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VOL. 28, NO. 16, Dec 26, 2008 (Poush 11 2065 B.S.)
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Change of Leadership
Continuation of Instability
The government and political system has changed from one to another, what remains permanent is the continuation of instability
KESHAB POUDEL
"If the government cannot fulfill the commitments made by it, CPN-UML will pull out from the government," said CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal. 'The Maoist must fulfill the promises made by them."
"Maoists have been working as if this is their own majority government. If they don't listen to us, our party will pull out from the government," said foreign minister and leader of Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) Upendra Yadav.
"Nepali Congress will continue to boycott the CA session till the prime minister Prachanda does not fulfill his assurances," said Laxman Ghimire, chief whip of Nepali Congress. "If they don't return seized property, what is the sense to be there in
CA?"
With the visit of Indian external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee in November followed by several high level visit of Chinese officials including its foreign minister, Maoist-led government feels shaken.
Although Maoists and other political parties have been making efforts to cover the contribution made by founder of Nepal, king Prithivi Narayan Shah, his explicit observation that Nepal is a yam between two boulders remain the evergreen reality.
"Thanks to its geo-strategic position, Nepal has been facing one or the other kinds of instability and change of government and system. The trend of instability in Nepal has brought the ragtag terrorists into power and the same trend is making it nervous. After completion of his hundred days in power, an outspoken Maoist prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' has pointed out that external and internal forces have combined together to dislodge him," said a political analyst.
"In the politics of Nepal, it is not only the domestic political parties that are the key actors. There are also foreigners. From the face of it, it looks like Nepali political parties are bickering but underneath the whole world will be squabbling," said Prachanda, who himself had recently revealed that he stayed eight years in India out of 10 years of insurgency.
In explicit terms what he means is that behind all seen players of politics in Nepal there are hands of unseen power. "Whatever forms of government is promulgated and whoever may come to the power, the age old saying of king Prithivi Narayan Shah appears as a hard reality. Until there is amicable adjustments between Nepal's two big neighbours, the political instability in Nepal is a fact to live with," said the political analyst.
Whoever is in authority- monarch or reds, they face similar kind of geostrategic pressure. There is a very limited space to play. Though Maoist leader Prachanda has said he stayed eight years in Indian cities, he cannot ignore north's concern. When he started to oversee north's concern, there is reaction from south.
"A legendary figure of Nepali politic B.P. Koirala, who put his neck into risk while coming back to Nepal unarmed with a call of national reconciliation, visualized a patch of dark cloud over the political sky of South Asia. He said that South Asia is going to be a zone of turmoil. When Koirala was fighting for democracy from exile,
he saw that the whole area of Nepal was becoming zone of turmoil. To save the country from the crisis, he returned with the slogan of national reconciliation. B.P argued it was not only a question of democracy in the country but the very survival of Nepal as a nation was under a great threat."
"After more than thirty years that threat is much more imminent and dangerous. Even a terrorist tagged leader in power at present was alarmed by this threat in the very existence of the nation but the problem of the politicians in Nepal is not with the diagnosis of the situation but the lack of vision and skill to overcome it," said the
analyst.
Late Leo E. Rose's observation in his book Nepal: A strategy for survival in 1971 is very valid. "To Kathmandu, the current potentialities of external domination and subversions are not very different in kind- though they may be in degree- from those with which Nepali governments have had to contend for at least two centuries," Rose writes. "There is a basic similarity between King Prithivi Narayan Shaha's analysis
of Nepal's role in the Himalayan area and his selection of tactics and that of the Ninth ruler in his dynasty, king Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev."
Although he tried to make the version of Prithivi Narayan Shah irrelevant and ordered his cadres to destroy the statue of Shah preaching publicly that Nepal has special relation with south, however, he could not stand by that for much longer.
As Rose writes," Nevertheless there are choices to be made within this strictly limited frame work and the consistency displayed by widely different groups of decision makers over a long period is one of the more notable aspects of Nepal's history."
Recent visits of high officials of Nepal's two neighbours and the remarks given by them during their interactions show that Maoist leader Prachanda and his comrades have to walk very delicately while they are in power. The constitution may change the leadership but it cannot guarantee the political stability. The four statements of various leaders indicate coming instability
