March morning in 1995 by someone who was supposed to have taken care of her.
Some years hence, Selena Gomez popped up in the PBS kids show Barney & Friends. Parents and grandparents who turned to the purple dinosaur for early life lessons for their young ones began bonding with her. It was pleasing to learn later that Selena’s mom had named her daughter after the Tejano singer.
With Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, we could now identify with Alex Russo’s magical antics as she and her two siblings competed for the slot of Family Wizard of their generation. The carefree, anything-is-possible attitude of children of men and women who wake up every morning and make America work gripped audiences episode after episode.
Much as they delighted adults, kids like Selena, her one-time Barney colleague and fellow Disney star Demi Lovato, and Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus also disturbed parents, especially those with daughters. How would they – and our children – turn out as young adults? And what would that say about us?
Demi began struggling with drug problems, walking in and out of rehab a few times, before speaking publicly about herself with courage. Miley grew into a raunchy entertainer pushing the boundaries of public decency harder than Madonna or Lady Gaga ever dared to.
Selena seemed to have transitioned with much – for lack of a better term – stability. Her side of the relationship with Justin Bieber contained nothing of bawdiness the Canadian heartthrob began showing with the first flush of success. Sure, there were stories of personal distress here and there, but Selena and the family handled them with much dignity and grace. She stands out as one of the few celebrities who are comfortable talking in public about her family values and faith with candor.
Selena’s visit to Nepal brought up troubling aspects of her love and life. Just looking at her pictures while she was here (such as the one above), you wouldn’t know what was – or was not – going on with her. What you did see was how she uplifted the spirits of kids here – even if briefly.
“At first when you witness children living in extreme poverty you wonder how it is possible that they can be deprived of their basic human needs and rights,” Selena said in her press release. “Then you talk to these children and you see hope, promise and a bright future.”
It would have been nice to see more international stories on how Selena Gomez inspired children in Nepal. But, again, that’s not what the entertainment pages are for. To writers and editors on that beat, well, everything comes naturally.