Nepal's king puts faith in
loyalty By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - "Competence" and "clean image" have
become important political buzzwords ever since King
Gyanendra sacked Nepal's last elected prime minister,
Sher Bahadur Deuba, on October 4, 2002. The dismissal
was based on the charge of incompetence, and the
subsequent appointment of Lokendra Bahadur Chand as the
prime minister was announced on the basis of the King's
perception that Chand possessed a "Mr Clean"
personality. Besides, he was expected not to contest the
upcoming parliamentary elections. Public disbelief in
both of these contentions, though, was instantly
apparent through raised eyebrows and critical comments
in the country's media.
The politically
conscious class, which immediately dubbed the King's
step as an undemocratic act, knew well that Chand was
anything but a politician with clean image. By selecting
Chand from among a half a dozen hopefuls, King Gyanendra
gave indications, wittingly or otherwise, that loyalty
would have an edge over competence and a clean image. It
is another matter that Chand could not fulfill the royal
wish to see an all-party government that would take the
country to early parliamentary polls. Chand's bid to end
the eight-year Maoist insurgency through negotiations
also became a fiasco. The bloody rebellion continues,
overtly challenging the capability Nepal's royal army.
Chand, currently leader of the right-wing
Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, was a royal protege right
from the start of his career in the 1970s. He was
involved in a US$1 billion scandal during his first
tenure as prime minister in 1984-85 - in the period when
Nepal was still under an absolute monarchy, which had
begun in 1960. Five years later, a pro-democracy
movement (early 1990) forced the former king, Birendra,
to agree to become a constitutional head of the state,
on the British model. Birendra was killed along with his
queen and crown prince in a mysterious palace shootout
in June 2001. Gyanendra, as the deceased king's younger
brother, inherited the throne. All of the new King's
commitments have been to help consolidate the democratic
process, but his actions (or lack of them) in the past
three years have failed to speak louder than his words.
The choice of people the King made for his first
royal cabinet was a clear indicator of the shape of
things to come in the following months and years. Most
chosen to work under Chand were known royalists of
yesteryear. The foreign minister, Narendra Bikram Shah,
was a close relative of the royal family. Eight months
later, in June 2002, the king replaced Chand with
another known royalist, Surya Bahadur Thapa. To do just
that, the king brushed aside the name of Madhav Kumar
Nepal, leader of a moderately left party, who was
jointly proposed for the post by five major political
parties. Leaders of those parties had reluctantly made
the nomination as a gesture of "cooperation" to the
King, who had earlier asked them to identify a leader
who could head an all-party interim government empowered
to conduct negotiations with the Maoists, thereby paving
the way for parliamentary polls.
But by ignoring
that nomination, the King further alienated the already
agitated parties. Their leaders smelled deception, and
saw Thapa's appointment as proof of the King's intention
to nullify the rights people enjoyed under the 1990
constitution. Hence they rejected Thapa's request to
join the government. Instead, they launched a new round
of pro-democracy demonstrations. Several weeks of street
protests put pressure on the King, from within and
outside, compelling him to ask Thapa to quit. Thapa
resigned, but the palace did not name his successor
promptly. As a result of that, the country remained
without a functioning government for over three weeks.
Meanwhile, the King held "consultations" with
politicians and a select group of intellectuals. Still,
a candidate could not be found. Then giving a dramatic
twist to unfolding events, the palace issued public a
notice "inviting" those Nepalis who wanted to be
considered for the post of prime ministership of the
country. It was a bizarre, day-long affair that
attracted more than three dozen applications. But at the
end of the day, King Gyanendra chose someone who was not
an applicant for the job: Sher Bahadur Deuba, the very
person the King himself had once dismissed for being
"incompetent".
To Deuba, it meant reinstatement.
One of the main agitating parties, the Unified Marxist
Leninist (UML) party, a moderate leftist group, also
felt that Deuba's appointment amounted to only a
"partial correction" of the regressive action that King
Gyanendra took in October 2002. UML thought it could
help achieve "full correction" by joining the Deuba
government. Accordingly, UML leaders parted company with
other parties in the opposition camp; they are now in
the government of Deuba, who has a mandate to resolve
the Maoist insurgency and create an atmosphere for
organizing elections by the end of the current Nepali
year, 2061 (by mid-April 2005). At present, the country
is without a parliament at the center and without
elected bodies in 4,000-odd villages, about 60 towns and
75 districts. Most of the members Thapa nominated for
the local units resigned in the wake of death threats by
Maoist rebels.
Facts on the ground do not give
credence to Deuba's claim that the reappointment was his
reinstatement. Constitutional experts are categorical in
saying that Deuba prior to October 4, 2002, held the
status of an elected prime minister; today he is heading
what is in essence a royal government. And his latest
position is not different from that of Chand's or
Thapa's, since there is no parliament (he himself
recommended its dissolution in May 2002) to derive
strength from or be accountable to.
"He can be
held accountable only to the person who appointed him to
the chair he is currently occupying," said Bishwanath
Upadhyay, a former chief justice who headed the panel
that drew up the constitution in 1990. In fact, in the
period between Deuba's dismissal and his reappointment
this June, the palace changed a number of rules and
regulations, increasing the king's powers, perks and
prerogatives. Controversial among these have been the
Rules of Procedures, which now make it obligatory for
the prime minister to seek the king's prior permission
to transfer even a police officer from one district to
another. Similarly, the prime minister's schedule
regarding his weekly audience with the king has been
changed. Previously, the premier used to brief the
monarch about the decisions made by the cabinet. Now,
the premier has to meet the king prior to a cabinet
meeting.
While Deuba may have accomplished his
goal of reaching the prime minister's seat once again,
it remains unclear who or what prompted King Gyanendra
to take a step that was sure to question his wisdom. "We
are quite curious to know how Deuba could convince King
Gyanendra that he has acquired the requisite
qualification in such a short time," wrote editor Madhav
Kumar Rimal of the weekly Spotlight, shortly after the
palace announcement, on June 4.
Some palace
insiders claimed the King was about to nominate the
Speaker of the dissolved parliament, Taranath Ranabhat,
to the post of prime minister. Such an act would have
lent some confidence to his publicly made commitments
toward democracy. But this did not happen because
Ranabhat refused to resign the speakership, an elected
position, in lieu of a nominated post. His condition was
that he would accept the royal appointment if he were
allowed to retain the Speaker's title until the next
general elections. The palace coterie used Ranabhat's
refusal as a pretext to put forward the case of Deuba.
"A powerful section of the palace was always in favor of
'Jwain Saheb'," editor Rimal wrote, alluding to Deuba's
status as a son-in-law of an influential Rana family.
King Gyanendra too is a son-in-law of another family of
the Ranas. Most if not all of the present King's
advisers are Ranas, who are the descendants of those
whose 104-year autocratic regime was overthrown by a
popular movement in 1951. Prabhakar Shamsher Rana, a
well-known businessman, and Satchit Shamsher Rana, a
former army chief, are among King Gyanendra's close
confidants.
Together with the Ranas, the palace
considers persons belonging to the Shah and Thapa clans
too among those who are known for their loyalty to the
royal family. It is a common belief that these
hardliners make up the group of the King's visible and
invisible counselors. Clearly, this group is unlikely to
advise the monarch to take a liberal path.
The
hardliners, say some analysts, are wittingly or
unwittingly pushing the King to the edge of a political
precipice. People opposed to the monarchy are getting
additional points. Krishna Pahadi, a leading
human-rights activist, is one of those analysts who
blame the hardliners for assisting rebel leaders to
create chaos and disorder in the country so that the
multiparty democracy readopted in 1990 could appear to
have failed in Nepal. In a wide-ranging interview given
to Deshantar, a Nepali-language weekly, Pahadi said a
section of the palace was of the view that up to 50,000
lives may have to be lost to prove that the multiparty
system is not suitable for Nepal. Now they must be happy
to see many of the features of democracy already
disappearing, at the loss of about 10,000 human beings.
Meanwhile an anti-corruption agency has filed
cases against three former chiefs of the Nepal Police.
All three headed the force after the 1990 political
changes. Some analysts view it as a deliberate attempt
to show that corruption has thrived ever since Nepal
entered the democratic era - as if it was not there
before 1990 or after October 2002.
In the
beginning, palace hardliners had also projected the
Maoists as a nationalist force who put up a fight
against Indian hegemony. But with the passage of time
Maoists have considerably softened their stand against
New Delhi, because the Indian authorities have not been
actively preventing them from launching cross-border
attacks on Nepali settlements. In other words, Maoists
have ceased to be that nationalist force a section of
the palace wanted to project in the early phase of the
insurgency. The hardliners are also presumed to have
advised the monarch on an increased use of military
force whereas almost all of the countries friendly to
Nepal have maintained that it would not be prudent to
look for a military solution to the insurgency.
However, palace courtiers have a long tradition
of being sycophants without being actually identified as
ones. But there is a widely held view that the King, who
faces the serious challenges of an insurgency, political
opposition and an economic downturn, has not been able
to shun such sycophancy. Editorial writers and
commentators have suggested the King should get rid of
advisers who are prone to giving loaded advice.
Suggestions offered to the monarch included a
recommendation to make himself accessible to the
ordinary people who form the majority of Nepal's 24.8
million population. He has also been urged to understand
a message from a popular Nepali dictum: the King belongs
to all (raajaa sabkaa saajhaa).
Humble
submissions and entreaties, however, have not made any
marked difference thus far. King Gyanendra has not
changed his habit of showing preference for loyalty over
competence and honesty. This has been visible whenever
he has selected men and women to fill the constitutional
posts of commissioners, judges and ambassadors. The
first major controversy surfaced at the time of
appointment of a new chief election commissioner a few
months ago. The King turned down the mandatory
recommendation of the Constitutional Council and
appointed an old, retired civil servant, Keshav Raj
Rajbhandari. Among the election commissioners, he
included a retired army officer and dropped the name of
a woman who would have been the country's first female
election commissioner. The induction of a person with a
military background in the Election Commission is
unlikely to ensure free and fair elections by the
stipulated deadline.
When the posts of vice
chancellor, rector and registrar fell vacant in the
country's largest and oldest university, Tribhuwan, King
Gyanendra, as chancellor, approved the appointments of
those three professors who were least likely to
challenge palace-endorsed guidelines.
To what
extent King Gyanendra has been accepting the nominations
made by the Constitutional Council for appointing envoys
to foreign countries is another subject of conjecture.
From some of the appointments made since he became king
in 2001, one can discern that loyalty to the King has
indeed been the determining factor. For example, all of
Nepal's current ambassadors to four crucial capitals -
New Delhi, Beijing, London and Washington - are the
King's men. Some served under Gyanendra's father, others
were in service during his brother Birendra's reign.
Whether all of these envoys can efficiently handle
emerging issues ranging from human rights and democracy
to gender and the environment is unclear. Besides, Nepal
is passing through an extraordinary period in its
history, requiring all of its diplomats abroad to take
on additional workloads with unprecedented dexterity.
"Obviously, you can't meet the challenges of the
21st century by employing functionaries who stick to the
perspective of 1970s and '80s," said Kuber Sharma,
president of the Green Nepal Party, who had a brief
stint as tourism minister in the first royal cabinet
under Chand. Sharma's view is shared by many of
country's intellectuals.
If the King has started
to expand his interests in areas that constitutionally
come under the ambit of an elected government, he can
naturally make changes in the palace secretariat - an
apparatus that has traditionally remained the king's
realm. All the palace employees hold their posts at the
king's pleasure. The constitution states (Article 121)
that it is the king's privilege to frame rules to govern
the palace employees, although their expenses are
defrayed from the state exchequer.
Unlike the
members of the bureaucracy under the elected government,
the palace employees are not required to sit for
qualifying examinations conducted by the Public Service
Commission. In other words, the king is free to organize
his secretariat in the way that suits him, keeping only
those employees whom he may consider loyal. And King
Gyanendra did exercise this authority in the intervening
years, doing away with some of the posts of principal
secretaries. But have these changes assisted the
500-strong palace administration to enable it to support
the traditional institution of monarchy? It hasn't been
felt by the men and women in the street.
Currently, the King's press secretariat is
headed by a former army colonel whose expertise could be
useful on security and military issues. Although he may
have been a loyal officer, his ability to handle media
matters is understandably limited. Would not a person
holding a media degree or a recognized media
practitioner perform the job better, media professionals
wonder, and enhance the King's public image? After all,
neither the constitution nor any palace-related laws
prevent the king from recruiting the best and brightest
Nepalis to man the palace administration. Needless to
emphasize, loyalty alone does not mean anything if it is
not allowed to be matched with performance and honesty.
At times, the lack of coordination among various
palace wings has become as glaring as they appear in the
bureaucracy under the seat of an elected government. A
classic example of a palace faux pas was reported a few
years ago when a former law minister, Shambhu Prasad
Gyawali, passed away. The palace sent a letter of
condolence, on behalf of the then king, to the bereaved
family. Six months later, the same family received
another letter from the palace with greetings to mark
Nepal's biggest festival, Dashain. The bewildered son of
the deceased minister made the letter public. He also
wrote a missive to the palace. Even diehard monarchists
often cite such incidents to express the reservations on
the clumsy manner in which the palace officials handle
their job.
As an age-old maxim goes, a man is
known by the company he keeps. Hence there is no one who
can change the public's perception of the King other
than the King himself.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
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