He has been termed the weakest and the most non-functional prime minister in recent memory. True. If it were not for energy minister Gokarna Bista’s sweeping reform initiatives in the energy sector, Khanal would not have a single thing to pride in. But it would be naïve to call him non-functional for he was very functional on a few counts. First, he doled out fund from the state coffers to his near and dear ones. Khanal is said to have allotted Rs 5 million to his party leaders and cadres over a period of five months. Doing so, he robbed the bankrupt nation, something reminiscent of the practices indulged in by the Ranas of the yore. Second, he administered oath of secrecy to new ministers on August 2. If he had to resign just in 13 days why did he have to ridicule himself like that? And third, he filled up the universities of the country with the flag bearers of his party as vice-chancellors and boasted of this “feat” in the parliament. These are some of the follies and offenses for which Khanal should be remembered in Nepali history.
These offenses and his complicities in them aside, it is also important to understand his plight. Thinking of Khanal’s predicament, I cannot help being sympathetic to him. For me, Khanal is an existential tragic hero of Franz Kafka’s stories. He could not continue being PM, he could not discontinue being one. He knew and did not know what he was PM for. He was literally imprisoned. Imagine an animal roped in neck with one end tied to one pole and other to another pole. And imagine a heap of fodder placed right in front of him. His temptation is to gobble the fodder. But he cannot move an inch without the mercy of masters holding the reins. And then there are some feral children giving him lashes now and again on his back. Whether he eats and how much depends largely on the masters. And if he is ever allowed to eat, it is on the approval and mercy of his masters and the feral kids.
Khanal was virtually in this situation. He had big tasks to accomplish but was chained by CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist) and was bludgeoned by the opposition (NC) from the back. In other words, he was never free. He was tethered more by his own party, which is clearly divided into two: Good and evil. I am tempted to recall William Golding’s Lord of the Flies where a bunch of boys is stranded on an island, then are divided into goodness and wickedness and where finally evil triumphs over good. UML seems to be enacting Golding’s fiction these days.
Now the urgent task for Khanal is to chastise Youth Association Nepal (YAN) and all those chums who support YAN’s criminality. YAN has already earned so much of defamation to UML. UML today has become synonymous to thuggery and goon culture. Khanal must disown this faction from UML even if that leads to a split in the party.
UML shelters both meek lambs and ravenous lions. Lion camp is straight forward. It tells the public what it is up to. Consider the admission of Mahesh Basnet. He openly admitted that his organization, Youth Association Nepal (YAN), is a group of dons. He leads the ravenous lions who, with their lolling tongues, are armed. The disclosure that they are armed with khukuris, knives, guns and can go to the extent of sweeping and “annihilating” all the opposing voices in and out of the party was made by Basnet himself in Biratnagar on August 13. If lions can openly threaten wives and children of the police officers, journalists and writers, they can be equally menacing to the lambs in the party. Khanal, as a representative of lambs, was forced to be a silent spectator of the rampage the lion camp ran in the party and across the country. Khanal’s own existence rested on the mercy of lions. His inability to tame them has to be seen in this light.
As a man victimized by the lions, he had to appease the lion faction in the forefront of which was a fox in his colleague’s skin, Dr KP Sharma Oli (I am not hyperbolizing, he had been awarded honorary PhD by one Greenford International University (GIU) in 2010, that was later proved to be fake). If Khanal pacified him, he would be turned down by Maoists. More importantly, there was a complete lack of support from UML even for the good deeds the ministers under him carried out. Everyone knows how Gokarna Bista is making reforms. But UML has never acknowledged him for he does not represent the lion camp. Under the circumstances in which Khanal was, anyone would be a successful failure. Now that he is gone we can only pray that whoever succeeds him will not have to face his fate.
At best, Khanal was helpless and the most unfortunate prime minister of the post-republic era. For his immediate predecessors, being prime minister would bring hosts of privileges including opportunities to travel round the world. I have lost the count of how many countries Madhav Kuamr Nepal and Pushpa Kamal Dahahl had flown to during their premiership. But in six months, Khanal got no opportunity to revel in foreign junkets except for one. He could not make state visits to even India and China. And in the entire six months, the only one visit that he could make was to Turkey in May. As a politician, he must have had this desire to make merry at the expense of taxpayers but no door to such opportunities was ever open for him.
However, Khanal need not be very unhappy, if he is, about his tenure. He has proved himself different from his immediate predecessor Nepal, who spent the first few months of his premiership in hilarity giving baby smiles and posing for photos in front of the cameras. Khanal looked serious during his tenure. Now that resignation has freed him, he must take up a few ventures to recompense the loss that he incurred to his self-image. As chairman of UML, he does not have to lead the peace process and consensus politics for he has failed already. Now the urgent task for him is to chastise Youth Association Nepal (YAN) and all those chums who support YAN’s criminality. YAN has already earned so much of defamation to UML. UML today has become synonymous to thuggery and goon culture. Khanal must disown this faction from UML even if that leads to a split in the party.
YAN has done great harm to UML and its well-meaning leaders like Gokarna Bista, Pradip Gyawali and others. They too are viewed as accomplices of crimes. Khanal may afford to ignore calls of Nepali media to decriminalize his party but he must heed to international community if he cares about the party’s international image. If he cares for how diplomatic missions are evaluating YAN’s excesses, he may well read the comments of US Ambassador Scot H Delisi in Republica (Aug 16). Time has come for Khanal and his aides to dispose the garbage from his party. Then he will be a hero to be applauded, not commiserated. It is never too late for action. Khanal may learn this lesson from his own aide Gokarna Bista.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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