National 11 (Spotlight Weekly)

Leave Your Egos At The Door

By SACHETAK

"You have to simplify, not complicate. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," someone once said. The present state of affairs in the country needs analysis, no doubt. But it seems our politicians, intellectuals and journalists are trying their best to confuse the man on the street as much as possible with their "rich" vocabulary and their Catch-22 logic. Here is a simple analysis of what went wrong in the past 13 years of multiparty democracy.

Krishna Prasad Bhattarai's interim government deserves praise. He managed the turbulent political scenario and succeeded to bring a constitution acceptable to all the political power centers and conducted the election amicably without serious grumbling from any quarters. Then the spectre of nonsense (or is it the "grand design", in the words of Girija Prasad Koirala?) began to surface. The sitting prime minister, who was also the acting president of the Nepali Congress, was defeated in the first general election due to open active campaigning by his own party stalwarts led by Koirala himself. The second nonsense was the child-like fights and feuds between members of the triad of NC - Ganesh Man Singh, Bhattarai and Koirala, which totally confused and demoralized all active political workers of the largest party of the country.

The third nonsense was activated by none other than the then highest judiciary, the Supreme Court, when it overruled the politically sensible step of mid-term poll after the fall of nine-month-old UML government, which in turn resulted in prompting many young UML workers to become Maoists. The then mid-term poll would have changed the political course of the country. The fourth nonsense was the UML split under the "dynamic" leadership of Madhav Kumar Nepal, which blocked the possibility of a UML government four years back, which in turn may have resulted in a different political equation.

To come back to the Nepali Congress' performance in the last 13 years, most deplorable episode is the total confusion among party workers regarding the feud between three supreme party leaders. This resulted in vertical polarization and majority of the party workers, knowingly or unknowingly sided with the most corrupt leaders due to obvious reasons. Corruption became an essential factor for the survival of political parties and most of communist parties also seem to have silently accepted it as a minor hazard of multiparty system. The man on the street was totally frustrated with not only those political nonsense but also with continuous daily news and views about bad governance and corruption in high places. Nepalese press succeeded in brainwashing the whole society that there is absolutely no hope for the country and the society. No wonder Maoist leaders managed to "conquer" village after village with their politically emotional speeches, while NC and UML workers, intoxicated by cocktail of power, money and all kinds of shady deals, were confined to major cities busy in politicizing any damn issue on earth. Few honest and sincere party leaders and workers just went into oblivion.

The last straw, which eventually prompted the King to intervene, was the historical split of the largest democratic party of the country under the "dynamic" leadership of Koirala and subsequent political stunts displayed by political leaders who were competing with each other to convince the people as much as possible that the country is in a mess not because of their failed leadership. For the first time after the restoration of democracy, the people refused to believe those leaders and in the last few days of the Sher Bahadur Deuba government, all politically neutral people including many intellectuals were convinced that there must be some alternative way to come out of the political fiasco.

As the general public is helpless and obviously cannot do anything to teach those "dynamic" leaders of major political parties lessons to come out of highly intriguing political quagmire they have landed, obvious alternative is the intervention by the head of state, the King himself. The debate about the constitutional validity of the King's step and all those confusing and biased views by so-called constitutional experts have no meaning when the whole country is on fire, especially in the context of 10 different interpretations by 10 senior lawyers on few simple sentences of some articles of the constitution.

The King's message to major political parties is simple and clear- you could not manage the country, I will show you how to run the country. And the message from the man on the street to politicians is loud and clear: the most sensible thing for you is to cooperate with the Royal Palace and for the sake of nation and the society leave your ego at the door and first try to put down the fire in the house. We, the people, are ready to give you one more chance, but for the time being, try your best to help the fire brigade that is trying to extinguish the fire triggered by you during the past 13 years.