Today Babauram Bhattarai completes three months in office. The period deserves a close scrutiny for two important reasons. One, Bhattarai had committed, the day he assumed office, that he would take no longer than three months to conclude the peace process and would deliver a draft constitution by November 30, which is now just two days away with the draft nowhere in sight. Besides, he has failed to deliver on good governance, austerity and relief package for the public, the promises which gained him widespread popularity. Two, in the three months he has had both the best and the worst of times.
Throughout November, Nepalis didn’t tire from singing his praise. Media at home and near abroad hailed him and wished him success. At home, some conferred on him the moniker of Bhimsen Thapa. He was compared to Bihar Chief minister Nitish Kumar. People across the political and ideological divides expected him to initiate vital reforms. The excess of expectations, however, was not the result of the burgeoning middle class failing to know him better, as some venture. Neither was it an outcome of the pliant media and naivety of Nepali intelligentsia. There were many reasons people had pinned such high hopes on him. He was an untainted, honest and intellectual leader (he may still be all three, even while people’s opinion of him has begun to change, mostly for the worse). When he assumed office he chose to ride the Nepal-assembled Mustang. Unlike his predecessors, he started going to office early and worked night and day. He announced a ‘package’ to alleviate people’s suffering. To doubt his intention, on the face of the overwhelming facts to the contrary, would be a sacrilege, we were told.
Bhattarai exuded exuberance, confidence and commitment. He spoke with authority and his statements were punchy. When he glided on the Kathmandu streets on board his Mustang, the passersby looked at him with awe: Here is the man that thinks for the people! Alas, we can now only be nostalgic about those times. At the end of his third month in office, things have changed drastically. People now see in him a helpless, powerless PM, a scheming politician, a master of doublespeak, a wolf in lamb’s skin, an unreliable intellectual and probably the worst prime minister in post-1990 Nepal. The same people who desperately wanted him as the PM are demanding that he go. This dramatic rise and fall reminds one of Thomas Hardy’s novels.
There are primarily two reasons for Bhattarai’s fall from grace: His petition for amnesty to murder convict Balkrishna Dhungel and his establishment of the biggest cabinet in Nepal’s history. Bhattarai continues to plead Dhungel’s innocence, despite the highest court of the land declaring Dhungel guilty. He has labeled cabinet expansion a compulsion of a coalition regime. He has a point. Indeed, the high proportion of Madeshi ministers in the cabinet could be the result of such compulsion. But his explanation that his cabinet is much smaller compared to Sher Bahadur Deuba’s in terms of percentage of lawmakers getting ministerial berths is hard to swallow. The 49-member cabinet is eight percent of the CA size. Bhattarai has indicated it could reach up to 60 because “it is international norm to have ten percent of parliamentarians” in the cabinet. This has further fueled people’s fury. Bhattarai was among the most vehement critics of the then Deuba government which had 18 percent of the parliamentarians in his 1996 cabinet.
Bhattarai fares no better when it comes to good governance. He is surrounded by ministers of dubious qualification and tainted pasts. Government secretaries have refused to take orders from the prime minister. We also have no reason not to believe our PM when he says his ministers are uncooperative. Some of the Madhesi ministers have indeed abused their power: Bijaya Gacchadhar’s untimely transfer of Leela Mani Paudyal, Forest and Soil Conservation Minister Mohammad Wakil Musalman’s acceptance of kickbacks for transfers of DFOs and “gold minister” Hridayesh Tripathy’s transfer of Krishna Acharya are just a few cases where the prime minister has had little or no say. These transfers, all questionable, cannot be justified in the name of good governance; if anything, it proves the contrary. Finance Minister and Maoist leader Barsha Man Pun’s transfer of finance ministry officials working to rein in VAT defaulters is an indication that his party too is a part of this grim business. Therefore, arguably, the re-categorization of ex-PLA combatants is his only saving grace.
These follies, no matter what their nature—circumstantial, self-induced, coalition compulsion or incompetence—have put Bhattarai’s political career in jeopardy. For long time to come, he will be remembered for his jumbo cabinet and his amnesty bid for Dhungel. For some of the same reasons Sher Bahadur Deuba is. Had it not been for the backlash against his jumbo cabinet, his institution of the pajero culture (1996), and his dissolution of the parliament (2002), Deuba would probably be the head of Nepali Congress now. These ghosts from the past continue to haunt Deuba, both inside his party and out. This, despite the fact that he was the only NC leader to win the CA polls from two constituencies under the most unfavorable political climate.
What common people see as a loss for the country might well represent a political victory for Bhattarai. But his fall from grace has been so unexpected that many people are still struggling to come to terms with it—some believe these are not Bhattarai’s fault, but part of a scheme of Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal to bring Bhattarai down. In the long run, Bhattarai may be able to mend his image; some politicians do mange to regain public trust. Like Maoist Chairman Dahal, who was not long ago considered a hardliner but has now come around to accepting the path of peace and constitution. He has also taken upon himself the noble goal of Lumbini’s development. But unlike Dahal, Bhattarai has paid with more than self image and personal career: His loss of public trust and social capital has been remarkable.
Perhaps for the first time in Nepal’s democratic history, people had seriously believed that someone could, finally, be able to ensure rule and law and to clean up the murky world of state institutions. They had believed that the right man had at long last found the right place. The Nepali society, usually untrusting of the politicians, had blindly trusted Bhattarai and had started to believe there can be honest men in politics. Bhattarai led them into believing that, this time, their expectations were real and their hopes genuine.
Bhattarai, deliberately or otherwise, has all but killed this hope. The consequences of this filicide may not be calculable. But it has delivered a cruel message; that no politician is good and honesty in politicians is only a façade. The huge section of the Nepali society who plumped for Bhattarai may now find it difficult to trust any politician. Perhaps this is Bhattarai’s biggest offence. Unless there is an O Henry twist in this narrative of frustration, salvation for Bhattarai looks unlikely.
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