 |
|
| Kathmandu, Tuesday February 18, 2003 Falgun 06, 2059. |
|
Common
Agenda for Nepal
By ANUP PAHARI
It is hard for any
living Nepalese to recall a more traumatic period for the nation or its citizens than the
unforgiving seven-year span unleashed by the internal war. With bruised psyches and
expectant hearts, weary Nepalese are transfixed on the prospects of peace. Will the peace
mature and bear fruit this time? Will it be aborted as once before? Are the principals
entering the peace process with honorable intensions? Where do the political parties fit
in the peace equation? What changes are in store for society and polity if and when a
negotiated peace is achieved?
Critical as they are,
these are questions wisely deferred for the time being for two reasons. First, only the
unfolding of the peace process itself can begin to fully answer them. Second, forcing
premature responses to these questions frames the issues wrongly by freezing analysis at
the level of what divides the principals and keeps them in destructive competition. The
proper prelude to negotiations is constructed by guiding the discussion towards
substantial areas of common concern and agreement, not by harping on differences.
War and the conduct of
hostilities have exposed and compounded divisions in Nepali society. But in perverse ways
the trauma and futility of Nepalese killing Nepalese has obliged all sides to question
issues, institutions and relationships that make up the core "Nepali experience"
in all its stark inadequacies. Over the past seven years the billigerents in Nepal have
nursed their share of doubts and queries and have had occasion to ponder the answers to
many of them. Out of this analysis of situation, self and "others" has emerged
something close to a Common Agenda for Nepal (CAN). CAN is defined as the bundle of core
issues regarding the present condition and future direction of the country over which
there is growing substantive agreement between warring principals, in spite, and in some
cases because of, the internal war.
By shifting the
spotlight from differences and self-interest to widely and deeply shared values, this
discussion about CAN urges the public and the principals in conflict to approach the
upcoming negotiations process with a fundamentally positive and pragmatic mindset.
Negotiations are ultimately about resolving differences, and this is not a call to sweep
them under the rug once again. It is, however, a call to not overestimate differences and
thereby underestimate the extent to which CAN represents genuine national consensus born
out of the hardships and disillusionment with internal war. Emergent consensus is not
something that parties involved in mortal struggle are typically attuned to, and often
requires outsiders to spell it out. It is in that spirit that this dialogue on CAN is
offered.
Territorial integrity
sovereignty of Nepal: All parties in conflict already agree extensively that there is
intrinsic and infinite value for them and for their constituencies in preserving the
territorial and political sovereignty of Nepal. There is also broad agreement that
continued instability and violence in Nepal increase the likelihood of external
intervention by regional and international interests. Finally, this consensus extends to a
realisation that the interest set of each principal is meaningfully and successfully
pursued only when Nepal continues to exist as a separate sovereign nation-state in South
Asia. In pre-conflict Nepal these would have been too obvious to deserve mention. In a
context where the key principals are groping to find common ground amid a sea of potential
disagreements, the once obvious becomes less obvious and bears reaffirmation.
Domestic peace: We used
to think of ourselves as peaceful people, and perhaps still do during moments of
uncontrolled idealism. Our forced collective suffering through seven years of death and
destruction has brought home harshly the emptiness and fragility in that self-conception.
The zone of peace has
now mutated into a singular zone of war. Suddenly the Nepalese have a mass yearning and
appreciation for real, not idealised, peace and what it means to live in a peaceful land.
Beneath mutual distrust and acrimonious public arguments, Monarchy, Maoists and political
parties share in that national yearning for a secure and tranquil Nepal. Like its effect
on the common Nepalese, war has worn out soldiers, rebels, leaders and bureaucrats alike.
Conflict is now the confirmed common enemy, and domestic peace is a value deeply shared by
the billigerents in acknowledged and unacknowledged ways. This is fertile ground to sow
peace.
Equity and social
justice: The farce of the "poor but happy people of Nepal" ran parallel with the
myth of the peace-loving Nepalese. Seven years worth of exposure to raw, infected social
wounds festering just beneath the veneer of accepted everyday life has disabused the
nation of such shallow and stagnant ideas about itself. Without condoning violent Maoist
means, the vast majority of Nepalese can now agree that the systematic skirting of social
justice concerns by successive regimes laid the foundation stone for the armed insurgency.
This seven-year education in the adverse results of neglecting social justice has helped
forge a national climate of deep empathy and resolve for doing the needful in the days to
come to remedy past wrongs. The consensus on social justice provides another solid base
for building and keeping peace.
Economic and human
development: The "other" war that Nepal is mired in — against poverty,
hunger, unemployment, illiteracy and disease — has lasted centuries and has exacted a
human toll well beyond anyone’s capacity to fathom. This gruesome internal war is
stalemated, but there is no confusion as to winner and loser in Nepal’s real
existential battle – by a wide margin Nepal is losing the war against poverty, human
suffering, and underdevelopment. The protracted conflict has exposed, and in many cases
exacerbated, vast regions of unattended and unaccomplished human and economic development
priorities. Solving the political crisis does not automatically help Nepal resolve such
chronic socio-economic underachievement. Maoists and non-Maoists alike can agree that
regardless of the outcome of today’s political and ideological battles, Nepalese will
have to start winning decisively, and soon, in the war for better livelihoods and living
conditions. This common commitment to progress for the Nepali masses offers another
reliable foundation for a negotiated settlement.
Good governance: Even
in the context of crisis-prone and shortsighted regimes of South Asia, the Nepali state
stands out for its abysmal record on enlightened public policy and good governance. The
democratic regimes since 1990 have differed from their autocratic predecessors, mainly
with respect to how power was acquired, and far less with respect to how power was
exercised. Thus, from the vantage of the common Nepalese with no access to power, all
manifestations of the state have been more or less equally heavy-handed, unresponsive,
ineffectual, and arbitrary. If nothing else, twelve years of misguided democracy and seven
years of wanton conflict have served to expose the full extent of political
self-indulgence and bad governance. There is emerging across the broad agreement that the
state is in need of far-reaching reforms, and that institutional provisions for competent
and responsive public policy making and good governance should constitute the core of such
proposed reforms.
Representative
democracy: At the moment Nepalese are in no mood for sermons on the virtues of democracy
given popular premonitions that the Nepali variant of democracy is what landed us in this
mess in the first place. But through collective despair over the derailment of democratic
ideals, Nepalese recognise that changes unleashed by the 1990 movement by way of mass
political participation and representation are irreversible. Indeed, the Maoist movement
itself was inconceivable in the absence of the open and democratic political environment
won through the 1990 movement. The monarchy and the Maoists – the two principals with
no innate affinity for democracy – have separately voiced their commitments to
representative democracy. Democracy is in the doldrums, but the Nepalese will not and have
not signaled that they favor a return to the era of political oligarchy and autocracy.
This is because there are no non-democratic ways to improve upon democracy. The only way
to reform democracy is through more, not less, democracy. Broadly, Nepalese still agree
that the only form of government that can be made truly accountable and one on which a
permanent peace can be pegged is representative democracy.
The inventory of shared
goals and common interests among the three power centres in Nepal – political
parties, monarchy and the Maoists — reveals that a very wide and deep consensual base
is already available on which to build a compromise over outstanding issues. It is not in
anyone’s interest for negotiations to begin on a base of illusions. But it is in the
interest of all Nepalese that principals enter into negotiations acknowledging the
sizeable and substantial consensus that already exists over fundamental issues.
Negotiations CAN succeed.
Other Stories
|
