Absolute/Relative Power And Money

Say you are an absolute monarch of a country of 10 million people with a GDP of $500 million, drawing an annual salary of $100,000 a year. Or you are a truly constitutional monarch, totally devoid of political power, widely respected, perhaps more popular than any other person in the country, of a country that influences 2 billion people, and has a thriving GDP of $50 billion, with you drawing a salary of $500,000 a year or more, with a host of businesses of global scales in a thriving economy. Which would you prefer? I would go for the second option.

If I am worth $10, and you are worth $5, I am twice as rich as you. But if you are worth $10 and I am worth $15, I am no longer twice as rich as you, but I am richer than I was before. Which option would you rather go for? I would go for the $15 option.

A truly constitutional monarchy is the $15 option for the king. Saying good-bye to the idea of reviving the parliament and the 1990 constitution in favor of an interim government and a new, progressive constitution is the $15 option for the Bahuns.

I have been roundly criticized for my near euphoric reaction to the king's lifting the emergency at the end of April. Now I am supposed be either a Monarchist, or a naive fool who could not see the king's cunning. After all, restrictions on fundamental rights are still in place, and countless Bahuns are still in detention.

Am I a Monarchist? I am for peace. If getting rid of the monarchy will bring peace, I am for getting rid of the monarchy. If retaining it will bring peace, I am for retaining it. But the issue of the monarchy is for the 27 million Nepalis to decide, not for me or for Girija or Prachanda. And the last nationwide polls show a clear majority of the people are for a constitutional monarchy, and so that is my officially stated line. If the people want to keep the monarchy, the Maoists may not take it away from them. The people are the source of power, not any guns.

Am I naive? If the king thought lifting the emergency but keeping the ordinances that curb freedoms would fool anyone, least of all the foreign powers, then he was the one being naive. But I don't see that to be the case. He meant to take a limited step in the positive direction, and he did not expect to be seen as doing anything more.

My biggest fear after 2/1 was that the Panchayat might get revived. But the lifting of the emergency tells me that is not in the cards. The king might be stretching the 1990 constitution, but he is at least paying lip service to it. He is trying to stay to the letter of the document, if not the spirit of it. And to me that is reason enough to be euphoric.

If you can not tell the difference between when an emergency has been imposed and when it gets lifted, that makes you politically blind. Can you tell the difference between evening and night? True, there are administrative ordinances that severely curb freedom, but ordinances are a very weak version of all that is possible during an emergency.

The thing about the emergency getting lifted is suddenly there is all this political space that the parties have to come up with a creative solution to the civil war. This space did not exist during the emergency. Can you tell the difference?

What worries me is if the law and order breakdown were to get worse, the country might yet see something worse than an emergency. Have you thought of martial law? Of direct military rule? Those are options the king continues to have. This is not me trying to scare the parties. I am not saying such a move would be justified, and I am sure not going to support such a move, quite the opposite. This is me being realistic in terms of what I see when I look at the political landscape.

Does that mean the parties need to give in to the king's wishes, the wishes of the army top brass? No. Not at all. But it is important for the parties to come clean on the question of the monarchy.

If the seven parties are for a republican set-up, they should go ahead and come clean on it. On the other hand, if they are for a Constitutional Monarchy, they should be able to offer an iron clad guarantee that the monarchy is here to stay.

But instead the parties have been monkeying around with murky waters.

Not even a Bishnu avatar can revive a parliament that does not exist. To look for a parliament that took shape in 1999 and hence expired in 2003 is like looking for me in the year 2120: I do not expect to be around and kicking in the year 2120. I expect to have died by then. So if you want to see me, come talk to me now, or 10 years from now. Don't look for me in 2120: you might end up frustrated.

But say the parliament gets magically revived. Then the Congress-UML could amend the constitution to make Girija or MaKuNe Commander-In-Chief. And they could strike up a compromise with the Maoists to go for a Constituent Assembly. And that Assembly could end up getting rid of the monarchy, not necessarily because public opinion might have turned against the monarchy so completely, but because about a dozen politicians are still mad at all the Nepal Television programs they were forced to watch during their house arrests.

When you are presenting that scenario to the king, you are cornering him. If you intend to corner him, and you corner him, that can be a sound political strategy. But if you end up cornering him according to the law of unintended consequences, chances are your mind is not in top shape to help the country out during its current difficult time.

Good chess players always think more than a few steps ahead. But the current strategy of the seven parties is about thinking only one step at a time. So the first step is to revive the parliament. And if this first step does not happen, items 2,3 and 4 on the agenda never see the light of day. Good luck.

By the way, according to that same poll, only a very small portion of the Nepali people are for the following: (1) absolute monarchy, (2) communist dictatorship, or (3) revived parliament.

Instead, why not listen to the people! Imagine a referendum was held on the issue of reviving the parliament. Guess what, the results are out. The idea of reviving the dufunct parliament lost handily. So get over it.

Instead think ahead a few steps like a good chess player. Instead of asking the king to revive the unrevivable parliament, press for an interim government. Put forth a finished list of names now.
If there were a Constituent Assembly, these same political leaders would be the ones chalking up a new constitution. Well, what prevents them from engaging in that exercise now?

And so I urge the seven parties in the coalition and the three or four that have unwisely been kept at bay to come around to my more sensible proposal.

I feel so strongly against the idea of reviving the parliament, I think serious thought needs to be given to forming a democratic coalition minus the Nepali Congress of Girija Koirala. I mean, who are these Bahuns trying to fool? They want to go back to the 1990 constitution so Bahun hegemony may continue.

In The News

• Nepal rebels bomb restaurant, ransack radio station Reuters AlertNet, UK The restaurant was almost empty at the time of the blast in Pokhara
• Nepal king faces growing revolution Workers World Armed action continues against government dissenters. Military units and armed police continue to be mobilized against protesters and opposition party leaders. The offices of the youth wing of the legally recognized United Marxist-Leninist Party continue to be forcibly occupied and the Royal Army recently fired on crowds of student protesters. Additionally, high-level officials from the parliamentary parties remain under indefinite detention and there is continued police harassment of the king’s political opponents..... She also spoke highly of Gyanendra’s decision to rescind the emer gency declaration ...... On May 10 several hundred Maoist revolutionaries launched simultaneous armed attacks on three joint security bases at Bandipur, Chorhawa and Mirchaiya. All three bases are along the east-west highway that links the rest of the country to the capital of Katmandu. ...... The CPN(M) and its affiliated organizations appear to be operating at full capacity, despite months of state terrorism.
  
• Nepal Army claims not yet received any military aid from India Outlook (subscription), India .....acknowledging that the Army was fighting the war on terror with limited resources....... The guerrillas are in a "defeated mentality" so they can become more destructive and intensify acts of terror in the days to come..... in the past three months, 556 rebels were killed, 375 surrendered and 119 weapons recovered...... In the past few years, the Royal Army investigated into 41 cases of abuses and sentenced 45 soldiers to jail terms ranging from six months to seven years...... The Army has sacked 32 soldiers, demoted 12, stopped grade to four and promotion to nine, and issued warning to eight........ Gurung played an audio tape containing the purported voice of Maoist chief Prachanda in which he alleged that India was supposed to release two of the central members of the rebels -- C P Gajurel and Mohan Vaidya -- from its jails........ But, the taped voice claimed, that India later asked the Maoists to withdraw action against their number two leader Baburam Bhattarai, who was sacked from all top posts except ordinary membership of the party for allegedly being a pro-Indian, before it releases Gajurel and Vaidya.
• Prince shapes up for crown Calcutta Telegraph Paras, the enfant terrible of Nepal and the first in the line of succession to the throne, seems to be turning over a new leaf...... it’s King Gyanendra himself who is supervising the makeover of his 33-year-old son..... He sent out personal invitations through the Royal Nepal Army to four top diplomats posted in the capital, including Indian ambassador Shiv Shankar Mukherjee and American envoy James Francis Moriarty, for a round of golf...... the diplomats were “pleasantly surprised” when they were received by an “extremely gracious and suave” Paras on the Tribhuvan Army Golf Course at the crack of dawn on Saturday....... The normally reticent royal was in a talkative mood during the game, the sources said, showering attention on Moriarty and discussing everything from the weather to golf swings with him...... the prince, who hit the longest drive among all the players, failed to match Moriarty’s expertise, losing narrowly to him....... prince did show glimpses of that fiery temper during the weekend game with the diplomats, especially when he hit a wayward stroke or missed an easy putt
• The pen that writes off a king Indian Express There is no condom for the pen, as Khushwant Singh has often said, but Gyanendra sought to invent one through the barrel of the gun...... The government is trying to stem the flood of journalists rebelling against the royal diktat by stopping government ads in those publishing houses that do not toe the government’s line.
• Insurgency in Nepal can be controlled within a year: general Xinhua, China General Satchit Shumsher Rana ...... General Rana said the differences and even in-fighting within the top leadership of the guerrillas have resulted in the lowering of morale among their cadres..... Rana said if the strength of the RNAis raised to 125,000 from the present 100,000 and "if foreign forces do not aid the rebels," the insurgency could be eradicated within the next 10 or 15 years..... there was no popular support for the proposed protest programs launched by the seven-party alliance...... he insisted on dialogue between the king, political parties and the guerrillas to resolve the country's problems
• Nepal king's deputies taken to court for flouting law:- Webindia123 The two deputies of King Gyanendra - Tulsi Giri and Kiri Nidhi Bista, who are vice-chairmen of the council of ministers - as well as Home Minister Dan Bahadur Shahi and police chief Shyam Bhakta Thapa have been sued by the Nepal Bar Association (NBA), a body of independent lawyers..... Nepal's Chief Justice Hari Prasad Sharma Wednesday summoned the home minister to his office...... summons came after a spate of re-arrests by the government, making a mockery of the Supreme Court that had been ordering the release of several political detainees...... The government Wednesday released a dozen senior political leaders following court orders.
• India and America push for full multi-party democracy in Nepal India Daily Boucher said the situation had, however, improved in Nepal.