Submit your Article

The federal government’s propensity to hide—or give incomplete information about—KP Oli’s health has everyone guessing about the continued fitness of their prime minister to lead the country. Perhaps for the first time, his health woes have also spawned a serious succession battle in the ruling Nepal Communist Party. If Oli is not fit, the first natural claimant to the PM’s post would be NCP co-chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal. In that case, he would also be the obvious choice as the new party chairman, at least until the next general convention. If only things were so straightforward though. 

Over a year and half since the formal unity of the CPN-UML and the CPN (Maoist Center) to form the NCP, the new party is still a divided house, the division running from the very top right down to the grassroots. Former UML rank and file are not ready to accept Dahal—with a legacy of a bloody insurgency behind him—as their leader, not the least because he seems minded to ditch the popular UML ‘people’s multi-party democracy’ line. They also fear that he could impose a top-down model, as he did in the former Maoist party, where he was the all-powerful ‘headquarter’. 

Ex-Maoist leaders in the NCP are just as adamant that the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between Oli and Dahal be honored. The agreement apparently stipulates that Oli will lead the government for half of its five-year term and Dahal for the rest. If not, Dahal will settle for the role of uncontested party chairman and will allow Oli to run the government for five years. But that too is a tricky proposition, again requiring some of Dahal’s fiercest critics in the party to come around. 

The NCP dispute is best resolved internally so that this government can serve out its full term. If the dispute gets out of control, all kinds of dicey actors could get involved, including monarchists and foreign hands. It is in the interest of the NCP to quickly settle Oli’s succession, both in the government and in the party. Perhaps the NCP senior brass is not foolish enough to let the left unity unravel and thus open up new political space for their rivals. Most Nepalis will hope so. If there is to be a change, let people endorse it in the next general election in 2022. It’s only just a touch over two years away now. 

After nearly 20 months in office, the two-third KP Oli government is widely seen as having failed to deliver on its electoral promise of ‘Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepalis’. People think the country has become less safe and more corrupt in this time. Top government officials have given a dismal account of themselves, both personally and in their roles as civil servants. Restrictions on free speech have increased too. On the other hand, the government is acknowledged as doing relatively better in foreign relations. But should we also start crediting it for its handling of the economy?

There have been some positive signs. Nepal this year leapfrogged 16 places, to 94th from last year’s 110th (among 194 countries), in the World Bank’s latest (ease of ) Doing Business Index. Last year, it had slipped five places. Potential investors around the world will hopefully take note. A week earlier, the same bank had forecast Nepal’s economy to grow by an average of 6.5 percent this year, behind only Bangladesh (7.2 percent) and India (6.9 percent) in South Asia. A growing service sector, reliable electricity, easier construction permits—all contribute to this better-than average growth.

But if things are fairly rosy, why is foreign investment at a historical low? Why are the country’s vital infrastructures still woeful? And what is contributing to the continued public gloom? One reason could be the high expectation with this government. The Oli government, perhaps unintentionally, gives off the vibe that its policies enrich only vested interests close to ruling parties. Moreover, the economic progress on paper, as reflected in the latest Doing Business Index, has yet to be realized. Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada recently pointed out how even noted businessmen were unaware of recent helpful regulatory reforms. This lays bare the lack of communication between the government and other private and foreign stakeholders.

The government may contend that its investments in vulnerable sections of the society like the poor and the elderly have gone largely unnoticed in the Kathmandu-centric media obsessed with hard numbers. Nor, as PM Oli repeatedly points out, is its laying of the ‘groundwork’ for an expected ‘economic take-off ’ readily apparent. Just wait a few more years, he reassures us. We wait with bated breath, comrade!

Krishna Bahadur Mahara. Mohammad Aftab Alam. Parvat Gurung. Over the past one month three federal lawmakers have been linked with grave crimes, from mass murder to attempted rape. Other lawmakers also routinely get into fishy stuff. Abuse of office and corruption are even more pervasive. What does all this say about the state of our politics? One obvious answer is that those in positions of power feel they can get away with literally anything in a country steeped in a culture of impunity.

Our lawmakers, after all, represent the society they inhabit. When nearly the whole bureaucracy and political leadership are corrupt, we cannot expect our lawmakers to be saints. Yet how could someone like Alam, with documented evidence of burning people alive against him, walk as a free man for over a decade? Even more egregiously, how was he elected to the federal parliament? An optimist might argue that justice, though late, has been done. Tell that to the families of his victims.

Even so, they are comparably lucky. The families of those who were killed or forcefully disappeared during the decade-long conflict have waited for justice for even longer. The former Maoist guerrillas have always argued that even the most heinous crimes from the conflict period should be treated as part of a political movement rather than as punishable offenses. The army is as averse to seriously investigating war-era crimes. By design, the two transitional justice bodies have been rendered toothless.

The rape and murder of Nirmala Panta is still unresolved, more than a year after the fact. The police then botched the Mahara rape investigation. How do people believe they live in a law-abiding society? There is now a widespread belief that our politicians and MPs have only gotten richer and more powerful after the advent of the federal democratic system; the police, meanwhile, are thoroughly corrupt.

The best way to clean up our parliament and political system is to set strict criteria on candidate selection for provincial and national elections. All those with criminal backgrounds should be strictly barred. But that is not enough. Along with this, there should be a hard cap on campaign financing. Our elections have gotten more and more expensive with time. It is now impossible for someone to contest a seat in the federal parliament without at least Rs 20 million.

It is said that democracy is an imperfect system, except that all other political systems are even more flawed. It is the responsibility of its supposed custodians to ensure they do not destroy it beyond repair.

The handling of the rape charge against the speaker of the federal house Krishna Bahadur Mahara has been appalling. First, the woman, the supposed rape victim, reportedly called the police emergency number ‘100’ to report the rape on the evening of September 29. She subsequently texted several high-ranking government officials informing them of the same. In addition, she gave a video interview to an online news portal where she details physical abuse she suffered at the hands of Mahara and shows his text messages, including one asking her to ‘forget about yesterday’ (referring to the night of the alleged rape.)

Apparently, fearful of filing a case against someone as powerful as Mahara, the police did not collect vital evidence from the woman’s residence immediately. They did so only a day later, after the Nepal Communist Party had asked Mahara to resign from his post of the speaker and an MP. This smacks of the subservience of the Nepali Police to their current political masters. The police, which is yet to recover from the Nirmala Panta-fiasco, blundered once again, but so did other supposedly responsible state organs.

One online news portal interviewed the concerned woman, blurring her face to hide her identity. But the blurring technique was so clumsy, her full face was clearly visible a number of times. Another online portal published her phone number. The Nepali media, and especially the headline-chasing online media, seems unaware of even basic norms of journalism.

The NCP, to its credit, asked Mahara to step down. But, curiously, a day later, the woman withdrew her accusation against Mahara. If her intent was to defame the speaker, she deserves to be punished. If she recanted because she was threatened, that too is a jail-worthy offense. The public also deserves to know if there was some kind of out-of-court settlement between the two parties. In any case, now that it has been established that Mahara, the holder of one of the country’s highest offices, had actually gone to the woman’s residence that night, drunk, that alone makes him unfit to hold any public office in the future.

People these days have so little faith in the state mechanism that even if the truth were reveled tomorrow, few may believe it. Yet that does not absolve the NCP, which voters have overwhelmingly trusted to run the country, of a moral responsibility of getting to the bottom of the incident and making the findings public. Relieving Mahara of his twin responsibilities is only a partial, temporary solution. More important is for people to believe that justice has been done, whoever may be culpable.