Step back, look forward

Here is a suggestion to our political parties: step back from the moment of heat and look at the future with a view that you all must deliver to the Nepali people. None of the parties can take a wise decision amidst raging emotions, but decision they must take and that must be in the best interest of the nation.

What seems feasible, even right, in the short-run seldom suits the long-term interest.

It may be feasible to cobble a coalition keeping the Maoists outside the government but writing a constitution, federalizing the Nepali state, maintaining law and order, delivering goods and holding another election to transfer power to a new government will be an uphill task, if not impossible.

Likewise, it may help Maoists to give vent to their anger and excite the radicalized cadres for a momentary upsurge but the monotonous ranting by its leadership will take the party nowhere.

As the largest party in the Constituent Assembly and as a party that showed interest in leading the next government in less than 24 hours after its prime minister resigned, the onus of reaching out to other parties lies on the Maoists. Unfortunately, the manner of communication maintained by the party so far is of threat, blackmail and fear-mongering. That’s immoral and opportunistic. The party should immediately stop such indecency and make genuine efforts to reach out to other parties.

We have to confidently use our strategic location for our benefit, and do so without losing the trust of both our neighbors.

Simply because of its background, the party propaganda machine – however hard it tries – cannot hide its leadership’s autocratic ambitions and present it as an overarching narrative of upholding “civilian supremacy”.

Didn’t the Maoists abdicate peaceful politics and opt for bullets in 1996 because it thought unarmed citizenry cannot change the fate of the country? Who, after all, needs a lecture on civilian supremacy from the Maoists? Didn’t Maoist Chairman Puspha Kamal Dahal, according to his own confessions, live in India for eight years during the ten-year-long People’s War? Can we ask Maoists how that was possible without India’s support? And didn’t India facilitate the signing of the 12-point agreement? If Dahal resigned choosing not to “bow before the foreign lords” what has changed since then that he now wants to lead the government? Has India changed its stance? And if the leaders of other parties are “foreign stooges”, as Dahal has blamed, why is he again eager to share the cabinet with them?

Finally, Dahal’s interview published in the Indian newspaper Hindu’s Sunday edition provides a picture of his nationalist stand. In the interview, he says that he had requested New Delhi to send an envoy for talks on the increasingly tense standoff over the army chief. “I wanted to settle this issue through interaction and discussion with high-level officials from Delhi. But unfortunately, the ambassador informed me that this cannot happen now because the election campaign is going on, that nobody is there, that it is very difficult,” Hindu quotes the Prime Minister as saying.

Hindu also quotes him as saying that his government had no intention of concluding a new friendship treaty with China without holding discussions with Nepali political parties as well as New Delhi.

Unless you interpret that as “spoken in a different context and to a foreign audience”, how would you explain it Prime Minister?

Labeling fellow politicians as “foreign agents” and “traitors” is the lowest a politician can descend to—and remember that in a civilized society questioning someone’s patriotism is a crime and is considered morally off-limits. Maoist leadership cannot afford to lose its temperament and decency in public—political parties’ characters are tested during difficult times.

Sandwiched between the two giants, who are poised to become the world’s first- and third-largest economies in the world, Nepal has geopolitical limitations. Let’s accept that as a matter of fact. But let’s not make it a divisive issue at home and polarize the society as pro-India and pro-China. Such a polarization will be humiliating as well as self-defeating. We have to confidently use our strategic location for our benefit, and do so without losing the trust of both our neighbors. This cannot happen so long as we try to play one against the other or by deliberately tilting on one side.

Where do we go from here?

Like our geopolitical limitations, we have political limitations too. Neither the Maoist nor the other parties, polarized in two camps, can bail out this poor country during this difficult transitional period.

The leaders of the NC and UML admit in private that even if they manage to stitch a coalition without the Maoists, somewhere down the line Maoists will have to be brought onboard to write a constitution on time. Why then waste time now trying to forge an alternative, which is not going to work anyway and is so difficult to put together. So long as the Maoists disrupt the House, a government cannot be formed unless the president nominates a leader who he thinks commands a majority in the parliament. But that will be outright unconstitutional and another recipe for long-term conflict and hostility. The parties should knock on the president’s door only if the Maoists do not come to a compromise, refuse to relent on the issue of army chief, and disagree to form a consensus government. In other words: only if they try to create a deadlock and exploit it to their benefit.

If the Maoists show signs of flexibility, that opportunity should be seized for forming a consensus government, which will be a much better alternative to a majority government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal. Public mandate matters in democracy and even if Nepal is elected as the prime minister by the parliament, he will be haunted by his double-defeat of the past CA election.

ameet@myrepublica.com