Nepal: Preventing a Flare-Up
Nishchal N Pandey
Director, Centre for South Asian Studies, Kathmandu
e-mail: nina@ntc.net.np

Nepal has receded from the headlines since the holding of the Constituent Assembly elections in April 2008. The political situation has since changed for the worse and public euphoria has become subdued. Much of this is the result of the poor performance of mainstream parties with their antics of petty infighting. The cardinal mistake was to reduce the country’s first-ever Constituent Assembly into a hung parliament under normal circumstances. Unlike when India’s Constitution was being written, Nepal has had two governments already. The country’s third Prime Minister since 2006 is currently at the helm. Not a single government in Nepal in the last 60 years has completed a full term in office. Today’s crisis has come about after the parties gave importance to forming and dismantling of governments over the larger issues of constitution writing and restructuring of the state that are the two primary tasks of the Assembly. This would provide a basis to resolve the existing problems based on caste, class, region, religion and gender. The high hopes of the private sector that economic recovery would begin, forced donations would stop and there would be swift reconstruction of infrastructure too have been shattered due to this prolonged and messy transition.

In the meantime, more critical and worrisome issues have arisen centering around the induction of the Maoists People Liberation Army (PLA) into the national security forces and carving out federal structures on the basis of ethnicity. There is also statelessness in most areas of the Terai where multiple armed groups have been making their own demands. And worse of all, there is an acute energy crisis in Kathmandu with crippling 12 hour power blackout every day. People stepped into the new year 2010 with a nationwide bandh. For the common-man, the sober realities of the post republic transition, which is becoming increasingly protracted, have begun to sink in and general morale has declined considerably.

Maoist insurgency dominated our national agenda for a decade. Nepal declared them ‘terrorists’ and initiated a bloody counter-insurgency campaign which made no headway towards outright military victory. Arms and ammunition supplies to the Nepal Army were stalled and parties began negotiating with the Maoists in order to end the people’s war. Three years down the road, the very same parties, primarily the Nepali Congress and the UML, are at loggerheads with the Maoists, the latter having secured the most number of seats.  No one had predicted that there would be such a groundswell in favour of the Maoists. In fact, they comprise 1/3rd of the total seats which makes it imperative to secure their support to pass the new Constitution. Currently in the opposition bench, it is legitimate that they feel cornered and deceived. The irony of today’s Nepal is that every party feels that it is the ‘victim’ and every ethnic group regards itself as the ‘minority’.

The Interim Constitution uses the word ‘consensus’ 11 times. It says under Article 38 (1) that the cabinet shall be constituted by ‘political consensus’ and Article 57 says that the parliament shall conduct its business on ‘political consensus’. So much so, that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in November 2006 has been recognized as a ‘part of the Interim Constitution’. With six amendments already and the seventh one to be tabled soon, the Interim Constitution is entangled in its own web. Therefore, things began going wrong when the consensus based dialogue approach was discarded and the 90s repetition of forming and dismantling governments became the order of the day. This necessitated every party to be constantly preoccupied with the potentials and intentions of the other.

The new Constitution should be ready by the deadline of 28 May 2010, otherwise the country enters into a Constitutional abyss pushing the whole peace process into real danger. The breakdown of the existing order might start a proliferation of chaos in which the state may no longer be able to maintain control over the situation. Unfortunately, the parameters of stupidity are limitless in Nepali politics. Some leaders have now begun to further antagonize the Maoists by talking of mobilizing the army. CPA’s vague wordings as regards to PLA integration is further complicating the process.
Indo-Nepal relations stand yet again at the cross roads. Every political change in Nepal since 1950 has been the direct off-shoot of the deterioration of Indo-Nepal relations yet every new regime that comes up in Kathmandu has had difficulty accommodating Delhi’s genuine interests and concerns. The 12 point agreement is now being hotly contested with calls for its review from almost all major stakeholders. Madhesi leader Matrika Yadav even compared the Agreement with a ‘hanging rope’.

In this befuddled environment, the External Affairs Minister of India and the Chief of the Indian Army are scheduled to visit Kathmandu soon. They must understand that there exists a serious deficit of trust between the two countries and therefore must not have any misgivings in trying to bridge the gap by talking to all sections of the Nepali polity – left, right and centre.

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