Special Session and After: Thinking Past the Nepali 'Post-conflict'

(Re-produced, courtesy of Dr. Saubhagya Shah)

The country took a huge leap of faith last April. More than year later, the people are still waiting for it to land, right side up. The farce called the Constituent Assembly (CA) election would not have been more than a lame joke had it also not been a fraud as well, arguably the most brazen since the millennium bug and the Mahakali scam. In the former, technology firms warned the consumers that if they did not buy their latest software and gadgets, the computer systems across the world would go kaput at the stroke of midnight, thereby causing the global economy, defense systems, health networks, transportation and the internet to go haywire to usher in Stone Age II. Thankfully no such pangs accompanied the birth of the 21st century, but the sting operation earned billions for the scaremongers.

The Mahakali caper was of a different tack, but of the same nature. Left to right, politicians here had gone in overdrive to sell the Mahakali deal. The proposal to sign off the western boundary river to India was touted as the biggest bonanza to ever befall the country that would earn a cool billion dollars per year to the country. A decade after the midnight deal in parliament, Nepal is yet to see a penny from the sell off. Nevertheless, the southerly wind from the deal has filled the sails and coffers of many politicians that dominate the political landscape today.

The ongoing constituent assembly (CA) mess is a remix of both these earlier scams. On the one hand, the people were bombarded for a whole year with dire warnings by the political parties, donors, and the willing media that if the CA elections were not held on Nov. 22, the earth would literally crumble and heaven would fall, so extreme and absolute was the propaganda. On the other hand, should the election take place, it would fulfill every wish and every need that Nepalis had ever thought of...so abundant was the promise. One just had to endure the endless TV skits, radio jingles, dohori songs, poems, talkshops and miles of newspaper space sponsored by the CA enterprise over the past year to recognize the carrot and stick approach to infantile democratization. No wonder, much of this media material imitated many of the soothing tunes and melodies of our nursery rhymes.

Experts, expertise

The transitional movement was recognized as another money spinner as international crisis firms and professionals who had made their names and fortunes in Somalia, Afghanistan, Timor or other similar human tragedies descended upon Nepal to set up shop in partnership with local subalterns. The first order of business was to establish the demand that could then be supplied by these experts. Using some convenient methodologies, it was first established that Nepalis in general were seriously deficient in their knowledge of the whole constituent assembly phenomena. Such a glaring civilizational deficit could only be filled by the superior knowledge embodied by the experts. Thus came the various CA projects and voter education programs from donors and INGOs in whose name millions of dollars were raised and millions of rupees disbursed, thousands of educators, TOTs (Tiny tots? the person who coined this development jargon must have had the most wicked sense of humor) and trainers mobilized to teach the ignorant masses how to do election come Nov. 22. Not to mention the 50,000 plus army of observers being marshaled to witness the event and the 60,000 see-through boxes dispatched from Japan to hold the secret ballots.

The chappal is obviously on the other foot now. The ignorant masses perhaps might just want to ask the experts why suddenly there is no constituent election after all this education and awareness raising? That is, if they have not already left the scene post-haste in their favorite getaways: the formidable fleet of satellite-hooked 4by4s and shiny helicopters. The people might also want to know why so much resources and effort was poured into a half-baked project whose completion was neither ascertained, nor even intended. The prevalent political culture here demands no responsibility and accountability even in cases of major policy failures and disasters such as the present one. The leadership can always plead democratic immunity in every act of omission and commission. Nevertheless, after having been taken on a wild-goose chase for a whole year, it would have made the people feel that they still count for something in this country if someone – parties, donors, or the CA entrepreneurs – had had the decency to tender even a simple non-incriminating apology following the unceremonious cancellation of the polls.

The 'post-conflict' industry in Nepal has temporarily been thrown off-gear by the cancellation of the elections. All those contracts, projects, budgets streams, networks, and careers are in disarray. But not for long, we can be sure that the resilience and resourcefulness of this highly adaptive industry will soon come up with another inspiring sales banner to continue its good work as has been the case for the last fifty years.

More than anything, the present election fiasco is an inevitable failure of a faulty paradigm whose basic premise starts not with the innate intelligence and commonsense of the people but their ignorance. Many of the assumptions that inform the intervention in Nepal are politically chic, but analytically dubious. The continued substitution of objective assessment and adherence to logical policy implications by normative homilies and ideological sermons is at the root of the present impasses, whether it be the donors or their recipients. In the absence of critical analysis, the liberal-radical consensus on Nepal appears to have become a victim of its own group think. Like all volatile mixtures, the liberal-radical combustion was eminently successful in burning down the royal edifice last year in the manner of a sweeping bush fire. But the prairie fire seldom lasts long, its fatigue is as startling as its blaze. The intense yet short-lived liberal-radical honeymoon also appears to be exhausting itself once the expressed target of that unity – monarchy – has receded from the political horizon.

Apparently, the blazes are good for burning down, not for building up. The lack of substantive momentum and direction during the past year and half and the national sense of being caught in a morass is a good indication of the exhaustion of the intellectual paradigm that guided the April uprising. To put it bluntly, not much thought was put into what was to be done after the April bonfire.

King and PR

For example, when the current ruling circle and its external guarantors have already decided in principle to make Nepal a republic after Nov. 22, what substantive difference does it make if the republic is declared by the parliament today to save the country from another likely bloodletting? The sovereign parliament that changed national identity from Hindu kingdom to secular state and confined the King to virtual house arrest in one stroke last year should have no constitutional or legal limitations in going republic to fulfill the deepest aspirations of the Nepali 'people', as claimed by the republican front. It is quite a mystery that the one party that attempted regicide twice in the past should be the one wanting to extend the monarchy’s life on some flimsy technicality. After the recent amendment to the Interim Constitution, the parliament has the authority to declare republic instantly if the king is found to be engaging in any activity intended to derail the CA elections. Government ministers, political leaders, the media, and senior civil society leaders have repeatedly charged the king of orchestrating the violence in the Terai and plotting for a regressive comeback by disturbing the CA poll environment. What more rationale and justification does the ruling liberal-republican consensus need for going republic today? To pose the same question differently, what benefits will the country accrue by keeping the much vilified monarchy another 18 days that were not there in the past 238 years?

Many republicans still blame Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhab Kumar Nepal for not seizing the opportunity to end the monarchy after the palace massacre in 2001 when it was at its weakest. Five years later, history has presented another golden opportunity to Nepali republicans. At the end of 2007, the House of Gorkha finds its neck on the chopping block and should the republicans again pull back from delivering the coup de grâce to fulfilling their historical destiny at this most opportune moment, the Crown may continue not because it necessarily willed itself to power but because there was no self evident alternative despite the rhetoric.

The wrangle over the proportional representation system also presents a similar discordance between the self-stated political stance and its necessary policy obligations. Among the other breaks, the 2006 political uprising discredited the unitary Nepali state for its historical marginalization and exclusion of various minorities and regions. The new regime has already accepted the constituencies of language, ethnicity, and region in contrast to the earlier model of universal citizenship in one nation. The new solution espoused has been the federalization of the state to provide voice and representation of these formerly excluded groups into the political process. But if the electoral process is not suitably modified to make it possible for these oppressed groups to articulate their voice and aspirations in any meaningful way, the federalization alone might not mean much because the existing first-past-the-post electoral system will continue to benefit the politically dominant Brahmin-Chhetry groups far in excess of their actual numbers in the population. If the promise of New Nepal to include and empower the formerly marginalized castes, women, janajatis, Madhesis, and Karnali into the political system is genuine, the federal structure must be accompanied by a proportional representation process. Only then will the numerically significant but politically weak cultural, ethnic, and caste communities have a viable opportunity for inclusion in the national process.

An election is an act of selection and representation by the people within an agreed upon framework. To make the democratic election meaningful, the competitors must agree on the fundamental norms of the electoral game. This includes the consensus on the purpose, method, and willingness to accept and abide by the result of the elections.
In the context of the CA elections, none of the three criteria were ever met satisfactorily. Whether it was the constituency redrawing controversy or the proportional system, there was a wide divergence of positions on the actual modality of conducting the elections. In this respect, the recently concluded special session of the parliament called to resolve these issues might have postponed the crisis for now, but it has not yet really cleared the ground for the elections yet.

More seriously, even after the elections dates were fixed, some of the contestants continued to state that they would not be obliged to abide by the results if it was not to their liking. The experts refused to take into account this danger signal and continued to send back rosy reports to New York in order to keep the illusion going for as long as it would last. Is the UN too worried about the latest cancellations here? Perhaps not. More mess in the Third World means more business, more budget, more jobs. One just needs to pass through the business class section of an airline flying into Kathmandu to see the laptop welding army of bright-eyed college graduates coming to town to do election and peace. As things complicate, UN seeking to make more elbow room for itself by seeking extended, expanded role in the host nation. Historically also, wherever UN has stepped in, it usually tends to stick around for a decade, if not longer. The good thing is, Nepalis will be assured of homespun entertainment from unminkoboli (UNMINSPEAK) over local radios and televisions for years to come.

The last point that undermined the prospects for a meaningful CA elections was lack of sincere agreement on the purpose of the election itself. For some, CA election was intended to be a rubber stamp to legitimize the 2006 regime change. For others, the CA result would have been the measure by which to take stake their claim on state power and resources.

Power to the politicians

None of the players in the game had actually wanted the people to exercise their 'sovereign' reason to express what they really wanted. In a preemptory move, the parties had already decided what the new Nepal would be: federal, republic, and pseudo secular. During his previous four stints as prime minister of the Kingdom, G.P. Koirala remained a strict secularist. He was never seen near a temple or a ritual. After having presided over the conversion of the only Hindu Kingdom into a secular state last year, it is ironic that this life-long agnostic is suddenly acting like a born-again Hindu. Whether it is the realization of his own approaching mortality or his suppressed desire to dabble in the kingly grandeur of divine rule, his ritual extravaganza around Hindu temples and festivals in his official capacity as the prime minister cum de facto president of a secular state makes a mockery of the idea of separation of state and religion. If the complete immunity from the logical policy conclusion of one’s stated political position remains the hallmark of the Nepali political class in general, it is no wonder that moral impunity is the defining feature of Nepali political culture.

Critically speaking, CA was gamed to extract popular consent for the regime, not open up informed choices for the citizens. Thus, even if the CA election were to be held on Nov. 22 as scheduled, it would not have been more than a costly ritual because the most important substance had already been preordained through an unelected process. That is why the sky did not actually fall when the election was finally cancelled and except for some perfunctory tears in some quarters, nobody is actually ruing the day.

Contrary to claims, the CA elections and the rest of the political process does not appear to be intended to empower the people through reason and information. It is, on the contrary, designed to infantilize them by playing upon their worst fears and emotions. The rule of law is being substituted by fear where insecurity, suspicion, and virulent demagoguery have become the primary ruling instruments. The nation is literally being made to live from minute to minute in bated breath as it awaits it fate outside the gates of Baluwatar and Singha Durbar while those inside wheel and deal, day and night, in perpetually extending sessions. The emotional manipulation serves two functions: buys borrowed time for the regime while reducing popular expectations of the political process to abysmal nil. The sum total? National degradation and societal demoralization.

Related Posts:

What has UNMIN Accomplished in Nepal?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-has-unmin-accomplished-in-nepal.html

Debunking the Democratic Dogma
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/debunking-democratic-dogma.html

No Impunity for Civil Society Leaders: Nepalis are watching....
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/no-impunity-for-civil-society-leaders.html

Bahunists and Bahunism - No Room for feudal elements in the "new Nepal"
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/08/bahunists-and-bahunism-no-room-for.html