But his August 2 declaration that the key to Nepal’s state power lies elsewhere is deeply disturbing. As if to reinforce his message, he repeated on September 8 in Gorkha: “satta mero hatma chhaina” (‘state power is not in my hands’). One can’t resist asking: “So what are you the PM for? Who are you the pawn of?”
Considering the current state of politics, it would not be wrong to say that satta is solely in his hands. There are no legal authorities to question his moves: CA is long gone and, with it, opposition parties have lost their legitimacy; the country’s anti-graft body, CIAA, is without a head; and Supreme Court is fast running out of its judges. The president meanwhile is confused, not wanting to offend either the opposition or the government. In this situation, the only powerful person in the state is the PM. But that’s beside the point. What is important to understand is whether the PM is telling the truth, what such assertions mean for the country and its people, and what he should do.
The PM may have made the statement to win public sympathy and, thereby, to absolve his under-performance. It might also be a desperate last-gasp attempt to salvage some political capital. But such utterances prompt a legion of questions on the country’s sovereignty. If the key is elsewhere, who submitted the key to the outsiders? Did the PM know of its whereabouts before he assumed office, or is this a new discovery? Isn’t it up to him as PM to bring the key back? Who holds the key and what is his role in a country whose key lies elsewhere?
Given the southern block’s repeated meddling in Nepal’s internal affair and growing rift between the prime minister and the president, it is not hard to guess that the PM’s remarks were aimed at India and the president. But this hardly explains Bhattarai’s incompetence as prime minister. Granted, his hands are now tied. Granted, the president and the opposition are not cooperating. Granted, he cannot settle the peace and constitution issues all by himself. But what prevented him from exercising his authority for nine months before the CA was dissolved?
What stopped him from addressing the vital concerns of the people? What kept him from implementing his good governance programs? What kept him from maintaining rule of law? What kept him from helping farmers running short of fertilizers during plantation? What kept him and his party from accepting multiethnic identity-based 11 provinces on which all major parties had lent their support on May 15? If the ‘key holders’ contributed to all this, people deserve to know their profiles and maneuverings in detail.
The PM’s key metaphor has even graver implications. A key is meant to lock up a room. If the PM is without a key, he is more like a gatekeeper whose job is to watch over the locked room and make sure everything is fine. By extension, his job is to keep the place safe for the master, who could come to the room unannounced, open it, get in and take the valuables away without ever having to answer the gatekeeper. One wonders whether the PM acquired this master-slave mentality during his one year in power.
The PM must explain these remarks for the following reasons. One, during critical times, the head of government is expected to allay fears and doubts of the people. He is supposed to comfort them by arousing optimism. But the key (pun intended) statement has done the opposite: Hurting people’s self-esteem and fostering a sense of slave-master relationship between the supposed key holders and the sovereign people.
Two, even off-the-cuff remarks by a responsible person can have far-reaching consequences in national politics and economy. No one should be better aware of this than the PM. During his stint as finance minister in 2009, Bhattarai once made a harsh remark about Nepal’s share market. He called the stock exchange a gambling spot and its stakeholders gamblers. Nepal’s share market started its decline from the very next day. Business reporters tell this scribe this was one of the many reasons behind the prolonged downswing of Nepal’s share market.
Three, as a person of such strong academic background, he should know every claim should be backed by evidence, strong arguments and irrefutable logic. This holds equally true to the statements ‘key lies elsewhere,’ and ‘state power is not in my hands.’
Four, Bhattarai seems to have given continuity to the tradition of Nepal’s big leaders obfuscating facts. In recent history, Girija Prasad Koirala threw the card of “grand design” in the wake of the 2001 palace massacre. But he passed away without disclosing what the design was. The PM needs to break free of this culture. He must explain who served as impediments to maintaining rule of law and taking pro-people measures.
He must give complete profiles of actors—both domestic and foreign, both from the coalition and the opposition parties, if any—describing how they prevented him from addressing people’s concerns. Given the will, there are many ways to do so. He can speak of these shady characters in his memoir or disclose them through newspapers, like BP Koirala did, condemning Indian interference in Nepali politics, specifying the actors and their maneuverings in his autobiographical records.
This is urgent. If the PM tells the people who holds the key, how long it has been out of home, whether he alone is serving as the gatekeeper or his predecessors too were in it, and why he could not bring it back, may be one of his successors will dare to wrest the key from its current holder. If this sounds farfetched, people at least deserve to know who the country’s ‘enemies’ are.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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