Thursday, October 06, 2005

Girija's House Revival Fantassy


Girija has presented something called a five point plan. What those five points are have not been made clear.

Koirala’s Five Steps To Salvation United We Blog .... leader of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) .... Koirala presented a five-step path to restore democracy and peace in Nepal. He made it clear that the vacuum created by the absence of a constitutional venue for all to come together to discuss the crisis and move forward had made the reinstatement of the dissolved House of Representatives the essential first step on the path back to democracy and peace. He outlined a clear path of what would follow the reinstatement of the Parliament. ......

The seven party alliance is the one legitimate political force in the country. I recognize that. As a democrat, and also as someone with personal contacts among several key members in that alliance's leadership, I consider myself to be part of that alliance. That is where I belong.

If the seven parties formally decide on Girija as their leader, do I go with that? Of course I do. It is just that it is undemocratic. The leader of the largest party should be the official leader. Girija should not be it just because he is the oldest. But if the alliance formally settles on the Girija name, I would disapprove of it on democratic grounds, but I will accept it.

I don't feel Madhav Nepal's democratic credentials are in any way inferior. If anything, they are superior. The party that Madhav Nepal leads has a much more sophisticated culture of inner democracy than the one Girija leads. Madhav Nepal has been working harder. Madhav Nepal has shown more flexibility. Madhav Nepal recognizes the pitfalls of relying too much on the 1990 constitution to move forward.

Why am I honing on this point? Because Girija messed up big time on this point the last time. When Surya Bahadur Thapa was Prime Minister, and the streets had swollen, and it was finally crunch time, Girija made two blunders: he kept the Deuba Congress at bay, and he backstabbed Madhav Nepal. This is not someone with a democratic character.

Girija has to submit himself to the democratic process within the movement for democracy, or he is not qualified to lead the movement for democracy.

Girija's one point agenda is House revival. He is not too keen on solving the civil war, or the political paralysis. He has a personal score to settle with Deuba, his vendetta is not against Gyanendra.

Girija is the only member of the seven party alliance for House revival. The rest of the members have been bullied into it. The UML is not for it, and the others are not for it.

This is fundamentally undemocratic. If there are seven members to a coalition, if six are against House revival, that should become the official position of the alliance.

Less than 10% of the Nepali people want a House revival. So six of the seven members of the alliance and over 90% of the Nepali people are against the idea of a House revival. And I don't know what proportion of the Nepali Congress cadres are for House revival, because Girija never bothered to ask. That is his style. He never asks, he just goes ahead and decides. This is an autocrat by character. He is the author of the mess of the 1990s. He is the author of the fundamentally wrong military approach to the Maoist insurgency. He is the author of the Nepali Congress brand of corruption. He is the only person inside the Nepali Congress who knows how that party gets funded. His grip on the party is more to do with that money he gets and collects to run the party and less to do with political skill, ideology or vitality. The Nepali Congress is an opaque party for a large part.

A party has to become democratic before it can lead a movement for democracy. A leader has to become democratic before he can lead a democracy movement.

Girija needs to present a plan and then subject that plan to a vote in the alliance. What is his plan? House revival can not be a plan. That is more like a fantassy. Of course the man who singularly destroyed the largest party status of the Nepali Congress wishes to go back to a time when his party was the largest.

What is his plan? How will House revival be achieved? If he stands by the House revival idea, he needs to chalk out a plan, and then submit that plan to a vote by the seven party alliance. Otherwise Girija is disqualified.

Will the king revive the House? If he will, how? Article 127? If not, which article? Does he have the option to use any article in the 1990 constitution to revive the House? Before we even go into the semantics of Article 127, we need to see if the alliance likes that idea? The UML has made it very clear it is not for the House revival through the use of Article 127 idea even if that might be possible. And I can see why. If the House is revived using Article 127, how long will its tenure be? Another four years? Or the remainder of whatever was left? A House that took shape in 1999 with a life of four years expired in 2003. Don't you think? What do the experts think? Is there a House somewhere that can be revived?

Girija is on record saying he wants to see the House revived just for long enough that a government can be formed, and then the House can be dissolved promptly. So you want a House revived for two weeks, form an all party government and then dissolve that House? Why revive it in the first place? Why not go straight for the all party government option?

I don't believe the king has the option to use any article in the 1990 constitution to revive the House. If it were so, that is like saying a democratically elected majority Prime Minister can dissolve a House, but the day after the king may revive that same House if he might so desire. That would be a fundamental clash that would make null and void the Prime Minister's prerogative. We can disapprove of Deuba's move to dissolve the House, but there is no undoing it. And Girija is directly responsible for the political cornering that prompted Deuba to do what he did. So instead of parroting the House revival mantra, Girija should go ahead and take responsibility that it got dissolved in the first place.

But say the king does have the option to revive the House. He does not, but let's assume for a moment he does. Then will he? Let's also assume he is in a race to expand his personal power base. Then likely he will not. And if he will not, how much sense does it make to have a strategy that entirely depends on the king exhibiting some goodwill? That would be a Monarchist strategy, that is not a democratic or a republican strategy. If your strategy totally depends on what the king does or does not, you are giving the king veto power. Not even the 1990 constitution does that.

If not the king, will the Supreme Court do it? It would be against the letter and spirit of democracy for the seven party alliance to wage street demonstrations to sway the Supreme Court. You just don't do that. The parties by definition need to focus on the legislative and the executive branches. That third branch is not their territory. So to wage street demonstrations to pressure the Supreme Court into reviving the House is to work against democracy, not for it.

If the king will revive the House, am I against the idea? No. If the Supreme Court will revive the House, am I against the idea? No. But I just don't see that happening.

So skip that step.

The six parties need to have the guts to confront Girija on this fundamental issue or they are letting this man hijack democracy and a country like he once hijacked a plane. And if the six parties will not do it, what rights to they have to ask the people to come out into the streets in large numbers?

Girija is having a hard time admitting his mistakes. His inept leadership several times he was Prime Minister, all that Nepali Congress corruption, his perverse attacks on the small parties during the 1990s, his fundamentally wrong approach to the Maoist insurgency, his reluctance to see early the constituent assembly was the way out, his autocracy inside his party, his ridiculous House revival stance, and on and on.

If the seven party alliance does not ditch the House revival thingie, this movement will have a very hard time taking off. The issue is that fundamental. So let there be a democratic vote inside the alliance on the issue.

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