Kathmandu: A casual urge by King Gyanendra to leaders of the five parties’ that were granted joint audience underlines the crux. The King asked that he not be allowed to exceed the constitution. Predictably this too was lost in the media rhetoric of the Royal audience was overplayed by the politicking parties.

The fact of the matter is that the agitating political parties oppose HM King Gyanendra’s October 4th 2002 use of Article 127 on grounds that it is unconstitutional. In its stead the parties have different opinions of what the constitution should impose on the King.

First, is the opinion voiced by Sher Bahadur Deuba that the King can’t dismiss an elected Prime Minister under this constitution. Second, is the UML contention which, while agreeing to Deuba’s version, would want the King to maker correction by using the ad continuum clause in the current constitution under article 128 which legalized the interim government of 1990 and allowed it to form the current constitution.

The UML in the effort to accommodate the Girija Congress support then went to demand the third constitutional contention, namely, the restoration of the dissolved parliament.

The partisan media and our partisan academics and professionals in echoing these partisan cover up the fact that the country’s political sector is seriously divided over how the constitutional should take place and that each of the separate constitutional stand points that have taken in public are severely flawed constitutionally as well.

Had particularly the media been sincere in its role to inform the public properly, the people would have been told to constitutionally use Article 127 as recommended by the elected government which refused to resign on grounds of its inability to conduct constitutionally stipulated elections. The King then asked the political sector for the formation of a national government, which would otherwise have been the responsibility of the dismissed elected government, had it not chosen to lengthen its office unconstitutionally on grounds of Article 127.

There is yet another contention of the agitating political parties which attempts to put the King wrong. Having dismissed the elected government and called for the formation of an all-representative national government, the King then proclaimed that he had assumed the executive powers in the absence of government. The media echoed the political contention that the King was not allowed executive powers under the current constitution. The media however, failed to ask the politicians where the executive powers would be in the extraordinary circumstances of dissolved parliament and dismissed government? Instead the media toed the political standpoints that the successive governments installed were bereft of executive powers in the effort to highlight the allegation that the King has usurped it despite the fact that the constitution does not envisage a government, subsequently installed, without, the executive powers under article 35.

The constitutional mess thus created by political interpretations repeated as truth in the media has now caught up with the agitating political parties. The third round of meetings with the King have been portrayed as result of the agitation to which the King has succumbed.

In actual fact this third round too is a continuum of the Royal effort augured in the October 4th.

The media hides the fact that the agitating parties were instrumental in the appointment of Chand and Thapa as Prime Ministers under article 127 in the absence of agreements among themselves regarding their own candidacy, which nevertheless can’t be under any other clause than article 127.

Furthermore this third round too this critical difference on the key position the search for which was precipitated by the Thapa resignation has highlighted the flaws of the parties in their constitutional interpretations. This time the King has told them not to seek the unconstitutional from the constitutional monarch.

The partisan media the partisan academics and the partisan streets will of course attempt to cover-up the flaws and use the streets to force the unconstitutional on the King.

The fact is that, as sometimes hinted by the agitating leaders the five party agitation demand that the King make a political decision and not a constitutional one when it comes to the matter of restoring the dissolved House to which the agitation is committed. If the King can make such a political decision he might scratch the constitution outright and talk with the Maoists directly. Bu this the agitating parties would want to preserve for themselves and here again they are nor concurrent on the matter of under who’s leadership. It is this that makes it predictable that their unconstitutional standpoint will force the King to seek options elsewhere at risk of further alienating the agitation.