Stubborn Koirala and NC’s Impending Downfall

By Yubraj Acharya (nepalnews.com)

While a weakening NC might look appealing to other political parties, including the Maoists and the monarchists, the Nepali people will have to pay the biggest price for NC’s misadventures, as they have been doing in the last seventeen years.

For those who closely follow Nepal’s politics, especially the dynamics within the Nepali Congress party (NC), Sujata Koirala’s appointment as a minister without portfolio—or a de facto deputy Prime Ministry, as some have called it—should not have come as a surprise. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s nephew Mahesh Acharya and his close aide Shekhar Koirala have both climbed these ladders before. Prime Minister Koirala’s action revealed not only that he is still a monarchist at heart, but also, and more interestingly, that, despite what the Nepali people have been told and what the international community has been forced to believe, he cares more about retaining the power within the family’s grip than about keeping coalition partners happy so that the peace process can move ahead as planned. This is nothing new.

What seems surprising and disturbing, however, is that even when GPK takes actions as radical as this, the opposition within the party is amazingly silent. The silence raises the suspicion that even outspoken opposition leaders within the party, including Narahari Acharya and Gagan Thapa, may be getting some kickbacks from the party being the leading party in the coalition government—why the silence otherwise? Moreover, the silence proves that the party lacks a leader who can rise up to the occasion when the party and the country need him/her the most. It also proves that, minus the support from GPK, the occasional rhetoric that we hear from some quarters within the NC about reforming the party is a mere political weapon. This observation implies that even if the monarchists and the Maoists are sidelined from Nepali politics after the constituent assembly elections, the lack of proper leadership and vision of NC will continue to be a threat to Nepal’s stability, more so when the GPK and his cronies are around.

While a weakening NC might look appealing to other political parties, including the Maoists and the monarchists, the Nepali people will have to pay the biggest price for NC’s misadventures, as they have been doing in the last seventeen years. A few examples from the history are illustrative. First of all, it was the NC’s insistence that retained the monarchy in 1990, which continues to haunt the nation almost two decades later. It was an internal conflict within the NC that brought down its own majority government after the first elections. Occasional flirtation of NC’s fractions with other smaller parties so that the former can be in power is likely the strongest factor that can explain the countless number of governments we have had in the country since 1990. What’s more, NC likely boasts the largest number of corruption cases files by the CIAA in courts against its politicians. Finally, it was a NC-led government that turned its deaf ears to the Maoists’ 40-point demand that eventually encouraged the latter to launch the war, which has claimed close to 14 thousand lives. When we compare this implicit suppression that the NC has caused to the Nepali people, Musharraf’s suppression of his people in Pakistan, Mugawe’s suppression in Zimbabwe and Castro’s suppression in Cuba all look like a walk in the park!

Fortunately, the evidence from the last decade shows that those who opt for the extreme policy or ideology choices get sidelined eventually, in one way or the other. In the last five years alone, we have seen Gyanendra Shah humbled by the people when he tried to impose a Musharraf-style “democracy” in the country and we have seen the Maoists’ political base weaken significantly by the arrogance of its youth wings, mainly the Young Communist League (YCL), and by the desire of the leadership to not listen to the voice from Tarai. This political ‘cleansing’ process is a good thing—we had been raring false ideologies for too long and it was time they got eliminated! In a similar manner, GPK’s recent foolhardy steps, of which Ms. Koirala’s appointment is just one of the extreme examples, may be suggestive of the fact that, after the Gyanendra Shah and the Maoists, it may be NC’s turn to learn the lessons from the people. Hopefully, people will not have to come down to the streets and face the bullets to teach that lesson this time around.

(Yubraj Acharya is a Master's student in Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, New York. He can be reached at yubraj@gmail.com)