Caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has carefully cultivated the image of being an avid reader. It is possible that he read Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Neetishastra as a child growing up in Gaur. The later collection used to be required reading for most middleclass children in Tarai-Madhes up into the early seventies when introduction of New Education Policy made the study of traditional treatises unwelcome. Grappling with lessons in Panchayat became a necessary condition of completing School Leaving Certificate examinations.
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince was a little difficult to get hold of even in significant towns like Birgunj and Janakpur. Perhaps king’s commissioners governing administrative zones thought that reading books about political ideology would turn loyal subjects into scheming subversives. While Mao’s Red Book could be picked up from pavements everywhere and Soviet Cultural Centers freely distributed works of Marx and Lenin, the district administration carefully monitored availability of political science textbooks. Premier Nepal probably read Mao much before he became a Marxist. But that hardly matters.
Unlike bourgeois political theorists, all leftist ideologs have borrowed more from Kautilya and Machiavelli than from Bidur or Kant. About amorality in politics, there is little difference between ideas of Marx, Angels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao. All of them rely on Machiavelli for tips about realpolitik: Everything is fair in love and war; politics being both at the same time, ethics has no place in political maneuvers. Be it Machiavelli, Marx or Mao, every apostle of power politics have advocated that morality be redefined to suit exigencies of office. The UML leadership has just done that by persuading Maoist Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal to withdraw from the race to Baluwatar.
The failure of Premier Nepal is attributable more to his political schooling rather than to his personal traits. Reading Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao is not an appropriate way of preparing a politician for participation in any parliamentary democracy.
With continued indifference of UML in elections for the post of Prime Minister, it is likely that the caretaker tenure of Premier Nepal would continue until an indefinite period. He has already remained in office for over two months after resigning from the post. His transitory status implies that he can exercise authority without shouldering any responsibility. He has used such freedom to defame UNMIN and may not hesitate to saddle future governments with decisions that would be impossible to implement. Nepal made a record in parliamentary history by its inability to elect a prime minister even after multiple round of contests. The country is all set to create another dubious record: Having a caretaker head of the government for the longest period in any functioning democracy. That raises another question though: Is Nepal a functioning democracy?
SUBVERTED DEMOCRACY
Outcome of Constituent Assembly elections had consigned UML strongman Nepal to the dustbins of history—he had owned up responsibility for the poor performance, resigned from the party post, and gone into semi-retirement. Under pressure from various internal and external stakeholders in Nepal’s peace process, he was brought into the legislature for a technical task at the insistence of Dahal. Whether Dahal had been under pressure to rehabilitate Nepal or he was working of his own volition is not publicly known.
However, when the Maoist Prime Minister had to bow out of Baluwatar, Nepal emerged as his surprising successor. Girija Prasad Koirala had to endorse his candidature despite strong objections from Nepali Congress (NC) rank and file. The rest, as the saying goes, is a yearlong history of murky politics, impolitic diplomacy, degenerative governance and continuous uncertainty pushing Nepal toward the state of a failed state. It is difficult to be definitive about unfolding events, but Premier Nepal’s term of office would probably be recorded as one of the most disgraceful periods in the democratic history of Nepal.
It is easy to blame foreign interference for the state of affairs of the state in Nepal. Main actors in national politics must also own up at least part of the responsibility for the chaos in the country. Since Premier Nepal headed the government when optimism turned into desperation, his actions and intentions need to be minutely examined to learn lessons for the future.
Choice of Nepal to head a democratic government violated at least five democratic principles. When a government exits in a parliamentary system, the leadership usually passes to the main opposition. The UML had been a partner in the government that fell and was as responsible for all its acts of omission and commission as the Maoists. Secondly, parliamentary procedures may not specify it in explicit terms, but it is assumed that politicians that have failed to gain the confidence of the electorate refrain from claiming the leadership of the government.
Third, the rapport between the chief of the party and its parliamentary head has to be cordial to ensure smooth functioning of the government. Nepal had to resign under pressure from his own party rather than that of the opposition. Fourth, prime minister in a parliamentary system is the leader of the legislature and needs to make all attempts to maintain its primacy in politics. Premier Nepal showed an unprecedented antipathy towards the elected house and never even tried to establish a functioning relationship between the executive and the legislature. In fact, he packed the government with politicos who had failed to be elected and were inimical to the very idea of parliamentary supremacy.
Finally, any constitutionally formed government is merely a continuation of the previous one despite all their differences of approach. Nepal made it look as if his induction into office was a signal of regime change rather than replacement of one government by another. This assumption closed all possibilities of cooperation between the government and the opposition, which is vital for the healthy growth of any democracy.
Nepal is a sincere person with a relatively clean image. His commitments to democratic ideals are no less unwavering than anyone else in contemporary politics. Apparently, the failure of Premier Nepal is attributable more to his political schooling rather than to his personal traits. Reading Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao is not an appropriate way of preparing a politician for participation in any parliamentary democracy. Could that have been the reason CPM politburo once denied veteran communist leader Jyoti Basu the permission to head a coalition government in India after 1996 Lok Sabha elections, an act that late Basu termed “historic blunder”? It is not just the later day schemers, had Kautilya decided take the place of Chandragupta Maurya or Machiavelli become his own Prince, their fate would have been hardly any different.
Having democratized UML with extreme patience in the turbulent post-1990 years, Koirala knew that transforming Maoists into peaceful players of politics was not going to be easy. Even now, Dahal refuses to accept that he had been mainstreamed—meaning brought into the politics of peaceful competition—by late Koirala. Premier Nepal decided to take former insurgents head-on and lost his own acceptability in the process. The UML chairperson Jhalnath Khanal claims that the three-point deal with Maoists is not against any party. Perhaps he is right—it may be against every party if NC fails to respond to the crisis with foresight, urgency and maturity expected from the most experienced democratic force in Nepali politics. Participants at the NC convention should be grappling with this issue. Ultimately, it would be their responsibility to fight for democracy if and when necessary.
cklal@hotmail.com
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