Page 1 of 2 Nepal's royal road to disaster
By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Recent actions (and inactions) do not show that the tumultuous
events of the year that forced King Gyanendra to issue a proclamation
relinquishing political powers on April 24 have made him any wiser.
When a high-level panel, for instance, probing the excesses committed by
security forces during the pro-democracy
movement approached him for information, Gyanendra defiantly refused to
cooperate.
The panel then sent a written communication to him seeking responses on
specific issues regarding atrocities, and he once again turned recalcitrant.
The consequences were obvious: he was be declared the main offender for all the
killings, injuries and destruction. "Clearly, he was given a chance to present
his case, defend himself, but did not utilize that opportunity," said Harihar
Birahi, one of the five members of the panel headed by a former Supreme Court
judge, Krishnajung Rayamajhi.
(Media reports said royal lawyers advised Gyanendra to ignore the inquiry
inasmuch as the 1990 constitution provided him immunity from prosecution. The
lawyers took it for granted that a parliamentary proclamation on May 18 had
substantially curbed royal perks, privileges and prerogatives.)
The indictment of a reigning monarch on charges of brutal suppression of his
subjects is indeed an historic deed. That is what the judicial inquiry did on
November 20 while presenting its report, containing nearly 1,200 pages, to
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. The report concluded that as "chairman"
of the cabinet he himself formed after staging a coup on February 1, 2005, King
Gyanendra must be held responsible for all the wrongdoings.
Since existing laws, said the panel, did not have provisions to prosecute a
head of state, it was expected that the upcoming interim parliament should
enact bold and appropriate legislation and penalize him. Together with the
monarch, the panel recommended that 201 other persons needed to be brought to
justice. The list of offenders included names of ministers and chiefs of
security agencies. The king's information minister was found to have spent vast
sums of money to bribe journalists associated with the country's influential
newspapers, radio and television networks.
Surprisingly, King Gyanendra broke his stony silence a day after a
comprehensive peace accord was concluded between the Seven Party Alliance and
Maoists in which they agreed to end a bloody insurgency launched in 1996. The
palace press secretariat, on November 22, issued a cryptic "notice" saying that
the king was happy about the peace accord. "His Majesty the King is pleased
that a peace agreement has been concluded in keeping the nation's needs and
people's aspirations," read the translated version.
He even prayed for the eternal peace of those "who lost their lives". The
notice was not immediately posted on the palace website, but a news agency item
was adequate to attract widespread public attention. The royal gesture
generated mixed reactions and interpretations. Left-leaning politicians read
King Gyanendra's words as a signal of his planned move to mobilize rightwing
parties and elements - with "moral" support from Hindu nationalists in India -
to stage a comeback.
Even if this may not be feasible in the immediate future as the state army is
no longer under his command, his courtiers and supporters could still create a
favorable atmosphere during the elections to the constitutional assembly,
scheduled to be held by next June.
One weekly newspaper, The Telegraph , pointed out that while the king carefully
put words together to express sorrow over the loss of lives during the
uprising, both Maoist leader Prachanda and Girija Prasad Koirala, who heads the
alliance, forgot to register their grief and concomitant public apology in the
document they signed. That was a striking lapse on the part of political groups
which badly need a popular base to conduct their politics.
However, politicians working with centrist parties, including the Nepali
Congress, do not find any credible basis to believe that King Gyanendra - and
the feudal institution of monarchy - could re-emerge as a strong political
factor in the changing context. Some of the Congress insiders confidently said
that those who tried to find hidden meanings from routine events were going to
be disappointed.
That Koirala was sworn in as prime minister by King Gyanendra is not an
indication that Koirala would go to any length to save the monarchy, at the
expense of unity in his own Congress party. Men and women occupying senior
positions in his party have consistently voiced their views against Koirala's
occasional utterances that Nepal may still needed a "ceremonial" monarchy. How
can an octogenarian Koirala prescribe what is going to be good for Nepalis
belonging to younger generation, they argued.
Neither have signals coming from prominent members of the international
community been particularly encouraging for the king. Initially, Washington
believed that the monarchy was needed to make democratic forces stronger - in
view of the threats Maoists posed on the population. That perception altered
with the passage of time, especially after King Gyanendra ignored pleas to
reach out to political parties.
Instead, he pushed the seven party leaders closer to the Maoists, who assured
them that they would renounce the politics of violence. US envoy James F
Moriarty no longer considers the monarchy indispensable for Nepal. "We have
repeatedly clarified that it is for the Nepali people to decide the fate of the
monarchy," Moriarty told an audience in Pokhara, a tourist spot in the west, on
Friday.
The Indian position is not markedly different from that of the American's. The
latest Indian stand was made public also on Friday by a visiting Indian
diplomat at a press conference. What Shiv Shankar Menon, foreign secretary,
said also indicated that New Delhi would support the decision of the people of
Nepal. This position clearly entails a shift in India's previous stand that the
constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy were the twin pillars required
to provide stability to Nepal.
Some pro-monarchy newspapers have found this shift untenable, and even
represented betrayal by the Indians. Quoting an Australian newspaper report, a
columnist in an English weekly wrote that everything started to go wrong once
King Gyanendra reinstated a defunct parliament, on April 24. "The agenda coming
from the south [India] was to remove the king, weaken the army and weaken
religion," The Australian newspaper, The Age, quoted a royal adviser as saying.
China, the other country that matters to Nepal, too, has seemingly abandoned a
long-held belief that the monarchy is necessary for the stability of its
smaller neighbor sharing a long border with its rival India.
Officially, the Chinese have always said that they respect and accept the
verdict of the people of Nepal. The peace accord of November 21 has left little
room for King Gyanendra to make any maneuver to salvage the throne. It further
reduced his role and envisaged nationalizing the property he owned as Nepal's
head of the state. According to the plan, the very first meeting of the
Constituent Assembly, expected by next June, would take a formal decision on
the monarchy.
In other words, the monarchy would end in 2007. Interestingly, there are issues
and areas where political parties differ, but they do not squabble over the
kingship. Koirala's options on a ceremonial arrangement stand closed after
signing the peace agreement with the Maoists. Newspaper polls and opinion
surveys conducted in colleges and universities have indicated that the monarchy
is no longer a favored institution.
In a newspaper article last week, Pradeep Nepal (Nepal is also a surname), a
legislator from the mainstream left, advised King Gyanendra to abdicate
immediately so that he could stay in the country as a respectable citizen. The
alternative, he argued, would be a painful exile. This lawmaker's prescription
implied that the referendum on the monarchy his party, the UML, has been
advocating for some time has now been repudiated. Other leftwing parties have
already expressed their dislike about the idea of retaining the monarchy.
Ironically, Pradeep Nepal's opinion is shared by some senior officials working
for King Gyanendra's overstretched palace secretariat. From their standpoint,
the king and incumbent crown prince should abdicate, leaving the throne for
King Gyanendra's toddler grandson, Hridayandra. The prime minister of the day
can act as the regent until the prince attains the age of 18 years. This is the
only way to prevent a looming disaster.
King Gyanendra, who became king in the aftermath of a palace massacre that
claimed the life of King Birendra in June 2001, missed several opportunities to
gracefully govern his trouble-torn kingdom. With the help of the army he took
undemocratic steps to dismantle an elected apparatus twice - in 2002 and 2005.
Even the international community initially gave him the benefit of the doubt,
assuming that he possessed a blueprint to extricate the country from a bloody
Maoist insurgency that began in 1996.
In fact, he could have swiftly taken measures which would have earned him some
acceptability, like President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. But that
did not happen, and King Gyanendra himself is to be blamed for the lost
opportunity. Now even those politicians who agreed to become his loyal
ministers once have begun to publicly voice their resentment against the royal
regime. Agriculture Minister Keshar Bista's case is the latest example to prove
the point.
That Nepal has arrived at a crossroads is a fact. And the institution of the
monarchy has undoubtedly become more a liability than an asset to the people, a
majority of whom are illiterate and are compelled to live in abject poverty.
But a
