The owner of the most prominent lodging house is a Madhesi married to a Pahadi. Their former retainer runs the in-house eatery independently. Since Gaur doesn’t have a proper place to stay, aid agency supervisors, NGO executives, government officials and prominent politicos visiting Rautahat often base in Chapur and take day trips into surrounding areas. For their convenience, the guesthouse has air-conditioned rooms and generator-powered ceiling fans. The management discourages unwanted visitors and forbids drinking in rooms to maintain its respectability. Local activists often drop by to check whether anyone they know is in town.
Even though a Madhesi foot soldier of Maoists roundly defeated political heavyweight Madhav Kumar Nepal from this constituency, Chapur is still predominantly a settlement of Pahadi Bahuns and consequently an UML stronghold. When reports came in that Nepal under Premier Nepal dropped from 138th to 143rd in the Transparency International listing to acquire the dubious distinction of having the most corrupt government in South Asia, leftwing intellectuals and UML sympathizers greeted the news with a knowing grin tinged with embarrassment. A teacher remarked that the administration in the home district of the premier was perhaps the most corrupt in the country, if not in entire South Asia. Contrary to his relatively clean image in Kathmandu, party colleagues on home turf apparently do not hold the prime minister (PM) in very high esteem.
Chapur once elected Nepal but he chose to retain his Gaur seat. During Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, however, Nepal came once again to Chapur as Madhes Uprising had undermined his chances of being elected from Gaur. Unsure of his loyalty, his former constituents voted him out. Reportedly, Premier Nepal is now assiduously cultivating Madhesi upper caste voters of Gaur once again. To bolster chances of his political survival, the road between Chapur and Gaur is being widened and upgraded with Indian assistance.
It’s difficult for old UML cadres to denounce a party that they built from a scratch in an area once considered to be a Nepali Congress bastion. Publicly, they defend their party with panache. In private, however, they worry if UML is headed in the direction of becoming Nepali version of Communist Party of India under Shripat Amrit Dange that lost its credibility after becoming a mere apologist of the status quo during the dictatorial regime of Indira Gandhi. The breakaway faction CPI (M) ultimately emerged as the main force in electoral politics of communists as Naxals and Maoists took away all radicals.
Khadga Prasad Oli, the conspirator who decided the final wording of the three-point agreement that extended the life of CA by a year, knew very well what Sam Goldwin had said once: “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”
It’s not just UML and NC, even Madhes-based parties are fast losing ground as they fragment and make unsavory deals with the invisible ruling clique. Armed groups operating from across the border were filling the political vacuum, but the Indian administration has tightened the screw over them to shore up the image of shaky coalition in Kathmandu. Manipulators in the capital city probably think that the hoi polloi in the hinterland are unaware of their shenanigans. But people are watching and have begun to look toward Maoists as the later adroitly play the part of being innocent victims of Indian machinations.
CIRCULAR RACE
The anti-Maoist coalition is sure that anarchy will ensue if the present incumbent of Baluwatar is allowed to clear the premises. In affect, they are merely modifying a remark attributed to Louis XV: After Him, the deluge. The logic goes that the current premier is the last man standing between a tolerable disorder and a complete Maoist takeover of the state. With that kind of reasoning holding sway in UML and NC, it would be futile to expect the resignation of the PM anytime soon. In fact, the intelligentsia in Chapur is convinced that Nepal is not the kind of person to step down from a lucrative post.
NC insists that the numbers of combatants to be integrated in defence forces be fixed, Youth Communist League dissolved, ceased properties returned and peace process concluded before Maoists can be allowed into government. NC activists in Gaur laugh slyly at these preconditions. They are very considerate, these NC honchos. They are not demanding that Maoists eat only uncooked food, drink the water of Bagmati and practice sleeping under the tree to become a civilian party. A radio journalist in Gaur confided that even a NC-led government was unlikely. It seems those who pull Nepal’s strings are killing three political birds with one stone: Undermining Maoists and destroying NC even as they play one group in the UML against another to weaken it further.
When told that a standing committee meeting of UML had decided last week that the door toward the formation of a government of national consensus will be opened only after political understanding is reached on peace process and constitutional framework, a retired bureaucrat in Gaur added wryly, “They forgot to add a few more conditions. They should have said that a Maoist government could only be formed after poverty has been eliminated and global warming brought under control.” Blame the media, but political consciousness of small-town Nepal is sometimes sharper than that of the capital city.
In piling one after another conditionality, NC and UML forget that the electorate rejected their brand of ‘civilized politics’ with a convincing margin. Voters didn’t repose total faith in Maoists either, but their message that the parliamentary chicanery of yesteryears would not be tolerated was unmistakable. The NC and the UML know it. That could be the reason they have been so dismissive of the mandate of CA elections. They seem to be taunting voters in unison: “Look, you didn’t trust us. But did it matter?” Maoists are merely giving a cover of respectability to the PM by insisting that he resign. Khadga Prasad Oli, the conspirator who decided the final wording of the three-point agreement that extended the life of CA by a year, knew very well what Sam Goldwin had said once: “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”
Apologists of the reigning coalition—it’s not the ruling coalition by a long shot, nobody seems to know who is ruling Nepal anyway—insist that the premier need not resign on moral grounds. That’s a valid argument once again. Premier Nepal checked morality at the gate the moment he decided to abjure his assigned duty of drafting the new constitution. His nomination in the CA was conditional upon accepting the leadership of constitution drafting committee. Gentlemen’s agreement, however, don’t apply to present or past communists.
Stalemate is a mild word; the politics of the country is rotting in the cesspit of acrimony, suspicion and deceit as politicos say things that they don’t mean and people know that they are being misled. The mood in Rautahat gives a peep into the rising frustrations of the populace. Premier Nepal may be a master of deception, but the game has to end somewhere.
His old friends remember Premier Nepal as a studious and bookish ideologue of Marxism-Leninism. He needs to remember the warning of John Reed, “In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.” Options of Premier Nepal are decreasing as he becomes a burden for the country he is supposed to lead.
cklal@hotmail.com
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