A Tale of Two Elections
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Friday 19 January 2007

    Seldom have two electoral events anywhere been awaited with such anxiety as in South Asia today. The results of these elections, and even the run-up to them, will make all the difference between democracy and destabilization, with region-wide ramifications.

    The story of these elections in Nepal and Bangladesh, expected to be held in six months or so, presents striking similarities as well as contrasts. The immediately striking similarity is that, in both the cases, the polls will come after the people's battle against what once seemed impossible odds.

    In the mountainous Himalayan state, the people have overcome the odds with impressive speed and ease, indeed. Nepal's insurrection against a hated monarchy, which brought together the country's parliamentary parties and Maoist insurgents, started with huge initial handicaps.

    It did not then have the support of India, the neighbor Nepal could never wish away. New Delhi then did not approve of any tinkering with the dilapidated structure, of which it saw the monarchy and the parliament as "the twin pillars." The movement, with an important place for the Maoists, met with the stern disapproval of the world's sole superpower as well, with US Ambassador to Nepal James Francis Moriarty displaying no diplomatic restraint in this regard. The parliamentary Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or the CPN(M), too, took their newly forged relations to a near-breaking point several times.

    It is relentless popular pressure that has taken the struggle to the stage where Nepal can look forward confidently to the next major step of a general election to a Constituent Assembly under an interim government that includes the Maoists. The assembly will adopt the new Constitution of Nepal, replacing the interim statute that has no role, not even a ceremonial one, for the dethroned monarch. Under the new statute, Nepal will elect a new parliament.

    It is popular will, again, that keeps the prospect of polls alive in Bangladesh of riverine beauty. The people sent the army back to the barracks in 1990, when an uprising overthrew the military regime of General Hossain Mohammad Ershad and put Sheikh Hasina Wajed and her Awami League in power. Fear of the people's reaction to any other step forced Begum Khaleda Zia to step down as prime minister and dissolve the parliament in October 2006 to pave the way for a fresh general election.

    The most striking contrast between the situations in Nepal and Bangladesh is to be found in the popular mood and ambience. Optimism is unmistakable in the Himalayan land that is making history, emerging from the shadows of a dictatorship that the Nepalese had not hoped to dislodge through a series of street demonstrations.

    Bangladesh, which began as a secular democracy before buckling under two military despots for 15 frustrating years (1975-1990), is not full-blooded in its hopes.

    The current standing of the armed forces in the two countries is cause enough for the atmospheric contrast. The Royal Nepal Army (RNA), which waged the King's war with the Maoists all these years, has been forced to part with its cherished prefix. The Nepal Army of today has also been constrained to lock up its arms along with the CPN(M), under the arms management agreement that has brought the new interim government into being.

    In Bangladesh, by almost all accounts, the outcome of the recent developments is disturbingly different. The election, originally scheduled for January 22, has been put off indefinitely, following the protest of alliance led by the Awami League against attempts by the caretaker government to rig the polls. Reports suggest, however, that the pre-election change has unofficially invested the Bangladesh army with new powers. The Opposition protests of the past few weeks brought over 60,000 soldiers into the streets, and several observers fear that the military top brass might just be getting ideas of running Bangladesh again.

    The protests have forced President Iajuddin Ahmed to step down as chief advisor to the caretaker government, but his resignation does not make Begum Zia's Bangladesh National Party (the BNP) and its allies, including the fanatical Jamat-e-Islami, any less reckonable a force. The newly installed authorities in Dhaka may produce a less flawed voters list for a relatively fair election by June-July. That, however, may not prevent another wave of protests, this time from the BNP and its band.

    In Nepal, some serious observers share the apprehension that the parties wanting a republican Nepal may be wrong to write off King Birendra and rule out his comeback. Monarchy has staged comebacks before in Nepal, after mismanagement by Parliamentary parties with a pronounced propensity to squander historic opportunities.

    Religious politics has played a reprehensible role in both the countries.

    King Birendra claimed a divine right to rule as an avatar of Vishnu, a major Hindu deity, and the claim won him support beyond the country's borders. The former princes of India (with whom the monarch flaunted his links) may have abandoned him in his current predicament, but the political far right in India has not. The Islamist parties in Bangladesh, meanwhile, threaten to dilute and distort the country's democracy (even if an election is held) by tempting both the Awami League and the BNP with their tainted support.

    New Delhi, under pressure from the Left, is apparently taking a more positive view of happenings in Nepal than before. The crunch may come, however, when a new Nepal moves for a re-negotiation of the unequal India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship 1950, as desired and demanded by the SPA and the Maoists alike. As for Moriarty, he has again made it clear that Washington won't be removing in a hurry the "terror tag" pinned on the Maoists. The governments of India and the USA are less open about their preferences in Bangladesh. But their new-found strategic partnership, now strengthened further by a nuclear deal, cannot lose sight of the "terrorist threat" here, for which their think-tanks advocate a tough remedy.