--By Achyut Wagle

 

The political promise of meeting the one-year deadline to deliver a new constitution, from the date of the second Constituent Assembly (CA-II)elections already gets truncated at least by three months now, thanks to the internal as well as inter-party bickerings and time-killing tactics of senior leaders of the so called major political parties. Even after the CA-II elections, held on November 19th, 2013, the sense of urgency in writing the constitution doesn’t seem to have dawned on the so called senior leaders of three major parties, namely the Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist. Other fringe parties are no less irresponsible.

 

The CA-II election too has failed to instill any fresh air in the outlook and political functioning of these parties that are primarily marred by gerontocracy. The priority of first completing the constitution writingabove all odds is now overshadowed by the ‘ first capture the power’ games within and among the parties. The parties that performed better in the votes -- mainly NC and UML, are busy in devising their respective strategies to ensure lucrative seats in the state mechanism to each of their first-rung leaders. Balancing the weights within the party structure too has overtly engaged them. The leaders in the parties like UCPN-M that suffered humiliating setback are too engaged in passing on the blame of the defeat from one to another. For the parties like Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal (RPP-N), the newfound strength seems to have been something more than it can chew. The electorates by voting to RPP-N perhaps wanted to caution other parties that there still is a royalist force that exists, which they should not ignore. But, RPP-N has started to interpret it as the precursor to the revival of the abolished monarchy and reverting to the ‘Hindu Kingdom’ from the secular state.

 

The three-some game

Nepal now seems to be entangled in a multitude of three-way fights and wranglings. At ideological level, particularly after somewhat spectacular revival of the RPP-N, the political discourse sways among the right-wing royalists, left-wing Maoists and the centrist democratic forces. There are also three main streams of quests for federalism; on how the country should be federalized or the new provinces should be created; solely on the basis of the economic strength, on the basis of ethnic identity,  or the mixed of both.

 

Three main parties, NC, UML and UCPN-M are at the centre stage of power bargaining. UML wants the President by replacing Dr Ram Baran Yadav, UCPN-M eyes the chair of the House Speaker and NC as the largest party in the House vies for the Prime Ministership. Interestingly enough, each of these parties have three-way power struggles within.  NC’s senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba, party President Sushil Koirala and Vice-president Ram Chandra Poudel all three have ambitions to be the Prime Minister. They in fact have vested a lot of energy and time to consolidate own faction, there by weakening the party.  The UML’s trio -- Senior Leaders Madhav Kumar Nepal and KP Oli and party President Jhalanath Khanal are in no way different than the NC power mongers. But they have very tactfully moved the campaign of changing the President so that the posts of the President, party President and the Parliamentary Party Leader can be distributed among these three, to take their perennial squabbles to a rest of a sort. In addition to it, they need to placate former House Speaker Subash Nembang in a protocally suitable position.

 

The story in the UCPN-M is no different. Two Vice-chairmen of the Party, Baburam Bhattarai and Narayan Kaji Shrestha have cornered Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal to take moral responsibility of the electoral defeat of the party in the last CA polls. They have demanded for a ‘complete’ restructuring of the party and its ideological reorientation to suit to the multiparty competitive politics. The row was deepened once Dahal monopolized in nominating the CA members under the proportional representation (PR) system. Even in other fronts like that of Madhesh-based parties, the triangular fight is just akin to their big brothers. Mahanta Thakur, Upendra Yadav and Bijay Kumar Gachhadar lead many of the three mainstreams of Madhesh politics. The Rastriya Prajatantra Party of former Panchas is under joint leadership of not only three but four bigwigs -- Surya Bahadur Thapa, Lokendra Bahadur Chand, Pashupati Shumsher Rana and Prakash Chandra Lohani. The recent wrangling in it was equally intense party, and the cause none other than PR handpicks for 10 seats.

 

The newly emerged fourth force RPP-N is also divided among the factions of party President Kamal Thapa and royalist hardliner Tanka Dhakal. The rumour mill of Kathmandu was rife that the former King Gyanedra Shah had to intervene when the latter wanted to break the party alleging Thapa of monopolizing all PR CA member nominations. ‘We have just started to breathe after long suffocation, can’t you just wait for the party to gather more strength? After all, they all are our own people,’ Shah reportedly yelled on Dhakal when he had gone to complain Shah against Thapa. Dhakal has ever since drastically mellowed down.

 

All these details appear like unnecessary drama of Nepali politics, but they have significant bearing in our political course. One of the major reasons of delay in the political process to commence the CA business was caused by these intra-party power-sharing arrangements that took too long for the parties concerned to address them. The biggest bone of contention was on picking the cronies of each of these three leaders in these parties to the lucrative post of the CA membership under proportional representation. Therefore, the so called ideological differences in any party was nowhere evident and was apparently dominated by petty vested interests of the powerfuls. The constitutionalism, federalism or economic prosperity of the nation that was outlandishly pitched through recent manifestoes of the parties looked absolutely hollow in the face of utter absence of sense of responsibility in them to the issues of national priorities.

 

Impending Constitutional Crisis

The Nepali politics now navigates through a terrifying constitutional vacuum. The Interim Constitution of 2007 is virtually non-functional. What now guides the current course is a year-old political agreement that installed Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi as the head of the election government.  Now, CPN-UML is demanding that there should be election for the new President. But there is no constitutional clarity on whether the present President should be allowed to continue or new one should be elected.  In the current pace of work, the new constitution is unlikely to be written and promulgated within next nine months of stipulated deadline. But, there is no constitutionally defined course from that point on, after the tenure of a year of the CA-II expires. Of course, some solutions may be worked out in the name of political consensus to avoid the crisis. But repeated practice of this sort, devising rules after ball is in the post, is giving rise to unhealthy and distortionist politics. It doesn’t help the institutionalization of democracy and constitutionalism. This is prompting not to adhere what is already provisioned and agreed for there exists freedom to oblique it by new set of rules that are forcefully inserted as constitutional amendments.

 

The principle of separation of power, desirable in democratic polity is so heavily compromised. Regmi who now heads both the judiciary and executive branches is pushing everyone to helpless defense. This was evident when a number of petitions only moved at the pace Regmi wanted them to be. Recent example is a petition involving the President’s desire to summon the first meeting of the CA-II, which compelled the President to compromise to the wishes of Regmi, allowing latter to make the ultimate call. It is not difficult to surmise that Regmi harbours even higher political ambitions and limelight. His posture while inspecting the CA venue was intriguingly demeaning. He wanted to address the first meeting of the CA ‘to record his successful tenure as the head of the election government in the CA.’ Till the time of these lines were written, political parties had not yielded to this demand, but his efforts were on. His dreams of becoming the next President of the nation are now sold on the streets, that sans real buyers. As such, when he is sent back to his old responsibility of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it might just be the case that his jurisprudence might be reactive or vindictively proportionate to his feeling of trauma of shattered dreams. The onus lies entirely on him though and time is the best testimony to all these conjectures. But, we have spoilt both the judiciary and executive branches taking them too far from the democratic parlance. It will take years to bring them back on track even if all political forces worked sincerely to this cause.

 

The session of the legislative parliament has also begun from 26th of January, almost simultaneously of the CA session. But the focus still is more on searching for Prime Minister, President or the House Chair rather than completing the constitution writing process. The fighting among the parties is as ugly as before. The second CA doesn’t seem to be seconded with additional sense of responsibility and improved rationality among the 

political players.

 

(The writer is former editor of Aarthik Abhiyan National Daily.)