KATHMANDU - There are rising doubts in Nepal that the country will have a new
constitution by May 2010, and if it does, whether it will create a credible
basis to cement the country as a democratic republic, as provided by the
interim constitution enforced in early 2007.
The party of Maoists which leads the incumbent coalition government continues
to depict, by words and deeds, itself as a political force only capable of
offering a revolutionary package.
A striking instance of the Maoists' revolutionary zeal surfaced last week when
the government enacted three ordinances - two of
which pertained to fixing the reservation quotas for traditionally backward
tribes and castes, and those whose names figure in the list of disappeared
persons during the insurgency years (1996-2006).
While the subjects taken up for action are not in dispute, the procedure
adopted by Prime Minister Prachanda has attracted stiff opposition from the
majority of the parties and their leaders, who see the Maoist move as a
clear-cut case of evading the parliamentary process.
The 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA), elected last April, sits without
interruption for the purpose of writing the statute; the same body, when
required, can sit as a legislature any time of day or night.
But Maoist ministers and their colleagues in the CA found it expedient to end
the legislative session abruptly, on January 19, and about a week later took
the course of ordinance to embark on a plan of action to show that their party
has a progressive agenda. This rule by decree has made the Maoists unpopular as
it was precisely the method the then-king, Gyanendra, adopted for 15 months
after he staged a coup on February 1, 2005. He first lost power, then prestige,
and eventually the institution of the monarchy itself.
Even the speaker of the CA could not help but comment on the Maoist's style of
work. In an interview published in The Kathmandu Post on Monday, Subhas Nembang
recalled the unpopular royal measures and made this observation, "Now the
people in the movement [of April 2006] are in the government, it is their
responsibility to analyze whether they have utilized the provision for
ordinances in a proper manner."
Members of civil society, too, are agitated by the Maoist defiance, and have
urged President Ram Baran Yadav to use his discretion before giving the seal of
approval to these new ordinances.
The content of some of the ordinances is not free from controversy either. For
example, the ordinance for fixing reservation quotas for backward communities -
Madhesi people residing in the southern region, called Terai, and men and women
belonging to lower Hindu castes - have expressed anger and resentment.
Rajkumar Lekhi, leader of the native Thaaru community in Terai, told a radio
interviewer on Monday that his community would continue with its ongoing
agitation until the provision to lump them together with rest of the so-called
Madhesis is retracted. (Madhesis are recent Indian immigrants, mainly from
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh).
Bin Kumar Biswakarma, who belongs to the community of blacksmiths, says it is
ridiculous the way a "photocopy" of India's reservation policy is being applied
in Nepal.
"How can I, even if a Dalit, support a scheme which seeks to revitalize caste
hierarchy and institutionalize it?" countered Biswakarma, who is a budding
youth leader in the country's main democratic party, the Nepali Congress. Nepal
could at least avoid the negative consequences of the reservation policy
experienced in India. Other communities reject the entire idea of reservation,
as it pushes qualification, competence and merits to the sidelines. They
consider it anything but a progressive measure.
The bigger issue, however, is the task of writing a new constitution. Although
the speaker has successfully set up a dozen odd thematic committees to assist
the main drafter, the Constitutional Committee, there are subjects and areas
where clarity of principle and objective are needed. The foremost among them is
what kind of republic Nepal is to be: a democratic republic as has been
promised in the interim statute, or a "people's republic" as the governing
Maoists often demand.
The next question on the periphery is whether Nepal should have a presidential
system like that of the United States and France, or a parliamentary democracy
as in India and the United Kingdom.
"What is to be the game - boxing or chess?" asked Badri Bahadur Karki, a
constitutional lawyer. The rules of the game have to be framed accordingly. The
presidential system is believed to offer stability, whereas the parliamentary
model is known for its accountability. Nepal has limped along the latter line
for about six decades.
The roots of the growing public concern are Maoist statements which appear at
variance with the pledge they made in their election manifesto last year that
they had entered the world of competitive politics and had joined the
democratic process.
But once catapulted to power, the Maoists have changed their language. Public
speeches of top leaders, including Prachanda, indicate their loss of faith in
the parliamentary tradition. As they approach yet another anniversary since the
launch of the "People's War" on February 13, 1996, the Maoist leaders are
sending a message to the masses that they are using the government and the CA
as well as the street to "seize" the entire state apparatus as quickly as
possible.
This sounds incredible, but one has to be alert about Nepal, a "critically
weak" state by some assessments. Prachanda usually talks about his party's
ability to perform miracles. In a newspaper interview published on February 4,
he blamed the Nepali people for giving the Maoists only a fractured mandate.
"How can we bring about the hurricane they expect from us?", he asked in
frustration. Still, Prachanda said, the Maoist leadership was trying to move
ahead in a different way, hinting at the method applied to enact the three
ordinances.
Finance Minister Baburam Bhattarai and Prachanda's senior colleague, is behind
an apparent hair-raising plan to exacerbate the political uncertainty so that
the Maoists can seize the state amid chaos and confusion. Bhattarai's elaborate
scheme was printed in Nepali language daily Nayaa Patrikaa on January 30. Even
if the Maoists allowed the CA to draw up the draft of the statute, they are
unlikely to permit it to be democracy-oriented. "If it is written it will be
tuned to our wish or else not a single letter will be written [in the name of
the constitution]," Bhattarai said in the article.
To add fuel to the fire, leaders of a left party in the ruling coalition, the
Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), frequently make public utterances that if all
the left-leaning parties came together they would make up a two-thirds majority
in the assembly. To substantiate this, the Maoists made a gesture of supporting
former UML general secretary, Madhav Kumar Nepal, to receive a seat in the
assembly, despite the fact that he was badly defeated in the April polls last
year, not from one constituency but in two places.
Working in tandem, they made a mockery of the elections by further "electing"
him as the chairman of the main panel entrusted to work on the drafting of the
constitution. It is already a disappointment to the political parties with
democratic credentials. Whenever top Maoist leaders take questions from public
platforms about their model of republic, they escape through ambivalent
answers.
"We have seen 26 types of republic in the existing world, ours will be the 27th
variety," said Chandra Prakash Gajurel on February 3 in front of an audience
which included outgoing United Nations envoy Ian Martin.
Bhattarai's claim that confusion and chaos work to the advantage of the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) seems to be a meaningful statement. The
promise the Maoists made during the insurgency days for an ethnicity-based
federal structure has intensified tensions between communities.
Fatal onslaughts on media personnel and organizations using Maoist-affiliated
trade unions as well as Young Communist League members have effectively worked
to silence the critical voices. Prachanda's direct interference in the
appointment of priests at a Hindu temple added another dimension to the state
of confusion. More recently, a Maoist initiative reported in the media said
that a panel of astrologers was working on a new annual calendar for Nepal
which would have 11 months, instead of 12.
"The challenge in the midst of anarchy is a serious one," Surya Bahadur Thapa,
a former prime minister, told Asia Times Online, alluding to Maoist excesses.
In his opinion, political parties committed to liberal democracy needed to
develop alliances and partnerships with the Nepali Congress as it is the most
credible force with a nationwide reach. And despite his advanced age, leader
Girija Prasad Koirala alone has the charisma to attract a large crowd of
committed people who could offer a counterweight to the left-leaning force led
by Maoists.
One readymade alternative is to rely on assurances from India. Foreign Minister
Pranab Mukherjee on January 28 gave an interview to the al-Jazeera television
network in which he said India had "persuaded" the Nepali Maoists to give up
violence and participate in mainstream political activities. "They agreed,
listened to our advice and now ... they are leading the government." If they
indeed listened to New Delhi in the past, the Maoists might listen one more
time and agree to promulgate a democratic constitution once the draft is
finalized.
However, one section of the Maoists does not seem to have taken Mukherjee's
remarks kindly, as they have diluted, if not nullified altogether, the Maoist
claim that historical political change in Nepal was possible mainly because of
their armed struggle for over a decade that took the lives of about 15,000
people.
The Maoists have not issued any formal reaction to Mukherjee's statement, but
sources in the party rejected it outright. Besides, there is also a perception
that New Delhi is getting jittery over the Maoist initiatives to develop close
contacts with Beijing. Efforts began in late August with Prachanda's first
visit abroad as prime minister to China, during the closing ceremony of the
Beijing Summer Olympic Games. In between, several senior Maoist leaders and
ministers have frequented Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, among other mainland
cities.
Knowledgeable politicians who appear alarmed at China's increasing interest in
Nepal, largely due to Tibet, are of the view that India has to pay dearly for
its earlier follies. A widely-shared perception is that the Indians went out of
their way to assist the Maoists without anticipating that they could eventually
be a liability in view of the fact that Nepal's border with India is both
porous and unregulated.
Their fraternal relationship with Indian Maoists can add a dimension to the
challenge India is already confronting. New Delhi's excessive involvement was
bound to project India as the meddlesome South Asian neighbor. On December 13,
2008, the Economist newspaper noted, "As a neighbor, India is itself far from
ideal. It has a long history of meddling in other country's politics, including
Pakistan's. Nepal witnessed an embarrassing example of this in April, when
India had its paw-prints all over the country's first proper election in a
decade. Seeking to secure a pliable new government, its agents bribed and
divided the field; this almost certainly helped a party of Maoist guerrillas,
whom India disliked most, to a stunning victory."
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Dhruba Adhikary is a Kathmandu-based journalist.
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