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VOL. 03, NO. 02, June 16, 2009 (Ashadh 02 2066)
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COALITION PARTNERS
Divided They Stand
The second coalition of the Republic of Nepal in less than a year faces ominous threat from deep internal division and long-running mutual suspicion
By SUSHIL SHARMA
Well begun is half done, goes a legend. Three weeks after he took the oath, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has not even begun.
The hotchpotch coalition has struggled to take off. Thanks to the hard bargaining among the coalition partners over posh portfolios. And, more importantly, to the deep division within the key partners.
Internal dissension has claimed the youngest of the key coalition parties as its first casualty. The Madheshi Janadhikar Forum has split into two.
The founder-chairman Upendra Yadav’s left-leaning faction has been weakened. The new-entrant, Bijay Kumar Gachchhdar, has bolstered his non-left faction.
Yadav is out of government. Gachchhdar is in, as deputy prime minister.
But the former Nepali Congress leader’s moment of glory may not last long. Not because of his bête noire and the former foreign minister. But because of the ministerial ambitions of the 32 MPs who “backed” him.
The fallout of the cabinet expansion will be his litmus test. Past records of ‘tested’ big parties – leave alone the small Terai outfits -- are not encouraging.
The Nepali Congress has weathered the storm over the induction of the party boss Girija Prasad Koirala’s daughter Sujata Koirala into the government. For now.
The power equation in the party has changed. Former Sher Bahadur Deuba and Sujata have joined hands. Trusted aides like Prakash Man Singh have left Deuba to join hands with the latter’s bitter rival, Sushil Koirala.
Sujata leads the party in the government. With the support of Deuba. But the perennially faction-ridden centrist party is too divided to be in a position to ensure the coalition’s future.
Sources say, even the octogenarian architect of the present coalition has left his hand-picked prime minister guessing. In the power games.
A Nepali Congress-Maoist combine is what some are speculating about. In a few months from now.
It was not for nothing that an unsure prime minister sought a meeting with the man he replaced three weeks ago. Interestingly, the meeting with the Maoist supremo Prachanda was held in the presence of the Maoist-friendly party chief, Jhalnath Khanal.
There was no major breakthrough at the Godavari resort meeting. Nor was the message he sought to convey was immediately clear.
But ominous speculations have begun doing the rounds. Of a Maoist-UML combine at the helm. To counter the prospect of a Nepali Congress-Maoist combine.
Prime minister Nepal’s UML is no less divided. Chairman Khanal and K.P.Oli lead the rival bandwagons. The prime minister is caught in the middle. The internal division has weakened the ever-indecisive Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Given the shaky grounds the major parties find themselves in, the future of the coalition looks equally shaky.
As they set out for honeymoon, the coalition partners are bound to rock their forced marriage . A natural fallout of the divided houses and deep-running mistrust in the world of the make-believe consensus.
Collision Course
Confrontation is set to become a bitter reality of Nepali politics amidst the never-ending sweet rhetoric
By SUSHIL SHARMA
It is dawn. June 8, Monday. Bhanu Khanal ‘Yaman’ hangs himself. At the Chulachuli cantonment, in the far eastern Ilam district.
Acquaintances gave two reasons for the Maoist combatant’s suicide. The frustration over the ouster of the Maoist government. Doubt over the integration into the Nepali army. And fear of meeting a fate of Sri Lanka’s LTTE fighters.
The young warrior’s fatal decision might be challenged. But not his reported analysis.
The downfall of the Maoist government is the present-day reality.
The impossibility of the integration of the Maoist combatants into the Nepali army is a near-certain future reality.
No influential national forces nor any critically key international forces are for it.
And there is a lurking danger that the Maoists meeting the LTTE fighters’ fate could prove a future reality.
The supreme leader, Prachanda, did admit as much. In his Tundikhel outbursts against the “foreign masters” who “master-minded” the government’s downfall, he referred to “warnings” of making him another Prabhakaran.
Sources confirm that he did indeed receive intelligence warnings in the wake of the abortive move to dismiss army chief Rookmangud Katwal.
Having led a bloody insurgency for ten years under powerful intelligence surveillance, no one is better positioned than Prachanda to read the writing on the wall.
In a desperate counter move, he sought to show his muscle. By brining in more than a hundred thousand people at Tundikhel.
But the same zeal was conspicuously absent in the subsequent first anniversary of the republic that the Maoists claim to have fathered.
The first birthday celebration of the baby republic was a forgettable event. There was no party.Out of power less than a year after they were in, the Maoists now find themselves on the run.
Even as he publicly spits venom against the “foreign master” a desperate Prachanda, according to sources, has privately sent feelers to influential power centres to create conditions for the return of the Maoists to power.
Prachanda confided to a reporter recently that he was busy preparing a political document to clear the way for the return to power.
It was in this light that the surprise meeting with the prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal at Godavari had been seen. Prachanda knows the prime minister’s vulnerability to the pulls and the pressures from within and without the present coalition.
The prime minister, on his part, is also learnt to be toying the idea of allying with the Maoists, should he continue to be “cornered” by the Koirala and Oli company.
It is not for nothing that he delayed the revocation of the Maoist government’s dismissal of the army chief Katwal.
The delay has alienated the army top brass. It has felt betrayed by the prime minister who rode to power on the strength of the army chief Katwal’s solo defiance of the Maoist government.
The army is increasingly becoming restless over the indecision and uncertain future of the new coalition.
Said a top general, “waar ki paar ko ladai (a fight to finish) against the Maoists is inevitable. Sooner than later”
As mistrust and deep division make the coalition shaky and the Maoists seek to take advantage of the situation to reverse the recent setbacks and a possible doom, national and regional security concerns will take precedence over the constitutional and democratic process.
That will lead the country to a collision course. With the constitutional president finding himself pushed into the centre-stage, one more time. As he was during the Katawal episode that proved suicidal for the Maoists
US-NEPAL
The Prism
By A CORRESPONDENT
During a visit to Nepal a few years ago, one of Robert Blake’s predecessors, Christina Rocca, ruled out looking at Nepal from the prism of India.
In Kathmandu last week for his first South Asian journey as assistant secretary of state, Blake did not make such commitment.
But he used the “familiarization” tour for some hard-talk on the Maoists. He ruled out de-listing the former rebels from the US terrorist list.
That should go down well in Delhi which felt “betrayed” by the Nepalese Maoists.
When former US ambassador James Moriarty dubbed the 12-point Delhi pact between the Maoists and the seven mainstream parties “wrong-headed”, he was condemned as villain of peace.
Three years down the road, Moriarty has the last laugh. Probably, he will share the laugh with the former deputy chief of the US mission in Delhi in his new avatar as in-charge of South Asian affairs at the State Department. Blake flew from Kathmandu to Dhaka where Moriarty represents the Obama administration.
While Blake appeared to see Nepal from the prism of the US’ new South Asian “strategic partner” his senior, Nicholas Burns, was in Delhi.
It will be interesting to find out if the world’s two largest democracies now see eye-to-eye on the Himalayan republic’s communist “rogue”.
