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| Kathmandu Tuesday April 09, 2002 Chaitra 27, 2058. |
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Grim anniversary
The people’s movement that brought
democracy back to this country is now twelve years old and there is little to celebrate.
The spring of l990 was a season of hope and optimism. Common people who battled the
Panchayat system in the streets of the capital and elsewhere heaved a sigh of relief that
a new chapter was opening in the history of this country. There was euphoria in the air
and it was infectious. But twelve years down the road that euphoria has vanished and in
its place is disillusionment, disaffection and disappointment. Democracy has turned out to
be not the panacea that people expected. Its flaws and faults have emerged in the harsh
light of reality. Not only that, the country now finds itself deeper and deeper in an ugly
and intractable bush war with the Maoist insurgents. The crisis the country faces is
arguably more serious than any time in living memory. Never before has the very integrity
of this country been threatened by developments from within. So where did it all go wrong?
There is the mistaken notion that democracy
is elections once every four or five years to choose the people’s representatives,
with the latter more or less left to their devices for the periods in between. Politicians
take to the hustings to win the people’s mandate for a fixed period of time and once
the elections are safely behind them, resort to all manner of irresponsibility, with scant
regard for the interests of those who elected them. The people’s mandate should be a
continuing process if there is to be greater accountability all round. That has been the
missing link. The way things now are, it is a government of the people, by an elected few,
largely for those few. The goal of the popular movement has been all but hijacked by the
greedy few who have subverted democracy to their own ends. Instead of delivering the goods
and good governance, the political big wigs have made democracy a perfunctory mechanism.
And it is this failure to deliver that has by and large fomented the Maoist uprising. What
they have delivered to the people are speeches, speeches and more speeches to the point
where the coinage of their discourse has become debased. What they have shown is that
their priorities are markedly different from that of the people, and that they will
readily resort to political chicanery to cling to power.
If there is one single lesson, then that the past twelve
years should have taught the people of this country, it is that politics is too important
to be left to the politicians and governance too important to be left to the government.
Civic duty does not end with the casting of the ballot when elections come around. They
have to learn that continuous pressure has to be brought to bear on the elected rulers to
keep them to the straight and narrow. That means the ability to lobby the corridors of
power and bring pressure to bear on the politicians whose decisions frequently affect
their lives in one way or another. These truths are beginning to dawn on sections of the
population and there is greater effort at concerted action that will wake up our political
bosses from their complacency. There is also much talk of local governance to bring power
as close down as possible to the grassroots. Legislation like the CIAA bill and the one on
impeachment are in the pipeline. No doubt there will be more incremental improvements to
come. But the point is that had there been greater awareness of all this back in l990, we
might not be feeling so let down now. |
