Kathmandu: The UML’s hard-to-get stance threatns the Deuba ministry whose rationale is based on an all party nature that can convincingly talk with the Maoists from a national standpoint. Despite assurances, Madhav Nepal’s internal party politics plays well with his bargain as mush as it does to cover up the hidden agenda of UML-Maoists contacts that appear as yet unexposed to the public.

The UML is not alone in playing the Maoists with the system. Even Girija Koirala of the congress is known for his exploration of possibilities. The abrupt announcement of the haltage of his street agitation is linked with the rainy season by which way the agitation says it will go to the rural areas. The fact is that any headway that the agitation is to make in the countryside must do so with some understanding with the Maoists.

If the UML plays hard-to-get, the RPP will remain harder to get since its conditionality for its participation in government is based on a majority in the dissolved parliament.

The Deuba experiment will thus prove costly if it fails. The fact is that parties represented in the dissolved parliament have contributed to the formation of each government under Article 127. In this sense the King has stuck to the constitution despite allegations otherwise. Both Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Surya Bahadur Thapa were appointed with the accord of the parliamentary parties with an eye to the majority in the dissolved parliament. It is unfortunate that the partisan media coalesced with the political parties in the effort to pressure the King to follow the individual agenda of the political parties, which individually didn’t command the majority of the dissolved parliament.

In line with this media inundation is the issue of the reappointment of Deuba. Deuba’s party alone considers his appointment the lone correction of the alleged regression. The CPN (UML) deems it only a partial correction. The Girija-Congress, on the other hand, calls this step too a regression. Lost in these political standpoints whose commonality the media has portrayed, as regression is the practical constitutional fact that the first time since October 4, 2002, either Girija Koirala of the Nepali Congress or Madhav Nepal of the UML will not have blessed the appointment of Deuba, if the UML retrenches from its original support to Deuba.

The fact is that both Nepal and Koirala supported the Chand appointment and withdrew their support after he did not meet their individual agenda. The fact is that Girija backed Thapa by making Madhav Nepal’s appointment untenable constitutionally. The fact is that discord in the five agitating parties prevented themselves from naming names for a Prime Minister facilitating Deuba’s reappointment. The fact is that Deuba’s appointment despite his claims otherwise is a reappointment under article 127 and by no means an acknowledgement by the King of his claim to office under the use that he recommended. By no constitutional means can the King allow an elected government to claim office on grounds of the postponement of scheduled elections. The King has by firing and hiring Deuba again allowed him a chance to form a national government on grounds of his chances of doing so in the absence of other parliamentary options publicly demonstrated by the discord in the five agitating parties. If he does not produce, what are the parliamentary options constitutionally justifiable? This is what public debate must concentrate upon. It is this debate that our partisan politics and partisan media will now avoid.