His Majesty King Birendra is more aware of his 'responsibilities' than anyone else.

-Shrish Rana, Senior Journalist, Kathmandu

Shrish Rana is definitely not a new name for the regular readers of this newspaper.

He is basically a political analyst of repute. His analyses on contemporary national and international events remain par excellence.

At the moment Mr. Rana is a free person but yet he continues to write for some Nepali and English language newspapers. For quite some time he assumed the role of a politician and served the Rastriya Janata Parishad headed by Kirtinidhi Bista. But these days he appears to have maintained a distance with that party. However, his real bent, as he prefers to claim, continues to be journalism. His journalism career began when he joined the government controlled and owned The Rising Nepal in 1976. Later he brought out the National Star weekly and continued there for a year and a half. It was this newspaper which had interviewed late B.P.Koirala, Mr. Rana beamingly recalls. His long association in the journalism sector made him finally the Chairman of the Gorkhapatra Corporation but that was almost at the fag end of the erstwhile regime.

After the change in the System in 1990, Mr. Rana resigned and joined the RJP mentioned above.

Rana studied Political Science at the TU and prefers to participate in the political debates of all sorts as and when he is approached. To recall, Mr. Rana has presented at least three working papers for the seminars organized by this newspaper and the last being his paper on good governance which he presented on November 23, 2000 in Kathmandu.

He is intellectually competent, independent, sharp and critical as would be evident from the interview that will follow in these columns. He is rich in sparking new ideas that are contextual.

Last week, we approached this scholar for an exclusive tête-à-tête exactly after two years gap. Below the results-Chief editor.

TGQ1:Mr. Rana! What sort of signals, in your opinion, could have been sent in the minds of the majority of the national population due to the unprecedented deadlock seen in the current ongoing session of the Nepali parliament? Does it bode well for the nation and the present order? Your exclusive comments please!

It is the duty of the opposition to oppose in a democracy. The treasury bench supports. These are facts of democratic life. The deadlock, however, stems from other salient aspects that are not altogether prescribed for democracies. A government with a valid majority would have had the strength to woo the opposition. With the Congress majority, things seem otherwise. Again, the confidence of the opposition that current woes, particularly systemic woes, have systemic remedies appears to have faded. It does not matter at the moment that the " majority of the national population" are being sent the wrong signals. The fact is that the majority of the organized population, outside a few, appear to be the monopoly of the parliamentary parties and so it can only be parliament that devises a systemic solution. For this, both the opposition and government must be willing.

As for the nation, the trend under the current system to put the party before the nation has had its effects and will continue to do so. As it is, countries like ours with, what has been described as, ‘electoral democracies’ will continue to put the electoral cart before the national horse and so the organization must be nurtured at all cost. Girija babu must take advantage of his majority and must nurture the organization that proves it from government until the next elections. For this, he must use the advantage of government to flip him back to power in order to put himself in a position to distribute the spoils of government to his supporters and thereby further consolidate his organizational political power. The opposition must elbow him out of his government seat and by doing so usurp his privileges of government in order to do what Girijababu is doing from government with the self-same purposes.

The fact that these parties have been elected by the people give them the legitimacy for their conduct. It is, after all, the people who have provided them that legitimacy. Whether this is in tune with democratic values is evidently nobody’s business to ask. That is what the constitutional framers were telling the people a decade ago. It is not surprising that the parliamentary parties are unwilling to admit that they are incapable of transcending their organizational demands for sake of the nation. It is another thing that the people are aware of this and they are not organized. So who are the parties representing? Puzzling, isn’t it.

TGQ2: How you Mr. Rana see the current posture acquired by the entire opposition in demanding the outright resignation of the Prime Minister? Could it be described as constitutional? The fact is that competent authorities were looking into the Lauda affair and were yet to indict Prime Minister Koirala in the Lauda air deal. But yet the noise of this sort. How you see the whole affair.

Part of your question has already been answered above. The other part must deal with democratic norms and values that appear nobody’s business in Nepali politics. Parliament is supreme, the parliamentary majority governs, the parliamentary opposition opposes. So much is structural. Can the opposition so disrupt parliament as to prevent its business, as it has proven it can do for the past month in Nepal? This has to do with values. Can the government continue to claim a majority with its own factions undercutting it in parliament? This has to do with values. Can the factions in government remain in the party and continually undercut its elected leadership? This has to do with values. In liberal democracies such as England, for example, it is these values that prompted resignations from Margaret Thatcher and John Major outside parliament. To prevent party and parliamentary crises, no constitution or judicial interpretation was required..

In the Nepali context where governments continue to sit in power when the supreme court must tell them the difference between a treaty and an understanding contradicting their public standpoint, where people from the ruling party themselves join the opposition in pleading to the king that the government’s move for spot elections be ignored, where one party after another challenge the King’s referral of issues for constitutional interpretation to the judiciary as undemocratic and insist that they conduct elections from government regardless of existing parliamentary options, where government and opposition together appear unaware of what actually a finance bill should contain and what it should not, the values and norms in operation transcend the limits of democracy. Who’s to tell Girijababu of the meaning of his minister’s resignation over the Lauda deal? Constitutionality in this scheme of things is hardly what one should be looking at. At another level, is anyone questioning the constitutionality of the sitting government in the Phillipines?

TGQ3: The Maoists have gained definitely of late but yet exhibit their preference for a dialogue with the establishment. Is it a sort of fear in them that the Koirala regime will crush their insurgency through the use of Ordinance Bill or is it that they too have become tired off of the insurgency and now prefer to devise a mechanism for face saving? Some sectors claim it to be their time buying ploy to accumulate strength for a major offensive against the government? How you assess the whole phenomenon.

Any analysis of the history of political organization in Nepal should make obvious that the Maoist movement emulates the formation of the organizations of the bulk of the parliamentary parties and is different in only the degree of radicalism. Indeed, even the radicalism makes sense in light of the growing success of each organized political movement as distinct from their predecessor. There is meaning in this. The ground rule is that prevalent woes are identified as roots of our impoverishment. The enemy are those who are perpetuating such from government and benefiting from the impoverishment of the people. The programme is to persecute the enemy and dislodge them from political power. The loot thus acquired fuels the organization. Whatever, the Maoists have shown that they can talk and they can fight. One does not see this displayed in response by any of the parliamentary parties whatever their standpoint. Since the Maoists are conducting an insurgency in the country in the name of a ‘people’s war’, they can adopt strategies to suit their declared intentions and they will talk and they will fight to do so. Our concern should be that the system has shown no capacity as yet to either talk or fight. On the other hand the environs continue to contribute advantageously to organizations with radical intents

TGQ4: Perhaps tired by the dismal performance of the governments formed after 1990s and observing the current mess in the parliament having no sight of an amicable settlement likely in between the opposition and the ruling party, the population now see the role of the constitutional monarch in settling the mess in the parliament. However, the King’s hands are tied, we are told. Yet, the monarch being the ultimate guardian of the nation, do not you think that it was time that King Birendra acted and brought back the troubled nation to normalcy and that too without giving a major jolt to the system now in force? Your comments please.

The ‘King can do no wrong’ concept is, I believe, a traditional inheritance of ours that has a recognized modern, democratic utility as well. As much as this modern concept is recognized by our tradition, one has, sadly as yet, to see this voiced publicly in modern organizational politics and their respective ideologies. The convenience of radicalism for organization has its roots here perhaps. Strangely, it is this organizational politics that claims representation of the Nepali people as well as the monopoly of modern politics in the country. This paradox is, in itself a crucial topic for research in Nepali democracy.

Since I believe that the institution of the Monarchy is of tremendous political utility to this country I would not want to discuss the Monarchy in light of the response you seek for the very sake of preserving that utility. One sees that organized public discussions of what the king should do or should not do are tailored to suit the priorities of organized politicians and their politics. These, as has been mentioned above, appear overwhelmingly dictated by the agenda of their political organizations even at the risk of the nation and the system. Since I believe in the utility of the Monarchy, I am confident, and he is widely acclaimed at having proven it, His Majesty is more aware of his responsibilities than anyone else.

TGQ5: The US Ambassador hinted of his displeasure regarding Nepali governance. German Ambassador sees the need for good governance. The Finnish charge de affaires says his country might pull out its support from Nepal if the violence prolonged. What messages do you see in their separate but yet meaningful remarks made for our country. Your opinions please.

So much is being talked of good governance these days. So many prescriptions have been made for this. One cannot forget that it is we the Nepali people who continue to suffer. The donor countries and organizations are also being bled at cost of their constituencies. These prescriptions are not altogether unknown in our societies. They have been ignored in politics on grounds of modernity itself. It is not enough for societies to demand their right to organize and it is for societies to develop the strength to demand from the organizations thus formed their obligations to society in lieu of recognition of that right. The roles that tradition, history and culture have played to develop that strength in the West have been purposely ignored in our context to the point that our tradition, history and culture have all been junked in the name of modernity. The result has been mere emulation of the west and its distance from Nepali reality is what politics is asked to breach. How can one demand performance when reality has been made so distant and one is not even to acknowledge it?

There is another intriguing aspect to this Western response. One must ask for serious probes into the actual or real beneficiaries of the isolation of Nepal in the manner thus threatened. Is it possible to see a calculated design in the overall direction that Nepal is heading? Who benefits when Nepal is made thus distant from third countries or when such relations are not made productive? Sets one thinking, doesn’t it?

But you provoke me, however, to opine in a different direction also. Two of the youngest world civilizations forcibly destroyed their predecessor mother civilizations in all but this part of the world. Serious analysis should reveal that this lone Hindu Kingdom in the world is unique because it is in so many ways a reaction to occidental attempts to impose their values on us. It is only now that these attempts are succeeding. Since, over several generations of ‘modern’ education we have taught ourselves to look down upon our values and not to reinterpret them to suit our times and since we have yet to get to the roots of their values to actually comprehend them and adapt them to our use, what better way for these societies to demand performance from us than with that mighty whip of the purse? There is hope that our Western donors are speaking a language that our modern democracy’s ‘dyaddy, momy’ culture will understand.

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