Federalizing the country and determining a system of governance are perhaps the most challenging tasks for the CA but the political parties are yet to deal with the issues seriously. Delineation of federal provinces is a sensitive issue that needs to be dealt with maturity. The CA Committee on state restructuring is yet to begin discussions on the topic, though it has held over 90 meetings. Reason: The parties are yet to come up with their federal model. None other than the UCPN (Maoist) has presented its model at the CA committee on state restructuring, though the deadline set by the committee for the parties to present their federal models expired thrice.
While the parties are bashing the Maoists for basing their model on ethnic lines, they don’t bother to come up with their own.
Why this apathy? In the words of a Maoist leader, federalism is purely a Maoist agenda and other parties have just been dragged into it. While the parties are bashing the Maoists for basing their model on ethnic lines, they don’t bother to come up with their own. Without official views of the parties on the federal model, the discussions at the CA committee just ramble back and forth. The committee meeting, sadly, never sees the presence of top party leaders.
The condition of the CA committee on the system of governance is no better. Despite scores of meetings at the committee, the political parties are nowhere close to reaching a deal. The UCPN (Maoist) is for direct election of executive president, the Nepali Congress for Westminster model and the CPN-UML for direct election of prime minister. Likewise, each of the 25 political parties has its own model – some of them bizarre – regarding the future system of governance. The parties have also differed over the electoral system with the UCPN (Maoist) opting for multi-member constituency, NC for first-past-the-post and UML for mixed member proportional. Unable to iron out the differences, the CA committee has decided to hand over the task to the top party leaderships.
Of the 10 thematic committees at the CA, four are yet to submit their preliminary drafts and concept papers at the full CA meeting. And those which have already submitted their reports have left crucial issues, like the form of judicial system and official languages, unresolved.
Visit the CA secretariat and you will hardly find anyone who believes the country will get a new constitution on time. Now the condition has worsened to such an extent that when you say the constitution will be proclaimed on time, people presume that it is a joke.
What went amiss? Most importantly, the political parties failed to lay down the fundamental principles of the constitution. Sixteen months have passed since the CA election but the body is not yet sure what kind of constitution it is going to make. Is it going to make a communist constitution or a democratic one or something distinct from other constitutions of the world? Basic features of the constitution could have been agreed upon even before the CA election but some argued that doing so would infringe upon the jurisdiction of the CA. And it could have been done immediately after the CA elections but then the elites were yet to come out of the shock from the surprise win of the Maoist party in the elections.
By not forging fundamental features of the constitution, we screwed up things totally. We eulogized the constitution-making process of South Africa but did not understand that drafting the constitution was easier there because they had agreed on the principle features of the constitution in advance. Without such agreements in Nepal, the debates and discussions at the CA have gone astray.
On top of that, the constitution-writing process in Nepal is more difficult as we are federalizing the country and the major political parties here stand on the extreme right and extreme left of the political spectrum.
“The constitution will be promulgated on time as the leaders of our country have the abilities to diffuse crisis,” said one of the CA secretariat officials. Of course, he was not joking and our leaders may even have extraordinary abilities to handle crisis but he just overlooked the point that turning a unitary state into federal and forging consensus among the political parties that have opposite ideologies cannot be done overnight.
The parties had joined hands in the past because they had a common enemy– the monarchy. Without such an enemy now, the enmity between the UCPN (Maoist) and the Nepali Congress – which represent extreme left and extreme right forces – is growing by the day. Moreover, it is not only a matter of political parties; new forces and new groups, capable of paralyzing the nation through strikes, are emerging and becoming dominant in Nepali politics lately.
The political scenario is totally different now. The world has stopped “saluting Nepali people” for breaking the chain of tyranny and is alarmed at what’s happening with the peace process. Soon, everything will be in a shambles if our leaders continue bickering over power.
A few months back, a leader, who is a CA member himself, told a television news channel that he did not believe the CA can ever write a new constitution. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray that he will be proven wrong. Is there anything more that we can do?
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