The saga is symptomatic of major fault line in Nepal’s democracy, demanding honest elements in the NCP to work for structural reforms
By Bihari Krishna Shrestha
The day of reckoning seems to have finally arrived for PM Oli. While there has been no PM on record other than BP Koirala of yesteryear on whom so much hope and trust were reposed by the people, today, they all stand disillusioned and sorely disappointed, raising this fundamental question of why our democracy is unable to produce an honest and capable leaders!
Two enormous harms to the nation
Given his popularity in his initial days in his current tenure as PM, Oli was nearly forgiven for his two unprincipled and opportunistic move that seriously called into question his standing as a politician of integrity. First, in pursuit of winning majority in parliament the earlier UML under his leadership shook hands with the Maoists whose hands remain smeared in the blood of 18,000 innocent lives that included thousands of Oli’s own party cadres. Oli and his fellow opportunists in the party obviously could not care less the pain and agony that such an immoral move must have caused to the hapless victims of this India aided and India-sheltered bloodletting. Secondly, in his greedy haste to succeed Sushil Koirala as PM in 2015 — who was clinging on to power on the seemingly popular pretext of promulgating the new constitution first — Oli managed to ramrod the passage of the statute by sidelining the constitutionally binding provision of incorporating the result of the nationwide poll — that had already been carried out on its draft — while finalizing and adopting it. Media reports then had it that the people overwhelmingly opined against the country going federal and secular. As a result, Nepal today remains saddled with the whole horde of big and small legislators and ministers in so-called Pradeshes in doing nearly nothing of consequence even as they are paid and pampered lavishly in this “least developed” economy of ours.
As for the local bodies, they are even worse, whose elected officials are five times more distant from the electors than their earlier VDC counterparts, because their total number, 753, is only one fifth the number of earlier local bodies. Manned mostly by the sitting members of the contractors association of Nepal who, having bought for cash their election ticket and having spent tons of money in buying votes in elections, are now recouping their investment so much so that the local bodies today remain the bastion of unbridled corruption, left, right and centre. This is where the Bhagbanda politics (a system of sharing of the illicit booty) is being actively practiced. While the CIAA chief, Navin Kumar Ghimire had recently (July 28, 2019) observed in abstract terms that “bikriti (distortion) seems to have accompanied the devolution of authority to the local bodies”, Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa “Badal” himself has been more direct and explicit when he said in Parbat (Phagun 18, 2076) that “if the corrupt officials were to be prosecuted, the entirety of the local bodies will be without elected officials”. While, despite this knowledge, the Ministry responsible for maintaining law and order in the country has still to act on that corruption pandemic in the country, the fact remains that it also constitutes an integral part of Oli’s legacy to the nation as an ambitious, ruthless and unprincipled politician and prime minister
Misrule galore
Consistent with his diminutive ethical standard as depicted above, Oli’s performance as the PM has turned out to be the aggravated version of the utter misrule of his notorious predecessors. At the very start of his tenure PM Oli gave out a call for “Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepalese” for which he did absolutely nothing thereafter. While he also promised to the people with such unrealistic, fantastic and fanciful slogans as maritime access to the sea or to providing piped connection to cooking gas to individual’s homes in the country, he defended them by claiming that he was just dreaming big for the country, except that he never came off his own dreamland. This and his other similar utterances show that he relied more on demagoguery and deception to remain in power.
Given such corrupt and bhagbanda-based political culture in the country, PM Oli’s functioning as an absolute ruler has always been a pain in the neck for some fellow old guard politicians such as Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Nepal, Jhalanath Khanal and Bam Dev Gautam, the first three of whom have been PM, the pinnacle of power in the life of a politician. Unlike their counterparts in genuine democracies such as UK where party chiefs and prime minister chose to go into oblivion upon retirement, these Nepali politicians, true to their value system steeped in Thalu tradition, have chosen to hang around in the party’s leadership ranks and expect a share in the booty of governance.
His other governing principle includes cronyism, with positions going to people with slavish loyalty to him. Given such pattern of behavior, his tenure so far has been marked by an uninterrupted chain of mega corruption scandals such as the reported 4-bilion rupee “Wide Body” commission scam, the unholy alliance with Yeti Holdings, the attempted 70-crore commission, and lately, the Omni Group fraud and so on. The Omni Group scandal in particular comes in as a new low in Oli government’s greed, now being investigated by the parliament as well as the anti-corruption watchdog, CIAA, because they tried to make money by exacerbating the worst health crisis to visit the country, the COVID-19 pandemic. As things stand, PM Oli has just about nothing to show for his first two years of worry-free rule. In the eyes of many people, Oli’s reputation as a politician and prime minister is worse than such notorious characters as NC’s Sher Bahadur Deuba — who reportedly sold every single election ticket and appointment for hard cash — or the earlier sinister-in-chief, Girija Koirala, who has the distinction of being the first multiparty PM to unleash boundless corruption and cronyism on the country.
Feudalistic forces descend on PM Oli
Despite some seven decades of democracy, Nepal continues to remain predominantly rural (80%), utterly impoverished, unequal and feudal in character. By and large, rural communities are highly stratified with a small band of Thalus (feudal elites) — generally individuals with high caste status, relative wealth and some modicum of education — sitting at the top of the pyramid. Most of the time, Thalu-hood remains a hereditary phenomenon and the son succeeds the father only upon the latter’s death. The Thalus exist in informal yet widely recognized ordinal relationship with one another that is also mutually collusive and competitive at the same time. After the multiparty restoration, it is these Thalus who have since re-incarnated themselves as “democrats” and have since gone on to head the multitude of individual political parties in their communities, and as elected officials of the local bodies, now known as Palikas (Municipalities). While these feudal elites as elected officials contribute to maintaining some semblance of order in their communities, their newfound power is almost always exercised to extract resources from all around for their own personal gain without any accountability to go with them. The institution is so deeply entrenched in our traditional social order that the more vicious a given Thalu, the more he is feared and regarded in the community. It is this gang of Thalus who occupy almost all of the elective posts in the communities, and misappropriate local development and other funds with wanton disregard for transparency and accountability. Hence, the Home Minister’s observation cited above. As things stand, a successful politician in Nepal is almost always a corrupt man or woman.
Given such corrupt and bhagbanda-based political culture in the country, PM Oli’s functioning as an absolute ruler has always been a pain in the neck for some fellow old guard politicians such as Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Nepal, Jhalanath Khanal and Bam Dev Gautam, the first three of whom have been PM, the pinnacle of power in the life of a politician. Unlike their counterparts in genuine democracies such as UK where party chiefs and prime minister chose to go into oblivion upon retirement, these Nepali politicians, true to their value system steeped in Thalu tradition, have chosen to hang around in the party’s leadership ranks and expect a share in the booty of governance. So, Oli’s stance of going it alone has always been a subject of not-so-veiled criticism. Since Olijee, having lost the popular support he had earned at the time of his election, has already been vulnerable, his recent Ordinance faux pas, in no way as grievous a sin as those mentioned above, just happened to provide these old guards with the long-awaited alibi to descend on him who are now baying for Oli’s blood in the form of his ouster so that they could restore the mafia-like practice of Bhagbanda al over again.
While these opposing politicians are using the Ordinance issue as the casus belli, claiming that it seriously tarnished the image of their party, there are certainly no takers of this claim. For instance, the PM’s press secretary, Surya Thapa, who is clearly a witness to the unfolding drama from close quarters tweeted on 4/28/2020 that the crisis has been nothing less than the “evil manifestation of Bhagbanda practice”. The leftist thinker, Khagendra Sangroula (@belakoboli) has been even more specific when he raised in his own tweet that day four pointed questions to the rebel quartet. First, he asked where were these rebels when Oli tried to trample people’s freedom of expression! Secondly, why none of them objected when Oli brought all the constitutional bodies under his thumb? Third, did these people speak when Oli amassed state’s resources under his feet? Lastly, did these people speak when Oli suppressed Dr. KC’s demands? Clearly, given the hopeless record of performance of these rebel members themselves, their attempted ambush of Oli can never be seen as being inspired by any higher cause.
Time for honest elements in the NCP to rebuild Nepal’s governance system
Despite widespread corruptibility of the politicians in Nepal, one should assume that political parties include at least a few honest and conscientious members in their rank. If the NCP too happens to have some of them, it is time for them to assert and act. For the people at large who have been suffering the decades of misrule at the hands of these multiparty Thalus it hardly matters whether the baton of governance is retained by KP Oli himself or is passed down to nondescript Nepal, Khanal, Gautam or the self-styled people’s warrior, Prachanda. At the very least, people need a total break from this vicious cycle of corrupt politicians making money and winning elections over and over again.
Despite the country being chronically impoverished and hopelessly governed, Nepal is held in very high esteem around world in two areas of national development namely, accelerated restoration of Nepal denuded forests through the nationwide network of forest user groups and emerging as the top performer in meeting the Millennium Development Goals in child survival and maternal mortality reduction in 2015 due to the nationwide network of Mothers’ Groups and their Female Community Health Volunteers. The crucial variable in the success of these two institutions have been that the users themselves participate in the decision-making of their institutions, rendering their management transparent and their leaders squarely accountable to them. While China remains the fastest developing country in the modern world, in the case of the MDGs in child health and MMR, Nepal certainly performed better than her illustrious northern neighbour. Such is the potential of participatory governance for accelerated and sustainable national development under which the people themselves at the grassroots are placed in command of their own destiny. Therefore, what Nepal needs is nothing less than the total revamping of our democratic makeup and rebuilding it to meet these two basic conditions. Firstly, all powers of must be vested with the people themselves at the grassroots. And secondly, the system must be so structured that it makes no room for elected leaders to be dishonest to the people as at present. Nepal’s democracy must be sculpted to meet its own specific socio-economic character and needs.
(The writer can be reached at: biharishrestha@gmail.com)
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