Is it possible for people to simply look on as top leaders like Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Sushil Koirala, Jhalanath Khanal and Bijay Kumar Gachchadhar are put behind bars? Can people completely lose faith in their once trusted leaders? Wednesday’s military coup in Egypt suggests anything is possible.
The forceful ouster of President Mohammad Morsi and house arrest of a number of Muslim Brotherhood members have pushed the land of Pharaohs into another political uncertainty. The move has ignited fresh conflict leading the country toward what New York Times columnist David Brooks recently described as “a bloated and dysfunctional super state controlled by a self-serving military elite.” What is unusual are the cheers with which the event has been greeted by the vast majority of people. [break]
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There are several factors at play behind Morsi’s end, but it is clear that the hope for prosperity turning into frustration and discontent had emboldened army officers to make the dramatic unconstitutional move. After the end of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egyptians had hoped his successor would rectify the wrongs of Mubarak era. Morsi’s administration dashed all such hopes. He was focused more on locking his cronies in power than fixing Egypt’s economy and cleaning up governance. Morsi delivered gas lines and electricity cuts while the rural and urban poor needed jobs and food. People felt that the new ruler had stolen their long sought chance to put Egypt on a democratic course with more equitable growth. Today, as Morsi has been confined to an army barrack, only his diehard supporters are calling for his immediate release and reinstatement. There are no exact parallels between Egypt and political developments here, but Nepal has also witnessed a couple of events in which public discontent emboldened rulers with dictatorial ambitions.
Take King Mahendra’s coup in 1960. A decade of democratic experiment had created such a situation that frequent government change, cronyism and corruption had become the norm. The rift within Nepali Congress was entrenched. Mahendra knew the iron was hot, and struck, imposing the coup. He accused NC of “attempting to dislocate and paralyze the administrative machinery, encouraging corrupt practices, encouraging anti-national elements, setting aside the interests of the country and [advancing] party interests” (Joshi and Rose, Democratic Innovations in Nepal, 384-85). So when Prime Minister BP Koirala was arrested from the open air theater of Kathmandu, people just looked on. There were no demonstrations.
King Gyanendra followed suit in 2002. He knew Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba would not be able to hold the proposed polls. He knew that the rivalry between Deuba and his party president Girija Prasad Koirala had weakened the party. Meanwhile, people had begun to see political parties and their leaders as incompetent. Public discontent was so high that they cared little if the king took over. It was with this calculation that he dissolved the Deuba government and took over the reins. Of course, the political parties opposed it. They took to the street to protest from the very next day. But people felt that the parties had had their comeuppance. Only when Gyanendra began to cross the red line by censoring press and restricting communication did people begin to sympathize with the parties. If this were not the case, Kathmandu would have turned against the king right from day one. Can similar things happen again?
Not likely, you might say. There is no potential dictator in sight, and unlike Egypt the country has no precedent of military rule. But this explanation cannot rule out the possibility of some form of dictatorship, cruel or benevolent. The level of people’s frustration and discontent is at its highest. A condition of statelessness prevails. From bus drivers to small grocery shopkeepers, water suppliers to gold entrepreneurs, are all cut corners to maximize profit. People’s trust in government authorities is eroding. Instead of dealing with an iron fist, the government gives these unscrupulous elements even more leeway. Water suppliers demand they be allowed to sell contaminated water, gold entrepreneurs to sell substandard jewelry, taxi drivers to extort passengers, dairy operators to sell poisoned milk, transport entrepreneurs to defy traffic rules and gas entrepreneurs for raise in commissions. But there is no punitive action against the rule breakers; instead the government gives in. As Pratik Pradhan has suggested in his Sunday Nagarik column, looters have hijacked the country. Politicians do nothing because such fraudsters are among their donors. Mere anarchy, to paraphrase Yeats, is being loosed upon the country.
An election date has been announced, but there is no guarantee it will take place on November 19. We have a government which the vast majority believes was installed by foreign powers. The common perception is that all our leaders are pawns to foreign masters. It is amidst such speculation that people begin to develop extreme hatred for politicians, look to untested authority to bail them out and long for the rise of a benevolent dictator. CPN-Maoist Vice-Chairman CP Gajurel was not joking when he suggested that his party will hold dialogue only with Nepal Army chief Gaurav Shumsher Rana. If anyone with reputation for patriotism and commitment to development and maintaining rule of law gets military backing, he or she can emerge as a dictator.
Politicians have reasons not to take such a possibility seriously. There is no potential dictator in horizon. Mahendra is no more, Gyanendra is gone, republic has been ushered in, and Nepal Army is under government control. But it would be a mistake to take things at face value. One does not need to possess special qualifications to emerge a dictator. Wasn’t Adolf Hitler the son of a family that “lived in a hut”? Wasn’t Hugo Chavez born to schoolteachers from a small village? Or king Mahendra the son of a titular head forced into virtual servitude under Rana rulers? What specific qualities did Gyandendra have to qualify as a dictator? And wasn’t Jung Bahadur a youth who had lost virtually everything after Bhimsen Thapa’s fall in 1837? Family lineage does not make one a dictator, times and circumstances do.
The next few months are going to be crucial in averting the possibility of dictatorship and resulting anarchy. Politicians need to work to give a semblance of credible governance and rule of law. Taking Mohan Baidya on board and going to the polls in November could be one way of doing this. If things get any worse, people themselves could rally against the politicians. Surely, those who promised a lot but delivered little will be the target of their wrath. And when a dictator emerges and locks up the politicians, people could just look on in disbelief, revel in schadenfreude, or even celebrate the politicians’ fall, as the majority of Egyptians are doing at Morsi’s fall.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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