King Gyanendra may deserve whatever is coming to him, but the Nepali people don’t
By Kunda Dixit
The maharajahs of Kashmir and Nepal met in Kathmandu in the presence of Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran on Thursday. Expectations are high that some breakthrough will emerge to defuse the continued volatile confrontation. But even by Friday morning as another 11 hour curfew set in and citizens of the capital reeled under shortages, it doesn’t look like good sense is prevailing.
OPERATION MAHARAJA: Girija Koirala of the NC meeting Indian special envoy Karan Singh, Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Indian Ambassador Shiv Shankar Mukherjee. Singh later had a private dinner with King Gyanendra to find a solution to the impasse.
The reason we are right at the brink is because of the continued refusal of King Gyanendra to see the implications of his takeover on the country, on himself and on the institution monarchy. He may deserve whatever is coming to him, but the Nepali people don’t. This has been a surprising uprising. No one has been more surprised by its runaway momentum than the seven political parties who launched it. In fact, they are being overtaken by spontaneous popular outrage on the streets. The people, too, have been surprised by their own power and emboldened by it.
King Gyanendra must also be raising one startled eyebrow, he thought he could ram things through with force once again. The Maoists perhaps should be the most astounded: the Nepali people have achieved in two weeks what the comrades have taken more than ten years to try to do and in the process left at least 14,000 fellow-Nepalis dead, millions in misery and the country in ruins.
We keep saying there are three centres of power in this country and have always forgotten the fourth: the people. They are a power to be reckoned with, and the other three ignore it at their own peril. The problem with people power is that it is ephemeral: manifesting itself only after a certain anger threshold is crossed, it stays for a while and then it subsides. It has to be channeled and lead while it is in a swarm mode otherwise the street energy for change is wasted.
Past people power uprisings like the Velvet and Orange Revolutions and our own 1990 movement brought about change because they were directed to a desirable outcome: stripping the powers of a dictatorship with minimum bloodshed. When the Philippine army refused orders to fire on demonstrators in 1986, strongman Ferdinand Marcos still hoped to cling on to power. He got a call from US senator Paul Laxalt, who gave him the famous line: “Mr President, it’s time to cut and cut cleanly.” Marcos knew it was time to go.
So there is a certain historical resonance to American Ambassador James Moriarty telling CNN that the king may have to fly out “clinging to the nose-wheel of a helicopter”. From Saigon to Teheran, the Americans have seen such chopper-borne evacuation of once-favourite strongmen frequently enough.
History repeats itself, and this week it is repeating itself as a farce. Three stalwarts of the Panchayat in 1990 are in positions of power: cabinet ministers Kamal Thapa and Niranjan Thapa as well as that shadowy adviser Sharad Chandra Shah.
They never learn, do they, that the country belongs to the people and not just to the king.
Courtesy : Nepali Times
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