Vigilance Follows Victory in Nepal
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Thursday 27 April 2006

    The streets of Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, which witnessed fierce battles between agitators and security forces for weeks, now wear a festive look. The people are celebrating a victory for the pro-democracy struggle. Many of them, and their well-wishers in the outside world, however, are aware that they may be rejoicing too soon.

    On Monday night, King Gyanendra Bikram Dev Shah bowed at long last to the people's pressure and proclaimed a revival of Nepal's elected Parliament, dissolved four turbulent years ago. Just two days earlier, His Majesty mocked the mass opposition to his authority by making a meaningless declaration of readiness to return "executive power" to the people and asking the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) against him to choose a common leader and Prime Minister for the country.

    It was a last-ditch effort to dupe the agitators and divide the SPA, and they saw through it. The offer met with outright rejection from them as well as the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or CPNM - in some sense, the most formidable of the monarch's opponents - despite the party's newfound preference for parliamentary democracy.

    Even as men and women with vermilion streaks on their foreheads dance in the streets to drum beats, with several groups of youths burning the King's effigies and trampling them under soiled shoes, Nepal knows that he has not gone far enough. The country also knows that the pro-democracy political spectrum has also to go far before this victory proves a viable proposition. Internal as well as external impediments to the process remain to be overcome.

    Internally, the Maoists' rejection of the King's revised offer as well is a major dampener. The CPNM has made loud and clear its displeasure at a mere revival of the dissolved Parliament of which it was no part by staging an attack on the headquarters of the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).

    The SPA is unhappy that the King has not gone far enough to proclaim elections to a constituent assembly. Originally a Maoist demand, the constituent assembly now provides the basis for consensus among Parliamentary parties, including the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) or the CPN (UML). They hope, however, that the revived Parliament, to meet on Friday and formally elect former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala of a national unity government, will take the first step of deciding on elections to a constituent assembly in order to draft a new constitution for Nepal.

    Not every observer shares this hope. The opposition to the monarchy, either way, has over the years been a hopelessly divided lot - politically, ideologically, and even fractionally. Koirala himself, in and out of the Prime Minister's post for over a decade, has not been without adversaries within his own Nepal Congress and outside.

    The SPA has adopted a "road map" toward a new democracy for Nepal. The second step under this agenda, after the decision on the constituent assembly, will be talks with the Maoists. The process may run against a road block which not many are talking about right now. Koirala had earlier spoken of the impossibility of holding elections in conditions in which the King and his RNA could influence their course. Some in the SPA also worry about the prospect of elections in conditions where the Maoists control much of the kingdom outside Kathmandu.

    These, however, are unavoidably necessary steps toward a new constitution. As former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has pointed out, Nepal is now ruled under a constitution that is unsafe for democracy: Deuba was appointed the Premier under one clause of the constitution and dismissed under another.

    The pro-democracy movement will encounter more serious external problems. As noted in my previous despatch on Nepal, King Gyanendra has over the past five years sought and secured protection from the George Bush administration of the USA as an ally in the "global war against terror." Washington and the Pentagon, along with their Western allies, have armed and advised the King in his offensive against the CPNM "terrorists" - an operation that has claimed a toll of 13,000 human lives, according to one estimate.

    There is nothing to show any decline in the support for the monarchy from the Bush administration, despite its readiness to unleash a series of wars to save democracy "elsewhere in the world." Significantly, after the SPA's rejection of the first of the King's offers, a delegation of envoys from the West, headed by that of the USA, met the leaders of the SPA in a vain bid to sell the offer to them.

    And there is only some purely verbal evidence to show a shift in the stand of India, despite its willingness to conduct itself as a camp follower of Bush in his highly and hypocritically selective crusade for "democracy." New Delhi hastened to welcome the first of the King's offers and called it "a step in the right direction." The response drew flak from several quarters, most notably from most sections of the pro-democracy movement in Nepal. Spokesmen of India's government even claimed credit for the offer and repeated the trite old formula about the twin pillars of Nepal's democracy, referring to the monarchy and a mere semblance of a multi-party democracy.

    Support for the Indian government stand came, not so unexpectedly, from the country's far-right opposition. Former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, of the ultra-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called upon the SPA to accept the King's first offer and to call off their agitation. Another BJP stalwart and former deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, asked New Delhi to keep its sights trained on the "Maoist threat." Some of the far-right foreign policy experts have also urged the government not to worry unduly about democracy in Nepal. The feigned status of Nepal as the world's "only Hindu kingdom" also strengthens the far right's staunch support for Gyanendra, regarded as the incarnation of Hindu deity Vishnu.

    Added to this has been the Indian support for the King stemming from ties of royal houses in India to the Narayanhiti Palace of Kathmandu. It was no accident perhaps that the Mammohan Singh government chose as its special envoy to Nepal during the crisis Karan Singh (son of Kashmir's Raja Hari Singh), who had married into Nepal's royal family.

    Above all is the compulsion, as perceived by the government and its security advisers, both official and non-official, to follow the course of an alliance against "global terror." The advisors are urging New Delhi, in column upon newspaper column, not to miss this opportunity to play the regional proxy of the world's sole superpower.

    All these are factors that militate against the Nepalese and their other neighbors' putting immediate and implicit faith in the semblance of a shift in official Indian policy espied by some experts. The phrase "twin pillars" may not have figured in the latest of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statements on Nepal, but this does not constitute a promise of India's support for a republican Nepalese constitution.

    With the West, India, and China (never a champion of multi-party democracy in Nepal and always a cross-border courtier of the King) on the same "anti-terror" wavelength, Gyanendra surely cannot be said to have dug his own political grave with Monday's proclamation.

    After this victory, a period of utmost vigilance awaits the people of Nepal.