Policy of keeping “options” open benefits UML

March 5, 2003
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Kathmandu: The UML leader, Madhav Nepal, is hitting the media headlines these days.

The reason: his dual policy which provides him space to bargain with both, the Palace and the political parties and perhaps it is this reason that he maneuvered his party’s decision at the freshly concluded party’s convention in Janakpur which said that the UML will keep all the options “open” till the country’s crises were over.

Whether the country’s problems will come to an end or not with his party’s keeping all the options open, however, what is for sure is that the UML under Madhav Nepal is playing hide and seek with the Palace and the political parties.

If on the one hand, the UML leader is sending warning signals to the Palace that the party will not take rest until the powers that currently were housed in the Palace came back to Singh Durbar, on the other, he is also sending signals to the Palace that should he be given an opportunity to serve the country through the formation of an all-party government, he would gleefully take up the challenge.

This means that should the monarch invite him for the country’s Premiership, Madhav Nepal will accept that offer in less than a second and that if the monarch did so would also mean that his party would forget the monarch’s previous acts which he himself on several occasions has termed unconstitutional.

To recall, the UML party is demanding the formation of an all-party government under article 128 and apparently wishes to head the cabinet formed under that particular article.

“I am told that the King is also in favor of an all-party government”, is what Madhav Nepal is telling his party colleagues. This means that for the time being, Madhav Nepal would prefer to wait for a few days more than waging an out and out agitation against the King hoping that the latter if convinced on his party’s demand might elevate his ranks in the country.

The UML’s hidden desire appears not to irritate the monarch any more. Could be a guess work only.

Logically too, if the monarch so decides, the UML party as the largest party will be told to form the cabinet to be participated in the other political parties as well.

However, whether the Maoists will send their representative(s) to participate in such a government is hard to predict. Hopefully they will! But what is for sure is that if such an arrangement comes into existence, the congress under Girija Koirala is on record to have told that his party would not join the cabinet formed under article 128 buit would remain adamant for the restoration of the parliament.

Be that as it may, the UML is on the move thanks to its policy of keeping all the options “open”.