Parties in conflict

Almost all the major parties in Nepal are infested with internal conflicts to a degree that threatens their unity. MPRF is at the verge of an official split; NC faces deep internal resentments; and CPN-UML is riven with internal power struggles. Since political parties are also the vehicles of democracy, their instability automatically destabilizes democracy. Management of intra-party conflict is one of the major challenges of our democratic polity. There is hardly any party—big or small— that has not split in the past. NC, UML, RPP, Maoists, you name it, all of them have gone through the pain of party divisions. Some parties have split on the ground of ideological differences but many of them have faced divisions on trivial issues. For example, the communist parties have split over issues such as whether to refer to the Tamil movement in Sri Lanka as the expression of nationalist aspiration or a secessionist movement and how to evaluate the role Mao Tse-tung’s fourth wife, Jinag Quing, in China’s Cultural Revolution.



At the heart of these party divisions is the absence of a democratic culture and lack of professional skills and experience to manage the intra-party dynamism, a challenge that almost all the parties, with their relatively short experience, inevitably face. A democratic culture is, however, not just a question of whether there is democratic space within the parties for dissenting voices or whether the parties have mechanisms to settle such differences. It’s more about the maturity and civility with which differences are raised and resolved. Therein lies the role of good leadership. If the leadership is morally strong, has hold over the party organization, and has ideological clarity, it approaches such conflicts with confidence and chances are it will resolve them amicably.



But when the leadership is not strong, it often runs the party undemocratically, and tries to avoid facing the party rank and file. Such leaders, even when they slip into a minority within the party, are in self-denial mode and refuse to accept the reality. That’s what creates the problems most of the time. Leaders should be able to say what former British Prime Minister John Major once said when confronted by his party colleagues. Facing growing dissent within the Conservative party in 1993, Major challenged his party MPs to either “sack him or back him”. He was well aware that his challenge was a double-edged sword but was ready either to run or quit the government in dignity. And that’s what leadership is all about—you take the risks to uphold principles and ideals.

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