The Mutual Attraction: King G And Tulsi Giri

This king's fundamental inclinations are ultra-right. His actions speak lound and clear. The kind of people you feel comfortable with says a lot about who you are, what your priorities are, the segment of the political spectrum you occupy.

His top choice was Tulsi Giri, the person who helped Mahendra dismantle democracy in 1960. This is not even a monarchist. This is an ultra-right ideologue. If he were a monarchist, he would have stomached the limited liberalization of the Panchayat by Birendra. But instead this joker left the country, he got so offended.

Giri's allegiance is not to the crown, but to an isolated segment of far right ideology. Perhaps it is that same segment that King G occupies. And hence the meeting ground between the two.

King G is not that innocent. He is for an activist monarchy, and militarization. Democrats offend him. That is his track record.

I am for Tulsi Giri speaking his mind. I don't expect him to change his thought patterns, but I do want him to reveal the same as much as possible. This is necessary to wake up the lethargic democrats. Before you can make your counter moves, you have to know what it is you are dealing with.

Ahobhagya Shaubhagya: Confusion InThe Monarchist Camp
Physical Abuse Of Peaceful Protestors
Tulsi Giri Is Beyond Redemption

In The News

• Giri’s attack on constitution is part of a conspiracy: RJP chief NepalNews “There should have been immediate clarification from the chairperson of the cabinet [His Majesty King chairs the cabinet] over Giri’s attack on the constitution of 1990. It’s surprising that there hasn’t been a word yet .... There is conspiracy behind this. This indicates that the state itself is actively working to destroy the constitution. What keeps the chairperson of the cabinet mum when a responsible member of the cabinets goes on attacking the constitution?” ..... the government’s silence on the issue could ‘invite disaster’, leading the people and the political forces to choose their own path...... Dr Giri’s Biratnagar address left no room for confusion as to who is leading the ultra-rightist political coterie in Nepal. “This makes clear who is behind the ultra-rightist movement in the country.”
• US ambassador meets Koirala the first meeting of the US ambassador with an opposition political leader in the context of the Maoist truce and the intensified agitations of the seven-party alliance
• NBA files contempt of court case against Dr Giri accused Giri of speaking against the apex court and its Justices ...... contemptuous as he accused the honourable Justices of being influenced by the political parties
• Thousands take part in peace rally
• Consumers’ body flays intervention in community forests The “people’s governments” of the Maoists in districts have been pressuring for donations and while the government side is also charging extra ‘revenue’ and has even set up security camps in community forests ..... the directives, which are yet to be implemented fully, the provisions of sharing benefits of ‘mutual forest’ - 25 percent revenue to forest management committee and 75 percent to the government fund whereas it is the other way round in the case of community forests – is unfair. “This is a ploy of the government to make people slaves”..... there are more than 14,000 ‘community forestry committees’ in Nepal and 113,991 hectors of forest area is managed by these committees. In this movement, around 854077 people from 1574029 households have participation.
• Leaders rap Dr Giri's statement "This is an anti-constitutional, irresponsible and outrageous statement from an unconstitutional official" ...... "It is the grumbling of foolish autocrats." ...... 'a blatant attack on the constitution, press freedom and people's sovereignty'. .....
  
• Govt. attorney pleads against incumbent ministers an interesting development, government attorneys have demanded that the Supreme Court (SC) name two ministers in the cabinet, Home Minister Dan Bahadur Shahi and Assistant Minister for Education and Sports Senate Shrestha, as convicts on charges of corruption..... anti-graft constitutional body claimed that Shahi, along with the then minister for agriculture Padma Sundar Lawati, had direct involvement in the smuggling of chemical fertiliser from India, causing revenue losses worth billions of rupees...... The CIAA has claimed that the accused were involved in an embezzlement worth more than Rs. 40 billion.
• NBA Files Case Against Tulsi Giri Himalayan Times, Nepal
• Contempt of court case against Giri Kantipur Online
• Thapa Flays Giri's Remarks Himalayan Times
• Tulsi Giri’s Firm Finally Clears 20-yr-old Loan Himalayan Times, Nepal
• Nepal lawyers take king's deputy to court:- Webindia123, India
• Resurrect constitution Kathmandu Post, Nepal
• Parties making noise for republic on foreigners’ instigation Gorkhapatra, Nepal
• Maoist violence still on; villagers, students abducted
• King planning autocratic constitution: Nepal Kantipur ..... accused the King of planning to draft a new constitution to ban the political parties. ...... the King, after being isolated from the national and international communities, was trying to establish an “autocratic constitution” to restrict the activities of the political parties...... the recent remark made by Cabinet Vice-Chairman Dr. Tulsi Giri was a deliberate expression of the King’s opinion, Nepal warned that the institution of monarchy would come to an end if efforts were made to bring in such a constitution...... “Giri has exposed what’s going on in the King’s mind...... Giri is the King’s puppet, he dances to the King’s tune.” ..... the Maoist problem could be resolved only through a constituent assembly, Nepal, however, argued that the United Nations, not the King, should take initiatives for the same..... the seven-party alliance was doing serious homework on holding talks with the Maoists, Nepal said, “We have been holding frequent talks with them [Maoists].”..... the recent remarks made by Dr Tulsi Giri on the country's constitution are a bad omen for the country's future politics....... had criticized the commission for welcoming the three-month unilateral truce announced by the Maoists...... the government should at least call back the security personnel in the army barracks if it cannot reciprocate the Maoist truce, Giri said in Biratnagar, "How appropriate is it for the government appointed commission member to speak like that?"

Ahobhagya Shaubhagya: Confusion InThe Monarchist Camp

I just bumped into this article by Shaubhagya Shaha whom I took to task several months back for another article. Shaubhagya Shaha: Autocracy 101 At Harvard.

This article has got to be the most articulate expression of the confusion ringing in the Monarchist camp since the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Maoists. It is not for no reason I congratulated Prachanda for his most brilliant military move to date. The ceasefire has done what no amount of fighting would have done. And, no, the credit does not go to the civil society or to the seven parties. The credit goes to the Maoists. They are going through an amazing ideological transformation. They are taking these creative steps after their diligent internal analysis.

The ceasefire has turned the Monarchist world upside down. This is what I meant when I said several months back the king is a rhino headed into a ditch. This is the ditch I was talking about. The Monarchists are like deer in the headlights. Wide-eyed. Trying to figure things out, not knowing how to do it. For the Monarchists, dream and reality are not so obviously different no more. They walk like sleep-walkers.

They are rigid. They hold power, but complain it is the agitating parties that are not talking, not compromising. Autocrats don't bend, they break.

Susta Sellouts And Other Vertigos
By Saubhagya Shah, in Scoop

Perhaps one of the biggest contemporary political mysteries must be this: the king who has pledged himself to holding multiparty elections within three years and transferring power to the elected representative is being opposed tooth and nail by an unlikely coalition of forces both within and outside the country. As if that was not odd enough, the same votaries of human rights, civil society, market economy and liberal democracy - local as well as alien - have now become the most willing bulwark for the Maoist party that began a violent campaign ten years ago explicitly to end multiparty democracy, establish a dictatorship of the communist party, dismantle the capitalistic economy and challenge Indian hegemony in Nepal. Surely there will be no human rights or press freedom - at least in its liberal form - in such a radical communist state? One is reminded of Bruce Lee’s predicament in an old martial arts movie in which he negotiated the treacherous hall of thousand mirrors: who is real and what is but an adversial shadow? While the politically savvy and the main contestants might know the inner logic of this apparent heaven and earth inversions, the recent spate of political gyrations continues to leave the silent masses clueless.

The King’s assumption of emergency powers last February in the midst of a decade-long crisis generated by the armed insurgency has polarized the major political formations into definite forms now. While the king finds himself more and more with the nationalist elements, many of the oppositional political parties have been drawn closer to the Maoists. This convergence appears to be both tactical as well as ideological. For example, the Nepali Congress, one of the main proponents of the Westminster model of governance, deleted constitutional monarchy from its party statute during the recent eleventh convention. A few short days before the party convention, however, the Nepali Congress president G.P. Koirala had sent shock waves in the political circles by disclosing that some of the most ardent advocates of republicanism within his own party were actually agent provocateurs on the king’s payroll and that republicanism was never a Nepali Congress agenda.

The growing pact between the Maoists and the opposition political parties is being cemented by the high profile activism of the civil society. Indeed, both the civil society leaders and the political parties have claimed that the recent unilateral cease-fire announced by the rebels was an indication of their influence with the Maoists. How to make sense of this unlikely maneuverings and the vertigo producing abrupt veerings and about turns of Nepali politics?

Nepali Politics

One tentative approach might be to look at it from the way the two competing forces articulate their claims. While the crown harks to its historical role as the nation’s founding institution and its territorial and ideological guardian, the political parties and the civil society combine draw upon the abstract notions of human rights and liberal democracy to press home their claims to power. In the increasingly acrimonious contest for supremacy in Nepal, these basic claims bestow their own sets of advantages and liabilities upon the claimants. While much of the monarchy’s legitimacy is internally constituted, this very fact can become a handicap in the new world order that does not look too kindly to any sovereign authority that is not explicitly created or at least patronized by the dominant global or regional powers. Ironically, the Nepali crown’s independent origin thus turns into its Achilles’ heel externally.

Since the political parties and the politically vocal civil society march under the banners of human rights and liberal democracy, they are assured of ideological and material sustenance from the dominant Euro-American axis. In a poor country, external assets of this kind becomes a major force in determining the outcome of local contests. The privilege of such patronage is, however, not without its ambiguities and obligations. First, it entails acknowledging the contingent Euro-American conceptions about the individual, market arrangements, and government configuration as absolute human universals across time and space. The acceptance of a particular cultural practice as human norm is not an insignificant price, at least intellectually. Second, despite the claim to universality, the TOR for the local adherents does not allow them to comment on the state of human rights, press freedom and democracy in the sponsoring nations or other traumatized areas like Palestine, Algeria or Kashmir in a truly internationalist fashion. If the tactic as well as the target are pre-selected from elsewhere, there can not be much of meaningful human agency or democracy in such engagements.

Foreign intervention does not come free, even when it is ostensibly in one’s favor. The enlightened nations are not in the habit of doing democracy missions abroad for purely philanthropic reasons: they do it only when it is profitable and they can drive attractive geopolitical, ideological or economic bargains. Given the apparent costs of calling up allies from abroad, the various forces fighting in Nepal should swallow some of their misplaced pride and come to an internal deal. After all, what kind of pride is it to ask outsiders to come and put you in power, a la Chalabi? From the national (not partisan) standpoint, it is more honorable to make concessions to your internal rivals than to indebt the country to external patrons. That way the initiative will remain within the nation and can be reapportioned later when the situation demands it. Once the issues and initiatives are taken outside the country, it is much harder to regain them...as we are finding out with Kalapani and Koshi issues. Like many previous occasions when the country was distracted in internal feuds, the Susta area in the south is now about to slip out of our hands because none of the major protagonists in Nepal want to risk losing New Delhi’s patronage by being the first to voice their principled opposition to India’s illegal take-over of Nepali territory. Over the decades, territorial sellouts has been established as normal cost of doing politics in Nepal. The silent accomplices to foreign occupation must understand that the people need a sovereign turf to enjoy the blessings of human rights and democracy and that these ideals do not exist in context-free vacuum.

Harvard Ph.D. Saubhagya Shah teaches anthropology at Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

In The News

• Govt. using excessive force against demonstrations: UN OHCHR NepalNews
• PWG Naxal - Nepal Maoists Nexus Peace Journalism