Palace : Center of Hope and Despair
Kathmandu: – A national government is in the making. This has been the effort all along. The problem is with the major political parties who have since the past decade and more sought the advantage of government during elections. Their stance is that it is they as monopoly organizers of the people and as representatives of the now dissolved government who must be granted the prerogative of election government.
The completion of one year of agitation against what these parties call “regression” and the extension over a month now of their “decisive” campaign to topple the government appointed by the King has merely demonstrated that the country is back to square one in as much as the formation of an election government is concerned. If the parties have demonstrated their cadre is precisely because the people are aware all along that this is purely a power tussle of the type that has brought Nepali Democracy and Constitutionalism to this self-defeating phase.
The king as constitutional monarch appears very much aware of the need to cajole the vested interests that have contributed to the current distortions in order to set things right. He has been consistent in asking for a representative national government with the participation of the political parties in order that this national government be competent enough to settle the Maoists problems and remove the impediments to thwarted elections so that a new parliament can take up the constitutional process which has been derailed for so long.
In the process it has been made abundantly clear that no government can be allowed constitutionally to seek extension of office on the plea that elections can’t take place-thus the dismissal of Deuba. Two Supreme Court decisions have been emphatic against the restoration of the dissolved parliament-thus making redundant the Girija Koirala standpoint on the basis of which Madhav Nepal’s candidacy to government was forwarded.
Having put themselves into an untenable Constitutional corner, the major parties agitate to pressure the King to heed their demands with the threat that they can be as radical as the Maoists in turning republican if these demands are not met.
The fact is that the King can’t constitutionally meet these demands.
The major political parties who have gambled on the premise that the Army, which is the strength of the palace, is over stretched in this preoccupation with the Maoists rebellion have miscalculated on their strength amidst the people. In actual fact, the parties have stretched their resources and yet a public whose support they seek turn increasingly belligerent against their violent agitation.
And so the third round of the talks the King has opened with the political sector for the formation of a national government reveals the same anomalies that have contributed to the current disarray. Deuba insists as he did twenty months ago that he head the electoral government. Both Girija and Madhav are at odds still regarding the solution and so the stalemate each other when it comes to an agenda to meet the King.
In the process, it is revealed that L.B.Chand was their candidate for PM after they failed to secure consensus on their own candidacy to head the election government. At least Koirala is on record of having admitted that he had also acquiesced to S.B.Thapa’s placement as Prime Minister upon Chand’s resignation. This, after the second round of talks at the palace repeated the same failures when it came to nominating themselves.
The third round of talks has again ended in the same stalemate. The five party agitation now demands resignation of Thapa but fails in an agenda for the national government with Koirala and Madhav Nepal differing on even the meeting with the King fearing that emergence of separate standpoints which prevented the formation of a national government on two separate governments over the past twenty months.To boot, the continuation of a Thapa government in-charge of elections would seem untenable to Madhav Nepal but suitable to Koirala. Koirala finds it impossible to agree to a Deuba appointment. So far this stalemate is advantageous to Thapa and by default to Koirala. This makes it a desperate situation for Madhav Nepal whose own party has done well to corner him in a position that is self-defeating both ways.
Something must break somewhere and this international donor community has signaled well by ignoring the five party demands to postpone the NDF meeting of donors beginning today. At least the international community has signaled its awareness of democracy and constitutionalism and continues to insist on the need for the parties to cooperate with the King.
And so the third round of talks is on. That Thapa must go is a demand that is virtually consensus. There is also a consensus on the need for a national government. What role the parties will play in the formation of the now definitive electoral government is something they will have to decide themselves.