Strengthening Democracy
PRIME Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, while addressing the Asia Society in
New York the other day, observed that democracy entails the spirit of freedom, rule of
law, independence, self-reliance and, above all, the will to achieve and keep them. He
further said that the nutrients of that spirit are still weak in Nepal, where the
challenges are compounded by poverty and illiteracy. Nepal is presently ten years into
multiparty democracy. Within this 10-year period, the Nepalese people and the political
parties have garnered valuable democratic experiences. More heartening to note is that all
the Nepalese are determined to gainfully utilise them to further strengthen the ideals and
practices of democracy in the country. Yet, along with the re-ushering in of democracy,
the expectations of the people have greatly heightened. One ready reason is that for
thirty long years they were not only being forfeit of their fundamental rights but also
held back from opportunities to enhance their socio-economic status. As such, now that
there is a government of the people, by the people and for the people in Nepal, it is but
natural for them to place higher expectations in democracy—which, as all know, is a
time-tested system endowed with the proven ability to fulfill the expectations of the
largest number of people.
However, for any people’s government of a cash-crunched,
resource-strapped and landlocked nation like Nepal, to translate their heightened hopes
into concrete fruits is a Herculean proposition and task. For, such a government is
invariably forced to juggle with the meager resources at hand to meet the yearly growing
expectations and hopes of the people. In addition to all this, the over three decades of
economic mismanagement has bequeathed the government with a moribund economy. In such an
unenviable situation, the government needs to rely on the goodwill and largesse of the
nation’s development partners to assist and expedite its development endeavours.
It’s not that the government is not in the know about the immediate and long-term
problems and challenges it needs to overcome to improve the people socio-economic status,
thereby sustaining the people’s faith in the new dispensation. The plethora of
economic policies, programmes to kick-start the economy and the slew of legislations to
attract foreign investments and protect the investors’ investments are there to prove
this. What it needs now is for its development partners to provide the nutrients so
necessary to strengthen the people’s democratic spirit by way of added investments in
the nation’s varied economic sectors. Premier Koirala’s observations should be
viewed in this light.
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