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Dissipation and Renewal of Democracy in Nepal

-By Kailali (October 25)

So Sher Bahadur Deuba has just completed his second innings as Prime Minister. It seemed to be just as profligate and confusing as the first. Deuba’s first innings was panned for its Pajeros for politicians and pensions for parliamentarians, as well as an ostrich like disinclination to deal with the insurgency that was growing under his very nose. The second innings started with a knee jerk attempt to win political capital by redistributing other people’s property by fiat (land reform). It   was also marked by his sudden dissolution of the House of Representatives in May 2002, and his decision in July 2002 to neither extend the term of the elected local government bodies, nor give dates for elections for their replacement. It did his reputation little good that he was so willing to dissolve elected bodies at the central and local level, but was so unable to hold elections for the  reconstitution of these important institutions of representative government (as opposed to party government). It did appear that in his second innings Deuba would distinguish himself by facing down and finishing the insurgency that he had ignored during the first. But this effort gave way to indirection and indecision, and demoralization from the inconsistent and opportunistic approach to insurgency and the emergency that was taken by his political rivals. It is now apparent that by dissolving the local government bodies, Deuba had created a political vacuum that benefitted the insurgency. He thus made the classic error of giving additional political space to the insurgency, instead of taking it back from them. Deuba’s first premiership was brought down in parliament in 1996 by his Nepali Congress party rival Girija Prasad Koirala. This time he had already dissolved the House of Representatives. So Deuba was dismissed instead by the King on 4 October 2002.

Deuba  is reported to have said that “the King cannot remove me as per the Constitution” and “I cannot be removed constitutionally.” Then how could he be removed? It was not possible for parliament to remove him because he had already invoked Article 53.4 to ask the King to dissolve the House of Representatives on 22 May 2002. He would certainly have lost a vote of no confidence if he had faced the House. Having thus benefitted from his prerogative as Prime Minister to seek dissolution of the elected chamber under Article 53.4, he then failed to fulfil the other and related requirement and obligation under the same Article, to hold elections for a new House within six months of the dissolution of the previous one. For this reason alone, he should have offered to resign on moral grounds. Instead, he asked the King to invoke Article 127, and to push away fresh elections by 14 months beyond the time stipulated by the Constitution, and 20 months beyond the dissolution of the House of Representatives! It was a remarkable request. Suppose, after 14 months, he asked for  another postponement of elections? This would give a Catch 22 situation where Deuba felt he could only be dismissed by parliament, whose elected chamber he had dissolved, and which cannot reconvene in a timely manner as per the Constitution, because he keeps postponing general elections for ongoing reasons of security.

The basic weakness of Deuba’s position is that he tried to have his cake and eat it too. He cannot claim parliamentary legitimacy from an elected House of Representatives that was dissolved for his own political convenience ( he would have lost a vote of no confidence ), and the elections for whose replacement he kept postponing on grounds of inability. Thereafter his constitutional legitimacy lay in his role as a caretaker Prime Minister charged with holding elections within the six months period stipulated by Article 53.4. When he then went to the King to ask for a delay in the polls by a further 14 months, he lost his constitutional legitimacy as well. Deuba also lost his moral legitimacy as Prime Minister by failing to fulfil his constitutional obligation to hold timely elections under Article 53.4. It did not improve his moral position that he instead asked the King to invoke the unusual situation provision of Article 127 to retain him in office as seeming head of a coalition of political factions whose inability to work with him, and each other, was matched by their manifest reluctance to go to the people for a fresh mandate. It is hard to believe Deuba, and his friends turned foes turned friends again, when they charge that his dismissal by the King was neither constitutional nor democratic. They have themselves not been convincing in their practice of parliamentary democracy, or in their adherence to the letter and spirit of the 1990 Constitution. 

Where did Sher Bahadur Deuba go wrong? Perhaps his greatest mistake was in raising the ante, but then losing his nerve when his hand was called by political rivals far more experienced and crafty than himself. Having called the bluff of his party rival and political nemesis Girija Prasad Koirala by dissolving the House of Representatives, and raising the stakes by calling for general elections on 13 November 2002, he should have kept to his commitment (and public assurances)  to hold elections by the due date. But his nerves gave way when the Election Commission (after three long months of seeming indecision and much speculation in the Press and public) decided against him and gave the name and the symbol of the undivided Nepali Congress party to his arch  rival Girija Koirala. It was a provisional decision that seems to have confused everybody and convinced nobody. While the Election Commission thus fiddled away precious months, in a period of acute political crisis, Deuba’s enemies burnt away at the spirit of the Constitution, and continuity of parliamentary democracy, with a gamut of activities ranging from terrorism at the one extreme, to the politics of destabilization (of the Deuba Government) and delay (of general elections within the constitutionally required period ) at the other. When Deuba’s political nerve gave way, he lost all moral authority. Deuba has been like a bull in a china shop, smashing things whenever he moves. In hardly six months he has dissolved parliament, broken his party in two, dissolved elected local government bodies sine die, and is now calling on the political parties to protest against and oppose the King! It is not that Sher Bahadur Deuba does not have courage. It is that this is more like the courage of a bull that charges at the many red flags waved before it by skillful politicians like Girija Koirala, Madhav Nepal, and Surya Bahadur Thapa, who had united against him in the kaleidoscope of the so called ‘broad democratic alliance’. Their call, to which Deuba succumbed, to request the King to invoke the extraordinary provision of Article 127, to postpone the November 13 general elections, and to form another government of the parties, was the ultimate red flag that made him charge out of the bullring of constitutional responsibility! 

By this time the siren call of the Girija Koirala faction of the Nepali Congress, for the recall of the dissolved House of Representatives, had become as irrelevant as it was unsustainable. The House was dissolved on 22 May 2002 per Article 53.4 of the Constitution. The dissolution was ruled legal and constitutional by the Supreme Court. The dissolved House had lost constitutional and legal validity. The House was no more. It had ceased to be. It was dead. The siren call for its recall was an example of the politics of convenience that cared little for the Constitution and for the Supreme Court. To recall the dissolved House of Representatives would be to raise the dead!

This fascination with political necrophilia matches the position of the political parties that only a government constituted by them would be constitutional. In this the parties appear to have lost perspective on parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy, the people, and sovereignty. 

Sovereignty does not reside in the political parties. Sovereignty resides in the people, and in a parliamentary democracy it is exercised by the people through representatives elected to parliament through periodic, and free and fair elections. Political parties are the mechanism for the facilitation of this process of representation. The parties themselves are not the repositories of the sovereignty of the people. The political parties have no inherent right to government outside of parliament. Article 128 of the Constitution refers to “transitional provisions” for interim government at the time of  “the commencement of the Constitution” in 1990. It gives no inherent or exclusive rights to the “main political parties” to form interim governments, or to be consulted in their formation. The political parties lose credibility and legitimacy when they impede the holding of elections in the timely manner required by the Constitution. When the political parties throw the nation into a period of chronic political crisis, then it is for the King to protect and to preserve the Constitution, and to move the nation back on the track of  parliamentary democracy. When political forces within the parties and the insurgency cause the dissolution of parliament, and subsequent delay in holding elections within periods stipulated by the Constitution, then the King as a constitutional monarch may be said to have become the repository of the sovereignty of the people for the practical purpose of restoring it to parliament. The King is the symbol of the sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty resides in the people and is symbolized by the King who, as King-in-Parliament, may be said to symbolize the continuity of parliament, and of the Constitution and rule of law. It is ludicrous for the parties to say that only a government of the parties will be constitutional and democratic. The parties and their government have neither legitimacy nor credibility outside of parliament. Democracy is not government of the parties, by the parties, for the parties! It is about government of the people, by the people, for the people. 

The King was facing a vacuum in the parliamentary situation. The House of Representatives had been dissolved by Deuba as Prime Minister, but its replacement had become a problem due to the professed inability of the Deuba government as a caretaker to meet its constitutional obligation to hold timely elections. It was made worse by the desire of the political parties to form an all party government, and to delay elections beyond the period stipulated by the Constitution. Deuba and the parties had created an unusual situation that was extra-parliamentary and extra-constitutional!  The King was therefore correct and constitutional in invoking Articles 127 and 27 to dismiss the caretaker government of Sher Bahadur Deuba, as well as replacing it with an interim government charged with arranging elections to parliament and local government bodies as soon as feasible, and addressing the security situation related thereto. In its orientation to this task, and its success, will lie the constitutionality, legitimacy, and wisdom of this government. It might be best if this government is not a government of the parties, particularly of the major parties and their leaders.

It is these parties that squandered the mandate of the people as represented in the May 1999 parliament. It was a parliament in which the people gave the ruling Nepali Congress party a healthy majority of 113 out of 205 seats in the House of Representatives. But the Nepali Congress proved to be so riddled with factionalism that it rapidly became dysfunctional as the leading party. Its infighting produced three Prime Ministers in as many years. The Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), as the major opposition party, contributed to shortening the life of the 1999 parliament by a persistent exploitation of the internecine feuds in the ruling party, and by indulging in a series of extra-parliamentary measures such as boycotts of parliament, street demonstrations, and strikes and civil and economic closures like ‘bandhs’ and ‘hartals’. The Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), that some consider to be nationalist and royalist, showed no powerful signs of either characteristic. Its rationale seemed to be that its best chance to acquire power and office was through a coalition of parties, rather than by winning a  majority through the electoral process. The RPP joined the process of destabilizing the Deuba  government, and advocating a so-called ‘broad democratic alliance’ that was neither broad, nor democratic; it looked more like a marriage of convenience between hitherto unfaithful partners. 

There are so many questions to ask. Why has the country had eleven governments led by six separate Prime Ministers (many taking office two or three times) in the twelve years since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1990? How could a minority party produce two Prime Ministers when it had hardly 20 seats out of the 205 in the House of Representatives? Why have so many Prime Ministers sought the dissolution of parliament with such frequency? Why have two Prime Ministers of the leading Nepali Congress party been brought down thrice by their own party president? Why does the leading party show such a marked tendency to self destruct while in office? The parties need to reflect. For the parties to allege that the recent corrective action of the King is neither constitutional nor democratic is truly like the pot calling the kettle black! 

Despite all of this there is still widespread recognition that the future of Nepal lies with the twin pillars of parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. Political parties please note. It is not just parliamentary democracy but also constitutional monarchy. Note also that parliamentary democracy is not the democracy of plebiscites and referenda that is favored by demagogues and autocrats; nor is it the ‘democratic centralism’ of the discredited communist regimes of the former Soviet Union. Constitutional monarchy is the best guarantee that our parliamentary democracy will not deteriorate into something far worse. The political parties should be advised to do nothing that will discredit the monarchy or politicize the Army. These two institutions are coterminous with the creation of the Kingdom of Nepal in 1769 as a separate and sovereign nation; and as a Hindu Kingdom with an unique blend of Hinduism and Buddhism, and with a practical record of religious tolerance that surpasses that of ‘secular’ India.. The monarchy and the Royal Nepal Army symbolize that which made Nepal unique, and that kept it separate and sovereign from British India, and its successor Republic of India. Monarchy provides the mystique and emotional glue that binds fast this nation of many different ethnic and linguistic groups, castes and sub-castes. Without the monarchy this nation will become a state or states within India. There can be no Nepal as a separate and sovereign nation if there is no monarchy!

It is time to look to the future. It is time to move from the dissipation of parliamentary democracy to its renewal and revitalization. It is time to stop the name calling. It is time now to recognize the negatives and to learn from the positives. A good thing about the democratic experience since 1990 is that it has given all a chance to lose their innocence! The political parties would do well to follow the injunction of the Greek philosophers to ‘Know Thyself’. They would do well to learn and to recognize that it is their own cumulative behavior over the last twelve years that has posed the greatest challenge to parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The political parties have asked for too long what they can expect from the nation and the system, rather than what they can give! It would be wise of the political parties to realize that they have been given valuable time off with the timely action of the King in dismissing Deuba on 4 October 2002 and forming an interim government charged with holding the parliamentary and local government elections that he seemed to be so indecisive and reluctant to hold. The parties should take this time off to reflect, reform, regroup and reorganize. The parties must forget about the politics of the ‘kursi’ (chair) till at least the next general elections! They should not challenge the monarchy! It is not the Constitution that is the basic problem. The major problems lie within the parties themselves. When the time comes, and if they show positivism it will come sooner rather than later, the parties should Go To The People with the blessing of the King! That is the path of parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. That is what Nepal needs! 

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