The Maoist sixth plenum has revealed that they are still in quandary in identifying the best feudal target: India, Nepali “establishment”, or both. And, there were the charges and counter-charges about the voting fraud and the distribution of the freshly printed crisp Rastra Bank notes.
Looking at the other side: OK, no one should dismiss lightly the briefcase breaking incident by the Maoists in the parliament. But, what is more interesting in this case is the swift response of the government: A photo-op media event and the declaration to relegate the broken briefcase piece as a museum piece. We all know in politics, symbolism and scoring political mileage are part of the game, and this briefcase incident is not an isolated event. But, sometimes these symbolic gestures and responses, when taken in a larger context, tell deeper stories about our ability or inability to make rational decisions.
Apart from the mostly ignored and uninvestigated but highly sensitive wiretapping and the passport scandals, what comes to minds for many of us is the Shaktikhor video incident. A similar swift press conference and a firm protest to UNMIN by the political leadership of the time --Girija P Koirala and his high level colleagues from coalition partners-- would have helped set the tone for everyone, including the Maoists.
We have forgotten that the three important elements required for any post-conflict rehabilitation effort are: Leadership, diplomacy, and institutions. On diplomacy, we trusted India and UNMIN to provide all the answers. But at the same time, our leaders began focusing on their personal political ambitions of power and politics rather than the larger public good of creating a platform for a healthy debate for formulating a new constitution and setting up the law and order condition. Diplomacy, as some would argue, quickly turned into a self-serving adventurism, and these “diplomats” began to be a part of the internal political chess games.
From the very beginning of the post-12-point agreement, the gap in the leadership quality had begun to emerge. It became fashionable for our leaders to frequently invoke Nelson Mandela, but they never bothered to understand the level of sacrifice and resoluteness one needs to be one. I would highly recommend that our political leaders watch a real life movie about Mandela – Invictus.
But what broke the camel’s back was the way we began approaching our institutional framework. With the leadership quality and diplomacy in disarray, the constitutional writing process began to look more like a profit maximizing industry for a select few than a long-term beacon of hope for millions of Nepalis.
We all know in politics, symbolism and scoring political mileage are part of the game, and this briefcase incident is not an isolated event. But, sometimes these symbolic gestures and responses, when taken in a larger context, tell deeper stories about our ability or inability to make rational decisions.
Major political parties began putting more focus and energy on how to manipulate power sharing mechanism in the interim constitution. Keeping things vague and open to multiple interpretations was adopted as a strategy instead of transparency and a firm procedural framework. With the loophole firmly in place, parties have no incentive to act otherwise.
For example, former PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal knows the benefit of being in the government for his own personal survival, and so he is fighting tooth and nail to the extent of going against their former refuge --India. Senior leader of Nepali Congress Ram Chandra Paudel has nothing to lose as long as he prevents UML’s top leader Jhalanath Khanal from coming to power. UML’s Mr Khanal seems more interested in keeping his option open on both sides of the aisle than giving PMship to Mr Paudel. Mild mannered and a poet, the Speaker of the House Mr Subas Nembang, on the other hand, cites constitutional constraints and sees no point in being a hero by terminating the “debate” and starting the election afresh even after witnessing the one-man election defeats, round after round . Why is this behavior? Because, the interim constitution was designed in collusion to benefit the party polity rather than to promote public good.
Advances in neuroscience have revealed that these decisions are driven by our own pleasure and reward system, and we are hardwired to act accordingly. This is why society needs a set of sensible institutional mechanism as checks and balances. There are only so many Mandelas in this world who can rise above and beyond. Most of us are incentive driven creatures. Just look at the 11,000 young Nepali students who have landed in the US just this past year for higher studies. Many of them are sons and daughters of our leaders and upper class society members. This is the unavoidable modern day reality, and we all have taken advantage of it. But, at the same time we are also capable of displaying a tremendous amount of social responsibility towards our society and the nation.
When we look at someone like Anuradha Koirala (recipient of the CNN Hero of 2010 award), it should give us hope, and there are many like her. We just need to nurture that by laying out the ground work, and this is where the political leadership should display their wisdom and courage for the collective benefit of the nation. So where do we go from here?
First, despite much faltering, we need to recognize the progress we have made so far. We have stopped a civil war, and the country has made a move towards republicanism. Simultaneously, massive grass-roots awareness has been unleashed on the Nepali political scene. The question is how to harness the new energy for a stable, united, and prosperous Nepal through various compromises and the give- and-take. What’s for sure is that we cannot look to outside for a solution and/or a course correction.
Perhaps the Speaker of the House and the President need to step up to the plate and remove the roadblock by proposing the following: Form a caretaker government by picking a group of honest and thoughtful individuals from the pool of former justices, high level former government officials, or even civil society members. A small group of these individuals should vow not to seek any public offices in the future.
The political parties should be instructed to focus on two things: 1) agree on a set of PLA numbers for integration and start the integration plan, and 2) speed up the constitution writing process with a careful debate on a sensible form of federalism structure. Other Parliamentary checks and balances are equally important to put in place to prevent frequent dissolution of governments (eg, constructive vote of confidence mechanism). Then, instead of taking a foolish approach of pitting one country against the other, the political planners should embark on the path to development strategies with a set of collaborative agreements with China and India. Regardless of our internal political differences, this should be our national strategy.
Importantly, we will gain very little by blaming each other: Media blaming the intellectuals; intellectuals blaming the politicians; and politicians blaming India, China, or UNMIN. As they say, Athens, the cradle of democracy some twenty five hundred years ago, ran out of villains to blame for its problems, and ended up killing the father of reasoning, inquiry, and opposition views –Socrates. In our case, we may lose the nation itself in more than one way.
Writer is Professor, Department of Economics, University of New Mexico
bohara@unm.edu
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