Recycled ordinance

The ruling Nepali Congress party, which never seems to be able to compose its internal differences while in power, has now apparently decided to terminate the ongoing session of parliament, a session that has been the least productive in the relatively short history of Nepalese democracy. The agreement came after a flurry of meetings the other day between the prime minister and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai at the latter’s Bhainsepati residence and among senior party leaders at the residence of another former prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba. Although the meetings could not make any progress over the vexed question of Girija Prasad Koirala’s resignation, they did project a semblance of unity. And there is nothing wrong with calling a halt to a parliamentary session when it is not getting anywhere. It’s perfectly democratic and well within the prerogative of the ruling party. Parliamentary sessions have been terminated and parliament itself dissolved for less solid reasons. If the opposition parties are hell bent on making a mockery of parliamentary democracy by bringing street level tactics into the halls of parliament for a month and more, there is little point in pretending that parliament is still functioning. However, intransigence on the part of the opposition over demands for Koirala’s resignation has been matched every bit of the way by Koirala’s own olympian disdain for the whole chorus of resignation calls. This obstinacy is now about to exact
a price in a manner not widely foreseen.

Stuck with an escalating Maoist guerrilla war that has just claimed the lives of 35 security personnel over one weekend and an armed police force ordinance which it cannot get through parliament because of the latter’s non-functioning, the Nepali Congress government has decided to keep the ordinance and the armed police force alive through a re-promulgation as soon as the current house session ends. This is a mockery of both parliament and democracy. People will naturally wonder what kind of democracy we have when parliament, its most supreme manifestation, has to be shunted aside just to get something important done. True, not everybody agrees on the need for an armed police force in view of the possibility of dialogue with the Maoists. But that is a different debate altogether. The question here is one of the continued relevance of parliament if parliament has to be gotten out of the way to enable an ordinance to be re-promulgated and recycled. It was in similar fashion that this ordinance along with another one on regional governors was brought in just days before the current winter session was to convene.

This is crass cynicism. Surely the people of Nepal who voted parliament into existence deserve better than that. Koirala and company should come out of the rut into which they have fallen and put the interests of the party above their own and that of the nation above those of the party. Koirala might be technically right in arguing that if he is to be forced out of office, it should be done constitutionally. But this is not the time to get bogged down in technical niceties. Far more important considerations are at stake.

The dying ordinances

By Basanta Lohani

Any ordinance when promulgated becomes as good as an act of law. This is clearly stipulated in article 72 of our Constitution. But for an ordinance to have perpetuity in the form of an act, it has to be ratified by parliament within "sixty days from the commencement of a session of both the Houses." Failure on this count means it shall ipso facto cease to be effective. And, it seems, this is precisely what is going to happen to not just one but two ordinances that the Koirala government got hastily promulgated on January 22, just two days before the government had the 19th session of parliament summoned on February 8. The ordinances are dying a natural death on April 9, because both the Houses are being continuously stalled by the opposition parties demanding the prime minister’s resignation for involvement in the corruption ridden Lauda deal.

This ordinance crisis is apparently the making of the government. Koirala’s obsessive attitude that once you have a majority in parliament you can bulldoze anything through has put him in crises one after another. And, he hasn’t learnt any lesson. His second obsession is that once the cabinet decides, no case of corruption can exist. This is equally wrong. This obsessive behaviour amidst his democratic lectures for public consumption has bred appalling contradictions. Thus, the result is an unending chain of crises not just for himself but where the nation too is increasingly dragged in. Like bureaucracy creating its own work, Koirala has been begetting his own crises for his crisis management team to work overtime.

The source of all this is his greed and also his willingness to sustain the greed of his family members. Lauda is just a case in point. The cabinet decision in this deal further reinforced his intention of sustaining greed by debunking the norms of governance and by strangulating the viability of the nation’s flag carrier. Likewise, his greed guided him to have the ordinances promulgated when the house was sure to meet after two weeks. His effort to have his way in bypassing parliament and still talk about it as if democracy meant nothing but ritual boomeranged this time because the Lauda deal. Though there is no law that debars a government from having the ordinance promulgated two days before the house was summoned, there is something called propriety while practising democracy. Koirala felt it convenient to ignore it because he was always happy to be confined only to democratic ritual for his model of ‘good governance.’

Under the first ordinance called ‘Armed Police Ordinance 2057 BS’, an additional inspector general of our regular police force was appointed as chief of the thus constituted armed force to contain the Maoists insurgency spreading almost right across the country. The second one described as ‘Local Administration (Forth Amendment) Ordinance 2057 BS’ empowered the government to create an intermediary administrative link between the centre and the district administrations so that coordination could be maintained primarily in law and order. Accordingly, the government has already appointed the regional administrators. On both these counts, it was a delayed decision on the part of the government by years. So delayed that it could have very well waited till the session due after two weeks.

The government knew long ago that a conventional police force not trained or even knowing the rudiments of guerrilla warfare was a hopeless match in combat situations. Likewise, in the euphoric mood after the restoration of democracy, the rulers scrapped the intermediary administrative layer called zonal commissioners with no thinking for the subsequent administrative void. So long as the euphoria lasted, the rulers and their rule looked good because their greed and filth were covered. Once people glimpsed the other face and the mismanagement born out of engulfing greed, the country gradually slipped into a chaotic situation corresponding with an increased level of violence.

Both these ordinances are the result of desperation rather than planning. Even in the state of desperation, greed trailed together with the government's fear of minority status in the upper house. Like putting every emerging conflict area under the essential services act, the government, lacking confidence in dialogue, has developed the habit of initiating bills as finance bills to avoid the upper house. This is clearly against the spirit and content of the constitution. The citizenship bill is a case in point, and it is in the rebound stage after the king sought the advice of the Supreme Court.

Sensing the spiralling effect of crisis if introduced as a finance bill and the ensuing greed, what the government decided was to bypass parliament in terms of forcing it into a ritualistic role. So the ordinances were promulgated. Had the government wanted to move through the front gate, there was enough time in the previous session itself. Besides, it had the session ended abruptly. The back door tactic has backfired after the opposition brought up the Lauda corruption deal missile. Thus both the houses are stalled by the opposition parties and the ordinances are not getting into the parliamentary proceedings. They are thus dying.

But what the government has already created through the ordinances and spent money to this end are not normally allowed to have a natural death like these ordinances because this would create insurmountable complications. Therefore, the government has to keep them alive even by artificial means. This means further violation of democratic propriety. For an insensitive government that has violated laws, rules and regulations for its convenience, breaching something known as parliamentary propriety is nothing. So the government could rule by decree. What this means is the government will continue getting promulgations issued one after another and getting the houses prorogued until the major players will be forced to agree to let it pass through the parliamentary requirements after brokering a compromise deal. Perhaps our leaders’ democratic model is Laloo Prasad’s Bihar where such things are, if not common, not rare either.

Ten plus two hazards

By Laxmi Sharma

Whether or not Kathmandu is prosperous for other things, it is certainly rich in boarding schools and 10 plus 2 colleges. Schools and colleges are sprouting everywhere. Every settlement has at least one plus 2 college, which upholds "academic prestige" for Kathmanduites. Shouldn't we consider ourselves lucky? We are living in a zone with perhaps the largest number of higher schools!

Let us proceed towards those products of plus 2 colleges, who
are just eggheads. The fashion of talking in tattered English in a peculiar accent, avoiding native language has created a unique class in the new collegescape. And moreover, students consider themselves misfit for the present time because they think they are too "scholarly". Coming to college with the attitude: " What you know, we know everything?", thinking that the word " respect" does not exist in the dictionary- these are some of the peculiarities we find among the plus 2 students. They live in the "I, me, myself" world.

This uniqueness is leading them towards stupidity, and definitely not to wisdom and creativity . Overconfidence is slowly but surely making them hypersmart and hypersensitive. But the question is: are they learning something? Do they rack their brains in class? Definitely not, because they are using teachers as their instruments, who are always spoon-feeding them by providing notes and imploring them to sit quietly and listening to the "readymade" lectures.

No need to mention how teachers are surviving amidst this new breed of students. Obviously, the teachers are in a pathetic condition. For them, problems ooze out one after another, during exams, too many copies for correction, check homework, give them notes and so on. It is indeed very challenging and calls for tons and tons of guts. In addition, they should possess the quality of " telepathy" so that they can act according to their so-called pupil’s whims and fancies. Those teachers must possess divine qualities, or else they could just perish under the burden of their work.

Teaching in plus 2 colleges means walking into a hornet’s nest. It is a thankless job with no appreciation or respect neither from the students nor from the management, not to mention the poor remuneration. Teachers, can you fight for your better existence? And parents, can you bring these oversmart teens to their senses?

Remembering Panchayat

By Pratyoush Onta

Today is 24 Chait, perhaps the most important anniversary day in the recent history of Nepal. On 24 Chait 2046 B.S., the Jana Andolan reached a stage from where it became impossible for the Partyless Panchayat System to continue its farce. That system, in the words of some contemporary observers, fell like a pack of cards. However, in retrospect, that description seems hurried as many of the stalwarts of that system have continued to dominate politics and social life in post-Jana Andolan Nepal in new guises.

Due to the inability of the present crop of our post-1990 political leaders, the Panchayati stars are even beginning to lecture to us about corruption, about governance, about poverty alleviation and associated subjects. It is as if they speak to us thinking that they were not involved in the sustenance of an anti-democratic system for almost 30 years in this country.

They speak to us as if those 30 years are unrelated to many of our present inabilities: our inability to institute mechanisms to monitor political corruption, our inability to build robust institutions in civil society, our inability to build large pro-democratic networks or for that matter our inability to make contributions to Lord Pashupatinath transparent! That an authoritarian regime that justified its rule on the basis of hukums from mathi did not give us the space to learn many of these skills over a course of time has indeed been conveniently overlooked. In fact the Panchayati stars speak to us as if we have forgotten the whole Panchayat era in total.

On the face of it, this seems true. It does seem like we forgot the Panchayat years too quickly. It seems as though we forgot how that system left us debilitated to the core. It seems as though we forgot how those who are giving us lectures from high pedestals of Nepali society sold their mind (often trained in some of the finest universities) and soul to serve a single master and a system that was at the same time ruthless and feudalistic.

But we have not forgotten. To celebrate the spirit of 24 Chait, I want to recall, in brief, the writings of people who can be described as the early philosophers of the Panchayat system. In the mid-1960s, King Mahendra was trying to consolidate the Panchayat system. Among those whom he recruited to elaborate the ‘philosophy of Panchayat’ were Mohammad Mohsin and Pashupati SJB Rana. Mohsin had just completed a doctoral degree in the social sciences from India and Rana had returned to Nepal after being a student in the UK. They promptly started writing in favour of the Panchayat system in English and became the two most important interpreters of the system to the world outside Nepal by 1970. Some of the articles they wrote first appeared in the magazine Nepalese Perspective. A few of them were subsequently published in a small book with the title Some Aspects of Panchayat System in Nepal in 1966 by the Department of Publicity of the then Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The book contains three articles by Dr Mohsin, five by Rana and one unattributed piece, perhaps written by both of them.

One of the first tasks of these Panchayat philosophers was to justify King Mahendra’s decision to dissolve B P Koirala’s government and with it the entire multi-party system. Mohsin and Rana had to tackle two aspects in their justification: first was to argue why the Royal coup was necessary and second was to argue how the Panchayat system was both democratic and suitable to Nepal. Mohsin went around the first task by talking about "the decade of disillusionment" in an essay that steeps with vitriol for the leaders of the various political parties of the 1950s and obvious praise for his political master.

He first characterized the 1950s as being the decade in which "the transformation from an autocratic feudal regime to a regime of so-called democratic liberty was so sudden and surprising that the people were psychologically unprepared for this." Commenting on the political leaders of the parties that had become active in the 1950s, he argued, "most of the leaders who were in the forefront of the 1951 uprising and who later formed the government had spent most of their time outside Nepal. They failed to have an objective grasp of the national situation. Besides, they were too ambitious and impatient."

Continuing his criticism of these leaders (while neglecting in total the various ways in which both King Tribhuvan and his son had failed to facilitate the fostering of a good environment for pro-multi party political action), Mohsin further wrote, "In their obsession with the textbook concept of liberal democracy they failed to give due consideration to the low level of literacy in the country, the absence of communication media, difficulties of transport, the evils of localism and traditionalism and the near absence of a sense of national identity." Mohsin added, "At the hands of many of these hare-brained politicians and demagogues, that this decade abounds with democracy was reduced to a mere catchword." Continuing in the same vein, he wrote, "These parties, in fact, converted the opportunity that the Monarchy had created for them of a democracy into unadulterated chaos."

Responding to the criticism that parliamentary democracy was not given a ‘fair trail’, he asked "Is it always necessary to taste poison to the very lees of a vessel to convince ourselves of its destructive potentiality?" Arguing that the Royal coup could not have waited longer, Mohsin asked rhetorically, "Would it not have been too dangerous as well as too long a period to wait for its anticipated outcome, particularly at a time when international situation was at a most unsatisfactory state?" Mohsin then went on to argue in another essay how the Panchayat was "a royal gift, a native plant" that "symbolises a grand, eloquent and moving partnership between King Mahendra and his countrymen for all-round national upliftment."

The discursive exercises through which Mohsin and Rana established Panchayat as a "true democracy" will be the subject of a subsequent essay. Suffice it to note at this point that to understand why Dr Mohammad Mohsin, chairman of the Upper House, wants King Birendra to assume a "more active role" in Nepali politics, one needs to read his writings when he was the Panchayat philosopher par excellence. Mohsin, in turn, needs to remember that while it seems like the Nepali people have forgotten the Panchayat, they really haven’t.