NATIONAL 3 -(Spotlight Weekly)

Strange Bedfellows

A month after the 19th session of parliament was convened, there are few signs of an end to the legislative gridlock

By KESHAB POUDEL

Nepal's parliamentary experience is facing one of its most crucial tests as legislative proceedings are being stalled by an alliance of opposition parties whose aggressiveness is matched by the intransigence of the government.

It seems unusual, but this alliance -- comprising remnants of the former partyless Panchayat system and leaders who are still ideologically wedded to the principles of one-party rule -- are desperate to establish their own political conventions by continually hitting at the underlying tenets of the present multi-party system.

House of Representatives : Stalled !!

Moreover, the silence of key Congress leaders, including former prime ministers Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and Sher Bahadur Deuba, makes it look like the dissidents in the governing party are willing accomplices in the opposition's strategy.

Strangely, the task of defending the multiparty system appears to have fallen solely on the shoulders of the leader of the terai-based Nepal Sadbhavana Party, Gajendra Narayan Singh, who has been consistently describing the opposition's activities as wholly unconstitutional.

"If the opposition parties are indeed committed to the political process, they have no reason to hold parliament to ransom for such a long time," said a political analyst.

The alliance of four factions of communists -- the CPN-UML, Nepal Communist Party (Masal), Nepal Workers and Peasants Party and United People Forum -- and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party --dominated by former panchas -- seems to have become too strong for the government to break.

Despite repeated efforts to find a solution, the deadlock in the House of Representatives shows no sign of abating, with the opposition refusing to budge from their demand for the resignation of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.

Nepal is going through a very difficult transition from the partyless Panchayat regime to a parliamentary system of government under majority rule. The role of the opposition parties and the tendencies of a section of the ruling party show that Nepal is still unprepared to follow a political system that puts a high premium on rule of law and adherence to established conventions.

"We will not allow parliament to proceed until Prime Minister Koirala hands in his resignation," said Bharat Mohan Adhikary, chief-whip of the CPN-UML in the House of Representatives.

The Nepali Congress holds a comfortable majority in parliament, but that fact has not deterred the opposition. "If nobody is in a mood to abide by parliamentary procedures, there is no reason to continue with this system of governance," said senior advocate Mukunda Regmi.

As the opposition and ruling parties continue to lock horns, the system will ultimately become the greatest loser.

Similar To Nepalese Democracy

Although he made the following remarks on the current situation in Indonesia, Singapore's senior minister Lee Kuan Yew's observations are equally relevant to the Nepalese context. In an interview published in the February 26 issue of Newsweek magazine, the architect of modern Singapore said:

Indonesia is going through a very difficult transition from one-man rule by president Suharto to a form of government as yet unsettled. The media is open and free. Anything you can say is immediately published. The result is that army officers' reputations have been tarnished, former leaders have been damaged. And now attacks are going on against all leaders in the government and in the legislature. [Moreover,] the executive and legislature are boisterously uninhibited in their attacks on each other. It's a vast and complex country. There are demonstrations going on every other day. In the midst of all this, they are supposed to run a democratic government. How?