-By Achyut Wagle
One of the influential leaders in the United CPN Maoist Party -- UCPN (M), Barsha Man Pun has recently alleged that present government has started to behave like a ‘political government.’ If that is the case, it is doing the right thing. The government must behave like a political than technical government, which can only solve political problems. It is irrelevant by now to keep hammering on the very nature of its structure just because a special kind of political equations that led to form this.
Once formed, it is the government of the country and it should function like a government, not as puppet show. Moreover, it is the government awarded with wider political legitimacy in the form of ‘first consensus government in years’. Every other petty detail automatically gets pushed to the background.
It is no longer a news, rather a foregone conclusion, that the polls are impossible, at least, until November. Of course, it would still be a grand success story if they could be held by the end of this year, 2013. The growing inaction of the government has redoubled the doubts that are already thick in the air as regards real possibility of holding elections.
No doubt, it was perhaps one of the greatest mistakes that Nepal’s political leaders made by choosing the incumbent Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Khil Raj Regmi, to head the election government. To add to the woes, leaders of the four political parties through the High-level Political Mechanism are trying to control the government. It must be mentioned here that any such mechanism doesn’t have a constitutional validation. Anything the Mechanism forwards can only be recommendatory, not mandatory for the government to adhere to. And if certain political parties are capable to continue to exert such pressure, how could the elections held by this government be free and fair?
This unnecessary practice has given rise to a double-fold nuisance. First, it has greatly affected the performance of the government. It sometimes appears as waiting for the ‘direction’ from the Mechanism and, sometimes tries to assert its own course of actions. The end result is: it has lost its direction and pace. Second, it has created a situation where for all the failures of the government, it can directly put blame on the Mechanism and for any success it can claim its own.
Therefore, the political leadership should now come out of the mindset of plying a guardian angel to the government. It is only way that this government can be made responsible to its national duties and accountable to political contract of holding the Constituent Assembly elections sooner. But this rationality doesn’t seem to have dawned upon the political top-hats of our country.
The world has taken well into account that these four political leaders jointly declared themselves incapable of leading this country. They doubted their own level of integrity such that heading an election government by one of them would not produce impartial poll results. This was what led the situation of Regmi becoming the head of the government, virtually out of the blue.
It looks rather clumsy on the part of same set of leaders to act as the true ‘drivers’ of the government. One of glaringly gauche example is the UCPN (M) Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal’s posture while departing for the ‘official’ tour of China and then to India in the second and the third week of April, respectively. He tried to portray himself as a virtual head of the government going for a state visit, particularly in his dealing with media at home. But it is now a public knowledge how these countries matched the protocol to this visit. Outcome of course is limited to him, if any at all. But these things don’t seem to have deterred our set of leaders feigning as grand saviours.
For this behaviour of our political leaders, Regmi and his cabinet colleagues have found more excuses, and, ironically, time to inaugurate painting exhibition, release some second-graded books or pose with gawky smiles in prize distribution ceremony of some primary school. The real business of governing the country is largely ignored.
The governance dysfunction was somewhat a foregone phenomenon as Regmi refused to resign from the post of Chief Justice to head the government. It was the message that he didn’t want to be fully responsible. His greed to go back to the old position, just for a few remaining months, after heading the government, speaks in volume how calculative he would be in taking decisions. This is undesirable on the part of the country’s chief executive. And, it must be corrected. He should govern, not dither.
Only remedy for all these ills, surfaced even in the day-to-day business of the government is to make this government entirely responsible for what it does and what it should do. It is in the interest of country and also, in the interest of the political parties concerned. Only when political parties step aside to give full space for the government to work, can they conduct a sort of performance audit on the government. Equally important, Regmi and his cabinet colleagues must be able to demonstrate their ability to govern, which so far seems unimpressive to say the least.
Putatively, holding the Constituent Assembly election is no doubt the cardinal of all responsibilities of this government. But, there are hundreds of other matters that have gone out of track and government can work to restore them in the interim. It will ultimately help to create a proper atmosphere for the polls.
It is perhaps right time to control organized crime, which is largely thought to be protected by the influential political leaders. These leaders now can’t have access to the official files of these goons and once the action is taken, these leaders, technically, will not be in position to defend them in public. This indeed will help decriminalize our politics in a great way.
Another important issue it can decide is: it can bring down the number of seats in the proposed Constituent Assembly, to a reasonable level of say, one hundred fifty to two hundred. This will be both popular and wise decision. But on the contrary, it is reported to be succumbing to the political pressure to increase it again to six hundred.
The donor community is surprised by lack-luster performance of this learned bunch in the government. The international community, for example, had asked to enlist the kind of support the government would seek from them for the new elections. But the government has even failed to coordinate a meeting of all these donors even in two months time, after it took charge.
Recently, a message was circulated that Nepal cannot hold the next summit of South Asian Regional Cooperation (SAARC) within 2013. Reason given is weird: there is no government in Nepal now. Is this government in position to react and say ‘we can’? The head of the government has not even thought it necessary to address the nation to give a sense where we are exactly heading. The list could be very long. But much needed guts is apparently lacking in every respect of the decision-making in the government.
Will this government without political will on the one hand and totally paralyzed by undue, frequent interference from the Political Mechanism on the other be able to hold Constituent Assembly elections by this year end? Doubts are high. And, only way to ensure that this government doesn’t shirk away from this responsibility is to make it look and act more like a true government than a club of volunteers.
For this, those political parties that think they obliged Regmi by choosing him to be the head of current government should stop interfering in the functioning of the government. And there is the role of the President, as a sole functional constitutional entity of the country, to remind this government to its duties and admonish when derailed. But, to repeat it again, this government must realize the fact that it is there to govern the country, not to appease any of the political masters. And it has true opportunity to choose than snooze.
