Republic convenient cover all

February 18, 2004
3 MIN READ
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Kathmandu: Lines are being drawn. The people despite violent hurdles and threats throng to meet the King to seek solace from their mounting woes. The political parties including the Maoists who claim monopoly to the people’s voice are severely threatened.

The solution they seek is in another movement. This time it is for Republic. As party intellectuals have begun their new thought, they claim that a monarchy in Nepal is inimical to a democracy. The monarchy must go and so a republic is the only solution to democracy.

The academics dismiss the spontaneity of public support to King as stage-managed. They dismiss the strength and the determination of the King as one backed by the strength of the army and not by the people. And so a two pronged attack: one on the King and the other on the security sector is already on the cards.

A willing partisan press will now highlight seminars and academic logic justifying the need for a republic in Nepal. A partisan media now will unearth security excesses and seek to destabilize the growing rapport between the affected people and the security forces that contribute now to the flow of intelligence and support which is pushing the insurgency underground compelling it once more to retain its public presence through terror.

Clearly, our supporters of the constitution, its builders and nurturers now conclude along with the Maoists that this multi-party system no longer nourishes their democratic aspirations but instead allows the King to empower himself at the people’s expense.

This will be the continuous message of the agitating parties despite their supposed lip service to the constitution. This has been the message of the Maoist movement and the raison d’être of their armed revolution all along.

There is another message. If the King does not bend to the whims of the political parties, the parties must necessarily collude with the Maoists. Lost in the message is how the republic is a cure-all for the woes of Nepali democracy.

A Presidential or a Prime Ministerial system under a republic must necessarily have a Head of State. If he or she heads a government His or Her excessive authority must be checked by a judiciary and a legislature. If the President is titular, residual constitutional powers are likely for reasons of practical convenience to be bestowed on that institution. The past thirteen years of competitive organizational democracy has demonstrated that our political organizations would rather settle the competition through brute force demonstrated on the streets and not in the legislature, the target being a seat in government’s that conducts elections. The role of the judiciary and even the parliament vis-à-vis government as check and balance thus becomes perfunctory and even residual constitutional authority must bend to the will of political force as our experience shows. King or no King, it is clear that our style of democracy will hardly be a democracy with mere structural changes. This the partisan academics will not accept.

There is politics to be gained to preserve the losses incurred through behavioral faults and so it is convenient to dismiss the politics of the past decade as mistake and dump the problems of democracy on the King.