I n d e p t h A n a l y s i s
Kathmandu: A welcome conclusion to the fluidity of the past years has been provided by the HM King Gyanendra’s Tuesday address to the nation. His Majesty has in a half-hour long address announced to his people that he has assumed government.

At time of writing, reactions of the political sector is at best lulled. The mainstream parties who have basked on constitutional prerogatives will definitely find the new public environs of expectations unsuitable to their monopoly. At this juncture it will perhaps be wise to await His Majesty the King’s formation of the new cabinet. As it is, much of the anomalies of the past years of constitutional democracy has been in the disregard of the basic democratic norms in the haste to form election governments. This in itself has been reflecting poorly on the total election processes, which, the mainstream parties are reluctant to admit, fostered the Maoist rebellion in the very first place.

His Majesty has assumes the burden of the state. The State was withering away both under the pressured of the Maoist rebellion and the continued conflicting approaches to government of the mainstream parties. The confidence with which this was done was based on their monopoly of political organizations under the present system. The impression that the King’s power solely lay on the army which was preoccupied with the insurgency allowed the political parties their conflicting standpoints regarding even His Majesty’s efforts of the past years to help cobble together a national government of the parliamentary forces to cope with the systematic challenge. The last Deuba government was the closest to such a government but contradictions within the government composition had virtually paralyzed it to public dismay.

Considering that, in the absence of parliament, government formed under article 127 were responsible to the King considering that even members of government continued to shift the onus of non-performance to the monarchy, His Majesty’s options remained limited and his choice appears logical.

At this particular juncture one cannot but respond to the King’s historic move with cautious optimism as has the lay public.