Governance In Nepal: Problems of ‘Democratizing’ Democracy

Dr. Lok Raj Baral, TU

"Good Governance" is a pet theme in today’s political discourse. Obstacles to such governance are broadly termed as "problems" that span a wide variety of constituencies and individuals who matter in either providing good or bad governance. Who actually gives good governance is also increasingly becoming a subject of interest to us because the criteria accepted for governance are of general and idealistic nature and can hardly be operationalized in the normative sense. It has been said that any good governance should be endowed with certain underpinnings such as accountability, transparency, work procedures based on law, highly institutionalized structures and behavior. In a resource-crunch country like Nepal, "controlling corruption and improving administration" have to be taken as qualities of good governance. In spite of being theoretical and universal, they need to be imbedded to the political process that aims at upgrading the content and style of governance. Many of the elements are, however, system-specific as only in a liberal democratic system, the issues of accountability, transparency, and rules of law, if not efficacy can come within the ambit of good governance.

Efficiency is a generic word that is evident in both authoritarian and democratic governance depending on the commitment and vision of political decision-makers. Authoritarian regimes are not naturally endowed with quality of efficiency, nor do democracies always prove to be worthless. Motivation, commitment, sincerity and confidence of hardcore leaders of both regimes and rulers. Such regimes are not based on process or norms, but most decision taken by them become ad hoc and interventionist in nature in order to respond to the immediate problems or crisis. Hence the durability of such regimes is vulnerable even to the smallest pretext as was observed in many South Asian authoritarian regimes including Nepal. Democracy, on the contrary, has better life span and scope for improvement as it fails to survive if it is not resilient to exigencies of time and context.

Thus, if the regime-type constitutes one of the broadly accepted indicators of good governance, the functional domains of such "democratic" regimes straddle the entire substance and mechanism of governance. Theoretical discourse without being accompanied by the guiding spirit of the polity based on minimum political consensus would not be able to take us to a logical conclusion about the nature, intensity and scope of good governance. What ails Nepali multiparty democracy even when it had achieved the needed "political integration" because of its acceptance by the major forces of the country.

Although the winding road of Nepali democratic movement had encountered some ideological and strategic challenges during its journey due to make-shift ideology and strategies of some communist groups, pledges to the restoration of multiparty system and governance based on it remained perennial agenda of the mainline political parties like the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal since the days of their birth. In 1990, communists of all variants freed themselves from ideological and strategic dilemmas by forging a broad coalition for establishing multiparty democracy, despite their "critical support" (what it implies is incomprehensible to us) to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990. They had not only participated in the movement but they also became critical for transferring the absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy.

Problems of governance in Nepal should be understood in both generic sense and in all pervasive trends of social, economic and political dislocations heightened by what I prefer to call "callous elite attitude towards problems" (Baral: 1998). Democracy is at work for the last ten years but no Nepalis except the smallest fraction of the population feel that they have been empowered by the processes brought about by them through a combined effort of all. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990 declares that "sovereignty is vested with the people of Nepal and would be exercised as laid down in the Constitution". So the conceptual framework of the existing democratic order cannot be flawed for bad governance or even non governance that the people of Nepal experienced. All sets of leaders and parties had the turns of running the country on the basis of election mandated whatever fractured and strenuous they might be.

All clauses of the Constitution concerning the parliament and governments were enforced one after another when political parties and leaders changed the lessons of democratic governance by invoking the art of forming political equations with parliament in order to enhance the prospects of power. What was more intriguing were the internecine conflicts reigned supreme. As many as five governments took their as if the "sovereign" people had restored democracy for a tiny section of elites whose total orientations and attitudes were astonishingly anti-people.

Yet, they are considered to be leaders and representatives of the people who (people) had nothing to offer but votes in the hope of getting better life for all. In all elections, which are the essence and mechanism of governmental legitimacy, people enthusiastically affirmed for orderly change and good governance hoping that the parties and leaders who went through alone struggle and sufferings would wake up to the basic needs – food, shelter, education, drinking water, health and security- thus providing a breathing politics, let alone those whose faith in the system had already been eroded, are not only disappointed but alone those whose faith in their own parties and leaders. And democracy is likely to be at the crossfire between the deviant activist whose mission is to end what they call "explorative state system through violence and revolutionary appeal and the protagonists of orderly change with the latter also showing their frenzied behavior at the callous attitudes of ‘democratic rulers".

Although the mainline Left party- the CPN (UML) – was suspect because of its ambiguous position vis-à-vis the existing multiparty system giving rise to doubt about its true character and objective, it went on adapting to the system by virtue of being the single largest party in the lower house of parliament during 1994-1998 until it split into UML and ML. The undivided UML also ran the government for nine months claiming that its style of governance was far better hat that of the NC. Its style of taking quick effective decision, albeit such decisions were election oriented and populist in nature, were its credentials for wooing the electorate.

Problems of governability in Nepal seem to have been multiplied due to pervasive influence of political culture of the past contrary to long struggle for the ideal of democracy. Democracy was glorified but the norms and procedured befitting democratic governance thus resulting in the replication of the old authoritarian and feudal; cultures that had dominated the entire modern period of Nepali history. Democracy was delivered to the people without basic normative infrastructures of multiparty system. Yet, democratic exercises even in limited sense during the party less Panchayat era had institutional net-working which constantly activised ordinary people for exercising their voting rights to which the movement parties could hardly ignore after they took the mantle of governance. At the local level, institutions were created across the country in order to carry out the regular developmental works at the village and district levels, and at the apex level, the then National Panchayat had replicated the parliamentary procedured and norms without however becoming detrimental top the all pervading basic spirit of royal leadership. Many of such procedures and election systems were contradictory in nature and functions in view of the partyless nature and active royal leadership, but they were quite useful told and lessons for democratic apprenticeship in the country. The unicameral legislature had been able to attract attention of the people during its sessions. Though it was a king’s government whose sole source of power was the palace, the panchayat government were invariable on toes because of the two institutions –the all powerful monarch watching them and the national legislature to which they were also partly responsible since the introduction of direct elections based on adult franchise.

Today, the political elites have seized the mantle by using the pet theme of "sovereign" people and the vehicles of legitimacy but fail to be accountable and responsive to the minimum expectations of the electorate. Many members of parliament, especially whose proximity to power is limited, are helpless creatures as if their crucial support for catapulting the leaders into echelon fo power. If the political process is a key variable for good and effective governance, then the role of the members of parliament, government and bureaucracy all role into one i.e. the process. If the government leaders are weak allowing themselves to be preoccupied with their personal and group interests, people’s minimum interests remain on the sideline.

In Nepal, parties are conflict- torn not because of any ideological issue but because of the failures of political leaders to be accountable to the single most important constituency the electorate. Conceivably, the invocation of leaders authoritarian to the single most important constituency the electorate. Conceivably, the invocation of leaders’ authoritarianism rules the roost afflicting both performances –legitimacy and democratic culture. Performance-wise, the governments deliver nothing except empty sermons for lending more cooperation and support to them, and on the plank of legitimacy, the election system is becoming a ritual in every five years, though regular elections are themselves become the symbols of democratic stability, if not democratic efficiency. Presenting the difference between a formal democracy and a vibrant democracy with formality, Ayesha Jalal has thus pointed out:

Formal democracy is a genuine democracy insofar as it guarantees, among other things, the right to vote and the freedom of expression. Yet it may not evince all the features of its normative ideal, thus the notion of a substantive democracy. A compound of its formal and substantive meanings, democracy her refers to more than the exercise of citizens’ voting rights in elections or even the right to free speech. Though an important feature of democratic processes, elections are only the political manifestation of democratization in the wider social sphere. Democratization’s normative or substantive appeal derives from the empowerment of the people, not as abstract legal citizens but as concrete and active agents capable of pursuing their interests with a measure of autonomy from entrenched structures of dominance and privilege.

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