For a country that has witnessed a saga of political instability and breakdown of democracy, a presidential system should obviously be the best choice. Disillusioned by the political instability during the parliamentary system after the restoration of democracy in 1990, there was general consensus among the elites, even among the Nepali Congress (NC) stalwarts, that we should adopt a system of direct election of the executive head to consolidate democracy.
But things have taken a different turn lately. The NC establishment, which doesn’t see its political future in the presidential system, must have been pleasantly surprised by the support and attention it has been receiving from a section of intelligentsia. Many have lately outlined the “perils” of presidentialism for an ethnically and ideologically divided country like Nepal and prescribed the same discredited system for “inclusion and consolidation of democracy”. Now we have a choice. The question is: Should we once again adopt the parliamentary system to avoid the “perils” of presidentialism? Not really, the perils seem to have been exaggerated.
FLAWED LOGIC
The hypothesis that presidential system often leads to regime crisis, originally presented by political scientist Juan Linz in 1990, did not stand the test of time and most of what he argued has already been dumped into the dustbin of history.
Following his logic, the parliamentarists in Nepal have argued that the most challenging part of presidentialism is the potential stalemate arising from the confrontation between the directly elected president and the fragmented multiparty legislature. Without a majority in the parliament, a directly elected president, so the argument goes, may not carry the legislative agenda of the executive, which may even lead to regime crisis. Given the political culture of Nepal, such a stalemate may even look imminent.
So, the parliamentary system, according to them, is safe because the prime minister holds a majority in the legislature, and will not face difficulty in endorsing the policies formulated by the executive. And here is the fault in the argument of the parliamentarists. They simply forget the fact that presidentialism could function in the fashion of parlaimentarism; coalition presidentialism has been the antidote to the potential stalemate arising from the coexistence of a presidential executive with a fragmented legislature.
In coalition presedentialism, the directly-elected president forms the government with the support of other parties; this, coupled with a provision of impeachment of the president, by, say, 60 percent or two-third of the national legislature, guarantees stability and check and balance: the parties in the fragmented Nepali polity are unlikely to garner such votes unless the president commits a serious offense. In fact, the coalition culture developed by the presidential systems in most of the African and post-Soviet states has already dealt a deathblow to the instability hypothesis.
An executive president cannot survive without acting like a prime minister, and he must cultivate a coalition to back his legislative agendas. The president can distribute ministerial portfolios among other parties and utilize various informal institutions to gain their support. That will shield the system from political stalemate. If this kind of presidentialism can function in other countries, why cannot it in Nepal?
Similarly, it is argued that presidentialism is not accommodative and when other political parties, say Madhesi outfits, don’t get a chance to participate in the government, they will immediately take to the streets, destabilizing the system. But Janajati and Madhesi activists should understand that coalitional presidentialism is as accommodative as parliamentarism.
After getting elected to the helm, a president must form a coalition to endorse its policies, leaving a fair share of his pie for other parties. The only difference being that the government will not be dissolved by horse trading or by the designs of foreign spymasters. Nor will our neighboring countries be burdened with dealing with multiple power centers to address their concerns.
The parliamentary system, on other hand, fails to honor popular mandate in a country like Nepal by making the third or the fourth largest party the kingmaker. This system has served well the interests of CPN-UML—that is less than half the size of the current largest party, the UCPN (Maoist)—which, post-2008, has already led the government twice and is currently plotting to bring down the current government.
The Nepali Congress (NC), the second largest party, on the other hand, is desperately waiting for its turn to lead the government. It is funny to witness an opportunistic anti-Maoist coalition effectively keeping the largest party out of power for so long. The people were condemned to be ruled by Madhav Kumar Nepal who was defeated by Maoist candidates from two constituencies in CA elections. It is absurd that we want to cling on to the same parliamentary system. Perhaps Hegel is right: the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
A close scrutiny of the arguments of the parliamentarists also reveals how selectively they pick the examples from around the world to undermine presidentialism. For example, the 1973 Chilean coup, according to their absurd logic, was the direct corollary of the inherent flaws of the presidential system, whereas the success of the same system in Venezuela, Columbia and Brazil of the same region is attributed to other factors.
Similarly, the functioning of democracy in India is attributed to parliamentary system, but the same logic is not extended to the US. The success of democracy in the US, they say, is the result of the “weak party system”, not presidentialism. As Professor Donald Horowitz of Duke University says: “Political success has, so to speak, many parents; political failure, only one: the presidency.”
Though there is consensus among political scientists that institutions matter, it is illogical to solely base analyses on the outcomes of specific institutional structures, ignoring other important variables—and that’s the main flaw in the argument of parlaimentarists. While finding faults with the presidential system, the parliamentarists seem to only talk about the pitfalls of democratic system in the Third World countries, irrespective of the political system.
If presidentialism has worked in other divided Third World countries it may work well in Nepal as well. In fact, the new democratic institutions to be transplanted in Nepal—federalism in particular—may not necessarily work and even lead to disorder. That’s another reason we need a strong center and powerful head of state to reign in the potential democratic chaos and anarchy, and consolidate the democratic institutions.
Commentators need not worry about inclusion (the catchword of Nepali politics) in presidentialism, for the system, as stated above, can be made to develop a coalition political culture. Nor should Kathmandu’s chattering class worry about the likelihood of a totalitarian state. The real backbone of bourgeois democracy, as Alexis de Tocqueville states in Democracy in America, is vibrant civil society and free press, and not the parliamentary system that was born in Europe after protracted negotiations between the monarchs and the nobles.
The writer is with Republica’s political bureau
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