Kathmandu: A victorious Girija Prasad Koirala can now afford to be accommodating. On plea of party unity his arch opponents in the party, former Prime Ministers’ K.P.Bhattarai and Sher Bahadur Deuba, can now be included in the central working committee as a gesture from the victorious party president. Regardless, the fact remains that Girija Koirala has trimmed the number of his elected opponents in the central committee of the party to less a fourth. This makes sure that any attempt to precipitate any splits will be constitutionally redundant. Any advantage that now remains with the K.P-Deuba group is in existing parliamentary numbers. How this number will be utilized to assert its presence in the winter session of the parliament remains to be seen.

The Deuba performance at Pokhara was predictable. But the fact that the Pokhara convention has alienated a sizeable portion of the congress grass-roots through manipulations and machinations obvious to the congress workers themselves makes for somber assessment as to its actual effects on the morale and the performance of a Nepali congress that is increasingly alienated from the masses.

The winter session of the parliament also sees a UML on the offensive. The Girija government is going to be hard pressed on the RNAC-Lauda air issue which has already claimed the airline key management and the tourism minister himself. It is noted that the minister had told the parliamentary committee that the choice of the Lauda air was a cabinet decision and nothing else.

In the background of increased Maoists activities closer to Kathmandu and the more frequent assertion on the streets of the nine left parties now cooperating with CPN-UML, the renewed public determination of the CPN-UML and its presence along with the disgruntled congressmen in parliament makes a potent combination for an isolated but stronger Girija Prasad Koirala.

Curiously, those seeking a way out of the current impasse in the efforts to elbow Koirala even see possibilities of the people power type that nudged Philippine President Estrada from power irrespective of his determined demonstration of legislative majority and support amidst popular charges of corruption. If the streets can topple systems, as in the Philippines and more curiously in Nepal, and claim legitimacy therefrom, why can’t it topple governments’ is the going explanation in the Philippines. What this means to democratic institutionalization is another matter of course.