The Khil Raj Regmi government came into existence with the one and only goal of holding new Constituent Assembly election. As such, all its efforts would be directed at clearing the hurdles for free and fair polls at the earliest possible date. Making decisions with long term implications for the country, the Big Four 11-point understanding clarifies, is out of the CJ-led government’s bounds. Or that is how it was made to appear. But the suspicion that there was more to the CJ’s appointment as the head of the new election government, over and above holding CA polls, is starting to come true. Soon after President Ram Baran Yadav gave his go ahead to the ordinance on clearing the legal and constitutional hurdles for the appointment of office bearers in vital constitutional bodies, the Big Four have started maneuvering to appoint their near and dear ones and those with checkered records to the coveted posts.
The High-level Political Mechanism formed to assist the functioning of the CJ-led government is all set to propose new commissioners for the Election Commission, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and the Public Service Commission (PSC). Functioning without office bearers for years, these bodies have been rendered virtually dysfunctional.
Thus, in the normal course of things, filling up the vacant posts would be highly desirable. But the question is: Why are the political parties trying to fill up constitutional bodies like CIAA and PSC in haste, at a time when there is no legislature to vet the proposed names, and when everyone’s sole focus should be the upcoming CA polls? The answer is clear: from their safe distance out of the government, they want to appoint vital office bearers to serve their vested interests. In this connection, most troubling is UCPN (Maoist)’s proposal of former Chief Secretary Lokman Singh Karki as the new CIAA chief commissioner.
In an unsettling irony, Karki has been proposed as the head of the same anti-graft body that once deemed him ‘unqualified to hold any public office in the future’ for his involvement in various corruption cases. His role in suppression of Jana Andolan II as the Chief Secretary in the authoritarian government of Gyanendra Shah in 2008 is also well documented. The only reason the Maoists could have proposed such a tainted figure to lead the country’s chief anti-graft body—and for the Madhesi parties’ swift and strong backing of the proposal—is that they want to protect the corrupt in their midst by packing the anti-graft body with their sympathizers.
In fact, even Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, who had initially resisted Karki’s proposed appointment, but eventually approved it, seem motivated by the same reason. If a person with questionable credentials is appointed the chief of the main anti-graft body, there is very little chance of any action being taken against NC and UML officials involved in questionable actions in the past. This kind of political collusion to protect the corrupt is a damning evidence of the lack of democratic credentials of the Big Four.
But more than that, pushing through such a controversial agenda could rob the moral legitimacy of the CJ-led government right at the start. If that happens and if the current government comes to be seen as no more than a ‘puppet’ of the Big Four, its credibility to hold free and fair CA polls would come into question. Surrounding the election government with such a shroud of suspicion behooves no democratic force.
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