Kathmandu: The move to topple Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is on. His rival former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has launched two broadsides. The first is the call for an all-party government. The second is the charge that Deuba has lost confidence of the Royal Palace.
G. P. Koirala’s new call for a consensus government is pleasing to the Opposition parties who have been demanding a role. However, Koirala seems to have forgotten that merely weeks before he had been denying the need for non-congress participation in government on grounds of decisive majority in the parliament. After moves in the congress central committee failed to flip Koirala in power on plea of Deuba’s utility having eroded because of the failure of the talks with the Maoists, the need for Deuba to step down for larger unity has been a consistent theme these days from among the Koirala camp.
The latest ruse to be used has been the spate of interviews in the media of the King. In the absence of sensationalism tempered by the emergency His Majesty the King’s meetings with media persons have received widespread coverage. This has been focus of much politics lately.
Some how the Koirala camp does not appear comfortable with the media focus on the King. Curious interpretations on the constitutional monarch’s statements now emanate from this camp.
One such interpretation is to do with the King’s statement that it was not his wish to declare the state of emergency. This is being interpreted as grounds for distance between the King and the Prime Minister who recommended the emergency. It is conveniently forgotten in this argument that the King has said elsewhere that the circumstances that led to His constitutional endorsement of the recommendations by the Prime Minister for the emergency compelled Him to acquiesce to the emergency. Granted that the Girija machinery sees benefit from seeing a discord between the King and His Prime Minister in order to declare Deuba’s utility eroded. But former Prime Minister Koirala must preach from the pulpit on the need for the monarch to remain silent as evidence of constitutionalism at work. It is this that must be noted. Girija appears blissfully unaware that he should leave the monarchy to itself in order to keep that institution above politics. This, despite the fact that interpreting the King’s statement to suit Deuba’s downfall may benefit him.
It is another matter that the King appears to have made concerted attempts in his various statements to stick to his constitutional role. Regardless, the political establishment appears to be making much of His statements on the current situation. Yet another example in this line of thinking is the King’s frank statement that the Nepali army is “defensive” in nature. This is being taken by the Girija camp as an unwarranted exposure of strategy as if the Nepali army could afford to be “offensive”. Amidst much hue and cry over the army returning to its barracks there is deliberate attempt to try and show a distance between the army and Deuba in the logic that Deuba must go because he has lost the confidence of the King and the army and his talks have failed with the Maoists. In the process, the message is lost that, in accordance to our constitution, Deuba can only go democratically when he loses the confidence of his party. Whether Girija babu can use the supposed distance between the King and Deuba for the purpose of ousting him is apparently for politics and not for the constitution to decide. It is enough that he has so decided that it is to his political benefit to cast aspersions at the King’s constitutional statements.