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Kathmandu,Tuesday March 21, 2000 Chaitra 08, 2056.
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Form cabinet with care
After the first ever election of the Nepali
Congress parliamentary party leader through the democratic process of voting in the ruling
party, public attention is now centred on the quality of the cabinet that the new Prime
Minister Girija Prasad Koirala will come with after his appointment. Obviously, Koirala
has already begun discussing the formation of the new Council of Ministers with his
colleagues and advisors. Reportedly, he has also talked about the possibility of
implementing the recommendations of a 1992 administrative reforms commission (ARC) that
calls for a smaller cabinet size.
Clearly, the country will have an efficient cabinet
if Koirala can really demonstrate the boldness that is required of him to implement the
ARC’s recommendations which had come up when he himself was at the helm of affairs
eight years ago. If the ARC recommendations are followed, the number of ministries will
have to be reduced to eighteen. With this, the cabinet size—which covers 27 separate
ministries at present-- will be drastically reduced.
Unfortunately, Koirala is bound to face a tough
challenge maintaining the fragile political equation within his own party. As such, there
are ample chances that he will be tempted to include as many heads as possible to keep his
position safe. After all, the parliamentary party vote has indeed proved that the minority
faction represented by Sher Bahadur Deuba is not at all that irrelevant as to be ignored.
While such is the case on the one hand, then on the
other, even if Koirala reduces the size of the government, the true quality of the new
cabinet cannot be established unless he inducts efficient and
clean figures in the new Council of Ministers. However, such an eventuality is less likely
because Koirala is very much glued or beholden to a number of tainted figures who surround
him. It is therefore unlikely that Koirala can hope to give a truly efficient cabinet just
by reducing the cabinet size. The most prominent question relates to the intellectual,
administrative and leadership qualities of the persons he chooses for handling different
portfolios. Equally important is their political and moral integrity.
Thus it can be fairly argued that, unless Koirala
demonstrates political prudence by avoiding the tainted faces in the cabinet, he can
hardly hope to keep his promise of eradicating widespread corruption, improving the
deteriorating law and order situation and establishing the ever elusive good governance.
If he succeeds in giving us such a cabinet, we can expect the Koirala administration to
perform and work towards bettering the conditions prevailing in the country. If not, he
will have sacrificed his own long term interests as well as the country’s interests
for the sake of short term political expediency. The faces he inducts into the cabinet
will tell us what to expect.
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