Constitution deadlock 
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is in a bind. On one hand, pressure is building on his government to announce the date for local polls at the earliest. In a significant development, Nepali Congress, the biggest party in government, on Monday decided that the only way to break the constitutional logjam was to simultaneously pursue the twin agendas of constitution amendment and finalization of election-related bills so as to clear the way for local elections. There seems to be a growing realization in Congress party that the country must push ahead with local elections, even if it means putting the constitution amendment bill on hold. If that is the case, even CPN-UML, the second biggest party that has been obstructing the parliament for a month, will agree to let the house function again. But the prime minister also knows that any proposal to put the constitution amendment bill on hold could further alienate the Madheshi parties. So what should the prime minister do? No doubt he has a difficult choice. But it is not an impossible choice either. For the ultimate legitimacy of a democracy has to come from timely elections. 

We are not asking the prime minister to choose between the UML and Madheshi parties. Ideally, we would still like to see a broad political agreement on all important issues, including on federal demarcations. If this can be achieved, the route to elections will be opened in no time at all. But if such an agreement is not forthcoming, the country can’t be indefinitely held hostage to this inability of our political class to give the country a definite outlet. If some political issues simply cannot be resolved with dialogue, then in a democracy there is no alternative to going to the people with those issues for a fresh mandate. Even some senior Madheshi leaders admit to this in private. But they cannot say so openly because they fear that if they appear ‘soft’ on constitution amendment, then their space in Tarai-Madhesh could be usurped by extremist forces, whose appeal, anecdotal evidence suggests, is increasing. But one advantage of going into elections with all the present problems intact is that the Madheshi parties can, rightly or wrongly, pin all the blame on the main parties. 

It is important to start the electoral cycle because three sets of elections should be completed in the next 13 months. If not, there will be a serious constitutional crisis. So if our political parties want to safeguard all post-2006 achievements, they must start thinking about elections.  Our biggest fear is that these achievements might be in jeopardy if elections are not held on time. So as much as we would like to see immediate settlement of all contentious constitutional issues, if that is not possible, the next course of action must be to hold the three elections on time. We suspect that our political parties have failed to think of the grave consequences of discrediting of the new constitution.

Right now it is still possible to find solutions by staying within the constitutional bounds. We are afraid that might not be the case for long if precious time continues to be wasted. 

 
• pushpa kamal dahal
 
• nepali congress
 
• constitutional logjam
 
• editorial