Girija Prasad Koirala: Simple Convictions


 

Simple Convictions is a record of Girija Prasad Koirala´s thoughts between the takeover by King Gyanendra in October 2002 and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord in November 2006. These were tumultuous times in the annals of modern Nepali politics, and they provided the ageing Koirala, 85 by the time of the CPA, with the opportunity to fight the finest fight of a politician: to bring down an autocracy and pull a violent insurgency into the arena of open politics. Acknowledged the leader of the People´s Movement. of April 2006, Koirala succeeded in what he terms repeatedly in these pages as "the last struggle of my life".

For having served the longest as prime minister in the period of democracy after the first People´s Movement of 1990, Koirala made the most mistakes as well as the largest number of enemies. Amidst the polarisation that marked the polity´s first decade of open political competition, Koirala played favourites and consolidated his position, much to the chagrin of his peers. He maintained loyalists rather than advisors, and as a player contributed to the confusion and lack of delivery of competitive politics, which allowed the Maoist rebellion to spread and the king in his palace to develop aspirations. As three-time prime minister in the dozen years of democracy till October 2002, he shares in the blame of the failure of government delivery and politicisation of the administration.

Yet, as the Maoists and royalists developed ambitions and the Kathmandu elites and intelligentsia escalated their attacks on the politicians and parties, this writer had maintained that history would treat the Koirala better than the contemporary observers and analysts. And that is how matters seem to have unfolded, especially since the new king Gyanendra´s ´creeping takeover´ began on 4 October 2002. Within a few years, the very Maoists who had regarded Koirala as a most despised adversary were looking to him to deliver them from their wayward ´ revolution´ into the field of open politics, and it was Koirala´s unrelenting stand against Gyanendra that made him the pivot in the fight against ´royal regression´. Meanwhile, Koirala became the rallying point for the Seven Party Alliance as soon as the various political leaders were done with being co-opted by the vainglorious Gyanendra.

As the Maoist rebellion sputtered to life in 1996, picking up the gun against a democratic government rather than a royal autocracy Koirala had evolved as its prime obstacle and target. At one training camp somewhere in West Bengal, in the late 1990s, the commandants would ask new conscripts to imagine Koirala as they practiced lunging with their bayonets. What a turn of events, then, that it was Koirala who became the Maoists´ chaperone once they decided some time in 2003; for reasons of regiona1 geopolitics and national practicality, to turn away from their people´s war´.

Country at the brink
Born in 1921, Girija Prasad Koirala began his political career organising workers at the BIratnagar Jute Mills in the late 1940s against the Rana regime. He continued for decades in opposition to the Shah regime under the tutelage of his brother Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala. together with so many others, he spent years in India, mainly Bihar, fighting King Mahendra and then King Birendra. Known within the party for his organisational acumen, after the demise of 'BP' in 1982, Koirala became part of the Nepali Congress triumvirate together with Ganesh Man Singh and Knishna Prasad Bhattarai and emerged as the party´s president. As the first general election of 1959 did in the case of his brother, four decades later the second general election in 1991 propelled Koirala to the pnme minister´s seat. He made it to the high office three more !lmes before the People´s Movement of 2006 elevated him once more as the uncontested choice for prime minister.

Girija Prasad Koirala is not a man of great profundity, but over time he developed strong faith in the basic principles of pluralism. He is a party organisation man rather than a political theoretician given to complex revelations, but over the course of six decades in public life his persona has been moulded by the values of democracy. A younger man might have felt the urge to compromise on principle with the rebels in the jungle or the king in the palace, but the octogenarian Koirala clearly had an eye on his legacy. Long deplored for his autocratic grip on the Nepali Congress party, Koirala set his mind on pluralism and democratic governance when it came to the national policy. And so when King Gyanendra readily dissolved Parliament upon the recommendation  of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in May 2002, Koirala geared up for what he knew was going to be a long fight.

The autocratic pronouncements of Gyanendra rapidly converted into overt action. The king dismissed Deuba as prime minister on 2 October 2002, appointed Lokendra Bahadur Chand as head of government, thereafter Surya Bahadur Thapa, and then again Deuba in June 2004, this time with even the CPN/UML of Madhav Kumar Nepal in government. Throughout, Koirala steadfastly resisted the siren call of the Narayanhiti Palace. When, on 1 February 2005, the king completed his takeover with a military coup, throwing all vestiges of constitutionalism and rule of law into the dustbin, Koirala decided that the time had come to take his stand.

As premier, Koirala courted controversy, from accusations of corruption to charges of political chicanery. While impervious to the buffeting .of polarised politics, even this seasoned politician could not have expected the chaos of five years that began with the Narayanhiti massacre of 1 June 2001, when he was prime minister. The following half-decade saw three states of emergency, the spread of the Maoist insurgency to the Tarai and the eastern hills, the deployment of the army and the discovery of its incompetence, and a numbing descent to brutality on the part of the state and rebels alike. NI of a sudden, the country became a bottomless pit of violence, where the people´s suffering knew no end and scores died violently every week. In the penultimate leg of his political career, Koirala saw the country beginning to self-destruct, and he would have understood with remorse that a good deal of this chaos was of his own making. Even if he had the intention, did Koirala have the will and the acumen to pull Nepal back from the brink?

It turned out that he did. After Gyanendra´s takeover, the polity became polarised, caught in a triangle between the political parties, the palace and the Maoists. Koirala and the rest of the political leadership waited one long year for Gyanendra to reach out to them, but the king´s arrogance – one of his many flaws – did not allow for that recourse. In the meantime, a Maoist-royalist cohabitation seems to have been tried but turned our unworkable. The signal for Koirala, Madhav Kumar Nepal and other party leaders to consider working with the rebels led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal (´Prachanda´) came after the Maoists at long last indicated their intention to join open, competitive politics. Going against the grain of conventional wisdom in Kathmandu, Koirala decided to take the plunge and in the autumn of 2003 met up with Dahal in Delhi. The series of meetings that Koirala initiated between the parties and the Maoists in the Indian capital ultimately led to the 12-Point Agreement of 22 November 2005, which served as the immediate trigger for the extraordinary People´s Movement of April 2006.

Bringing back Parliament
Simple Convictions is a collection of speeches, statements and private interviews given by Koirala between October 2002 and December 2006. Immediately after the ´creeping coup´ began on 4 October 2002, Koirala started making countrywide tours denouncing Gyanendra s adventurism. His campaign revolved around a one-point demand that he stood by throughout, until the defeated king was forced to concede In April – the reinstatement of the dissolved Third Parliament.

As the process of Gyanendra´s takeover continued, politicians who had experienced less or held weaker convictions tried to cohabit with the king, compromised on principle, or turned outright quislings to pluralism. Koirala was nothing if not steadfast in defending the tenets he had taken to heart, which is why we find again and again in the following pages ideas that may not be weighty in terms of political theory, but are clear-headed renditions of simple logic and faith. These speeches and statements were all given in Nepali, of course, and they lose some of their immediacy in translation. The reiteration of a few basic ideas in rally after rally may be the result of Koirala´s limited repertoire, but this is what the people wanted and needed from him: reassurance on the return path to peace and democracy.

As a carrier of uncomplicated truths, Koirala is consistent. From the time in the political wilderness, when the king first acted and the parties had difficulty generating crowds, to his arrival in the front ranks of the People´s Movement and thereafter, Koirala´s stance and message refer back to a handful of basic values. His beliefs, as expressed with little alteration during the period under review in this book, are as follows: the king had no business being anything other than a constitutional monarch; democracy is the answer to the country´s problems; the Maoists are misguided rebels who need to be brought into open politics through the medium of a revived Parliament. These three mantras make up the core of Koirala´s rally addresses.

Tenaciously held and repeated throughout the text are the beliefs that the army must be held accountable to Parliament; that the revival of Parliament will not only help restore democracy but also usher peace; and that the Maoists must come into government as a legitimate force under the Constitution. Koirala defends the practicability of this proposed transformation by pointing to the ´democratisation´ of the formerly royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and the Communist Party of Nepal (UML). On the subject of Gyanendra, he relates that while a king can be doomed by one mistake, the people are much more resilient and will survive. In his misguided actions, Gyanendra was not only quashing democracy but also jeopardising the very future of monarchy.

The run of speeches starts as Koirala tours the countryside in the wake of the October 2002 action, continues as he addresses various joint rallies of political parties and Congress Party gatherings, and ends with his extempore remarks at the signing of the CPA on 21 November 2006. There is a period of silence in these pages, referring to the period that Koirala was under house arrest after 1 February 2005. When Gyanendra is defeated by the People´s Movement and Koirala becomes prime minister, his public appearances once again falloff as he confronts the task of negotiating with Dahal and his colleague Baburam Bharrarai, amidst acute personal health problems. As prime minister, Koirala does not venture out even to the Singha Durbar secretariat, and most of the negotiations with the Maoists are done through aides at his Baluwatar residence. When decision is required on innumerable critical issues as they come up one after another over the weeks and months, it is the ailing Koirala who is at the helm.

What has become evident in Koirala´s latest period as prime minister is his unerring political instinct on where to take the country, how much to concede to the Maoists and when, and how, to politically manage the disparate Seven Party Alliance. A healthier prime minister – Koirala without his weakened lungs and need for oxygen support – would probably have made correct decisions quicker. The Maoists would possibly have been brought into the mainstream more efficiently, and quicker even than the nine months it took from the People´s Movement to the rebels´ entry into the Interim Parliament on 15 January 2007.

Had Koirala taken on a team of efficient and capable advisors and maintained a prime ministerial office rather than a stringy kitchen cabinet of loyalists and relatives, the country would possibly not have become as anarchic as it did over the autumn and winter of 2006. Success in achieving peace was accompanied by failures in providing governance, restarting development, reintroducing law and order, and helping the citizenry to get back to their livelihoods. Had Koirala kept a larger circle of advisors, he would probably have responded better to the discontent brewing among the ethnicities of the hills and the communities of the Madhes/Tarai.

The responsibility for the absence of government administration during the summer through winter 0[2006 must be laid at Koirala´s door. By having held on too tightly to the reins for too long, Koirala had no one on his side with the required command and credibility to share his burden, at a time when it would have helped. It is a measure of Koirala´s stature – as well as his failing – that no one came close to sharing the limelight with him, or to being groomed as leader-in-waiting. The massive centralisation of state and party power around him may even have served its purpose during a time of crisis and sensitive negotiations, but it will surely not work once the government is asked to deliver in the arena of development, governance and law-and-order.

And yet what Koirala was able to achieve over the period covered by this compilation was, as the headman of Nepali politics, to give back hope to the populace. Willing his body to respond, Koirala oversaw a tortuous and interminable series of peace negotiations with the CPN (Maoist) through the summer, autumn and winter of2006, agreeing on a code of conduct and innumerable understandings, inviting the United Nations for monitoring the laying-down of arms, negotiating a comprehensive peace agreement, drafting an interim constitution, setting the modality for ´managing´ the Maoist weaponry, and devising a new interim cabinet that would include Maoist members.

The critical decisions taken in the process of bringing the Maoists in were all Koirala´s – it was up to him, ultimately, to agree or not to agree on the concessions to be given in the negotiations, in the drafting of the interim constitution , in the ´arms management´ process. Elsewhere, ´elder statesmen´ gain emeritus status and write memoirs, but here Koirala was the man of the moment. Koirala was able to shoulder enormous responsibilities single-handedly, and this would not have been possible were it not for his rock-solid convictions, defended, as we find in these pages, with single-minded clarity.

Peace was the priority for the people, and that was the one goal that Koirala did not abandon. But such was his confidence that he did not pander to the public´s rightful desire to know what was going on. While everyone including the Maoist leaders rushed to the waiting microphones at the portals of the prime minister´s official residence at Baluwatar, even as they emerged again and again from the interminable talks, Koirala remained ever the recluse inside.

The 1990 Constitution
The speeches and statements included in these pages were mostly delivered extempore, all of them in Nepali, in Koirala´s sonorous voice and unhurried diction. Always dressed immaculately in white labeda-suruwal, black coat and Bhadgaunle cap, with fingers invariably toying with a white handkerchief, Koirala was inseparable from his cigarette-holder, until he was forced under doctor´s orders to quit his chain-smoking in March 2006.

Not one given to making rousing speeches, Koirala´s command from the pulpit was on the strength of his power base and his centrality to the political process. Through the repetitions in these speeches made before the press, political cadre and the public, it is possible to understand the simple convictions of Girija Prasad Koirala – his uncompromising stand against Gyanendra´s adventurism along with his willingness to consider a constitutional/ceremonial monarchy; his rejection of Maoist violence and the democrat´s understanding of the need to bring the insurgents into the political process; his belief in the need for United Nations involvement in ´managing´ the Maoist arms, and so on. Indeed, the shape of the Nepali polity up to the Interim Constitution and beyond essentially follows the map drawn in Koirala´s head.

Beyond consultations with his few trusted lieutenants and occasional meetings with the Indian ambassador – India being the country which played an important role in facilitating the Maoist landing in Kathmandu and which remained interested in how and when they would join the interim government – the prime minister kept his own counsel on the critical decisions. He was the all-powerful kingpin, making compromises and concessions on the run, keeping up the momentum so that the jittery rebel leaders with cadre to assuage stayed the course.

In these pages, Koirala refers repeatedly co the pressure he faced from foreign ambassadors to make compromises with the autocratic Gyanendra in the gullible belief that the latter had bona fide intentions. Koirala refused to bend, insisting that it was the king who had conducted the coup, and thus that the onus was on him to revert to the parties, which were unwilling to compromise on the principles of pluralism.

In speech after speech, the reader will find Koirala emphasising the achievements of the 1990 Constitution. Though latter-day populist opinion-makers prefer to denigrate it, this was the document that made the Nepali people masters of their fate. This was the constitution which, embodying the values of classical liberal democracy, built the foundations for pluralism by empowering the population at large. It is this document that must ultimately be given the credit for the massive demonstration of people power in the People´s Movement of April. But no document is perfect, and the 1990 Constitution coo would have been interpreted, amended and revised over time but for the fact that the marauding Maoists and the depredations of Gyanendra made it ultimately necessary to move on to a new constitution through a constituent assembly. It was the Maoists spread the kerosene on the 1990 Constitution, and Gyanendra who set it to light.

For all its strengths, the 1990 Constitution had therefore to be sacrificed, and the abandonment of this document on the altar of the constituent assembly was the crucial departure made by Koirala and his cohort, as a means CO win back peace. Koirala´s defense of the 1990 Constitution was constantly coupled with the challenge he threw co the rebel leadership "to make clear your views on a constituent assembly". Over and over again, he says that, whatever the king and rebel leadership may have in mind, his job is CO safeguard the achievements of the 1990 People´s Movement as reflected in the Constitution of 1990. The fundamental freedoms guaranteed in that document, the supremacy of Parliament and rule of law, were nonnegotiable if a new constitution were to be drafted through an elected assembly.

Though the matter of a constituent assembly had been hanging fire since the 1950s, this time it carne up as the bottom-line demand of a Maoist leadership even as it realised that the armed rebellion was going nowhere. After waiting more than a year for Gyanendra to reverse his destructive course, Koirala, together with the other party leaders, signalled an acceptance of the constituent assembly proposal- but only after the Maoists agreed in the negotiations over the sum met of 2005 co abandon their violent politics.

While the 1990 Constitution could perhaps have been amended to incorporate the rebels´ demands, the constituent assembly also simultaneously became the rallying cry for Nepal´s historically disfranchised communities as they expressed the deep-felt need to build an inclusive society by a restructuring of the state. By the time of the People´s Movement of April 2006, there was no doubt that a constituent assembly would have to happen, and even the most sceptical politicians were fully on board. Meanwhile, the Maoists could present this as their victory.

Royal depredations
As the tallest political personality of post-1990 Nepal, one of the most interesting aspects of Girija-the-politician has been his relationship with kingship. As he reminds his audiences again and again here, he has dealt with four kings, from Tribhuwan to Gyanendra. Even though it is clear that Koirala despises Gyanendra´s actions, in public pronouncements he is careful to maintain decorum for the institution of monarchy.

Koirala´s stand against Gyanendra held credibility because he did not go into cohabitation with the palace, unlike the leaders of the other major parties who rushed to join Gyanendra´s revolving-door cabinets after 2002. Nevertheless, one of the most intriguing questions after the April 2006 movement, when most political and civil society figures professed their commitment to a ´democratic republic´ and the end of kingship, was why Koirala continued to call for retaining the king in ceremonial role. As the one political leader who had not succumbed to King Gyanendra´s autocratic agenda, why did he continue to stand up alone among the front-rank party leaders for a ceremonial monarchy?

There are several possible explanations, as can also be gleaned from the following pages. As someone who, at this critical juncture in the polity´s evolution. espouses "continuity and change". Koirala may believe that a toothless kingship will provide a familiar symbolic presence that will be helpful during the tumult of transformation. He maintains the desirability of such continuity even as he claims that the country lies at "the borderline of republicanism", and that further escapades by Gyanendra will guarantee the demise of kingship.

The prime minister´s attitude after the April movement might also be an old warhorse´s leniency towards a king who finally did, on the 19th day of the People´s Movement, concede defeat by reinstating Parliament. Here was the man who most vigorously opposed Gyanendra's designs, and yet when the king is down he refuses to inflict the coup de grace.

Alternative to such ascriptions of magnanimity, it could be that Koirala simply likes the feeling of being all-powerful, and has the need to prove his omnipotence by fighting the tide of political opinion single-handedly, of being able to force his views on every other political player including Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Maoists. One may recall the one-point agenda he stood by for over three long years. cal ling for reinstatement of Parliament against all odds and received opinion. As a strategist with a keen understanding of the popular pulse, Koirala also may believe that a large segment of the population would like to retain a vestige of monarchy, but which for the moment "is keeping its own counsel. With the ´republican´ vote in the constituent assembly dividedamong other parties and particularly the CPN/UML and the CPN (Maoist), Koirala´s may believe that his ´ceremonial´ stand is good electoral strategy.

At his most calculating, Koirala may be playing the ´ceremonial´ card to waylay the nervous reactionaries in the army and elsewhere – most importantly Gyanendra himself – while the democratic terrain solidifies. When the time comes, a Nepali Congress convention that he calls may well decide to make official the republican position if that is the demand from the rank and file. In the end, it is the first meeting of the constituent assembly that will make the decision on the position of monarchy, by majority vote, and at that time Girija may be more than willing to let the monarchy go.

lt is argued convincingly that a king with proven mala fide intentions such as Gyanendra will forever be conspiring against democracy. While Koirala may feel more than capable of keeping Gyanendra under his thumb, others may not have the stature or acumen to withstand renewed royal adventurism. In the days ahead, it is entirely probable that the Narayanhiti palace will seek to take advantage of – if not instigate – social and political instability in the belief that a phase of absolute chaos will revive the chances of kingship. If that happens, then in hindsight Koirala will be found to be at fault for not having delivered the final blow on monarchy when he had it in his hands. For by the end of the People´s Movement of 2006, Koirala had become an all-powerful personality of Nepal´s modern era, who could have eliminated the monarchy with a nod of a head.

Brother of Bishweshwar
There is a fallacy nurtured willingly by the royalists, the Maoists and Kathmandu Valley´s powerful clans alike, that the  dozen years of democracy between 1990 and 2002 were an experiment in failure. The distaste of Kathmandu´s upper crust for the politicians elected as the people representatives was particularly evident in the abuse they heaped on the person of Girija Prasad Koirala, regarded as the interloper from Biratnagar. In these pages, Koirala defends the dozen years of democratic rule, though he concedes shortfalls, including poor governance, destructive competition among the parties, and corruption. We may or may not agree with his defence, offered more than once, that the inefficiencies were "were mainly due to inexperience".

An honest evaluation of Nepal´s first decade of democracy must accept the truth of malfeasance by the politicians, mal-administration and corruption on the part of the political parties. But it must also consider the record of pluralism against the improvement the country saw during this period – in the socio-economic indicators, the spread of roads and communications infrastructure, the empowerment of local communities, the catalytic importance of media freedom, as well as the economic boom that marked the early 1990. A proper assessment must also refer back to the loss of momentum with the start the Maoists ´people´s war´ in 1996, the palace´s non-cooperation and even outright sabotage which blemished the record of the democratic era.

Despite the professed inexperience, Koirala had gained enough understanding of the requirements of pluralism and democratic rule to fight relentlessly and alone for the revival of the Third Parliament, which, he told the audiences around the country, would in one stroke not only resuscitate democracy but also provide a forum to grant legitimacy to a reformed CPN (Maoist). Through the months and years after Sher Bahadur Deuba´s recommendation to dissolve Parliament was hastily accepted by a king eager to begin exercising power when the political firmament darkened progressively, with all the polity turning either fatalist and/or opportunist, Koirala stayed the course on the revival of the House of Representatives. He insisted on the restoration of the Sansad as the only credible d legitimate denouement to the royal adventure, and the only means to incorporate the Maoists while cleansing them of at least some of the blood on their sleeves.

In the end, it was the people of Nepal who rose to the occasion, dashing Gyanendra´s ambitions and chastening the Maoists, even while forcing through the restoration of Parliament. It would have been better if Koirala and the other political leaders had had the confidence to declare the restoration of the House of their own accord from the street, rather than have it granted through royal concession. Nevertheless, Parliament provided the credible legislative backing necessary to safeguard the achievements of the People´s Movement, exactly as Koirala had hoped. Much as the Maoists hated Parliament – their practice was to characterise it as a grubby butcher´s shop – it was the House that in the end provided the stamp of legitimacy to their safe landing in Kathmandu. It is the Parliament chaperoned by Koirala that made the Nepali public and the international community alike accept the Maoists-sans-weaponry as a rightful part of the new Nepali political landscape, and which made it possible for them to enter the expanded Interim Parliament on 15 January 2007.

Koirala´s consistency is seen not only in his unyielding, stubborn stand on the restoration of Parliament, bur in his call for the Maoists to lay down their arms before they entered the mooldhar ´mainstream´ of politics. To this end, Koirala, Madhav Kumar Nepal and others devised the process of hatiyaar byabasthapan, or ´arms management´. This was the euphemism developed to ´manage´ the Maoists arms even while allowing the rebel leadership adequate deniability vis-à-vis their flock. The leaders had not conceded defeat, and hence could not tell their ground-level fighters straight off that the ´people´s war´ had been abandoned.

If Koirala was the man to stand up to Gyanendra and reach out to the rebels, as the negotiations progressed post-April 2006, he was also the bulwark against opportunism on the part of the Maoists who would have liked to enter the interim government without making a clean break from their weaponry and militarist ways. Forced by national circumstances and regional geopolitics to drop their guns and join open, competitive politics, the Maoists in turn understood that it was only Koirala who could guarantee them a ´safe landing´ and a sizable berth in the Interim Parliament and government. Therefore, they could sputter and protest and seek the support of some pliant members of ´civil society', but they could not push through into the interim government without the start of a credible process of laying down the guns, socket-bombs and improvised explosive devices.

It helped Koirala that the Indian position on the matter coincided With his (and because the Maoists had come to realise the importance of the Indian position In the" long road to ´over-ground´), and that the presence of. the United Nations to monitor ´arms management´ provided credibility to the effort. Koirala says repeatedly that it is a job of a democrat to bring misguided militants into the mainstream and in the end he was able to perform this role successfully – though of course credit goes first to Pushpa Kamal Dahal and his commanders for remaining unified even as they recognised the futility of their Insurgency.

Girija Prasad Koirala has many detractors for his omissions and commissions over six decades in politics, and especially for his record Since 1990 when he rose to become the central figure in his party and in national politics. One could say – and perhaps Koirala himself would concede – that he was atoning for past mistakes when he decided stand firm in his commitment to restore peace and democracy In mountain, hill and plain. Accused of harbouring massive political ambitions that have seen his contemporaries and rivals neutralised and fall away, Koirala claims again and again in these pages that he had nothing to gain in the fight against the king other than the return of peace and democracy.

It is clear that Koirala was aware that in this, his "last battle", he was creating a legacy that would also wash away his record of excesses, ambition and centralisation. Koirala´s need to serve the people and to thereby define his political legacy perhaps explains the energy he was able to summon up during the four years recorded in this volume. As prime minister, he seems to have willed his body forward even in the worst moments of oxygen deprivation. And he continues to will it to carry on as of this writing, saying he wants to see the country and the people through a free and fair constituent assembly process.

In these pages, Koirala is at his most poignant when he shares his empathy for the common woman and man of Nepal. T he people, he repeats, have been abandoned, and feel "alone" as they suffer in silence between the guns of the Maoists and the king´s army. The populace is squeezed between the "illegitimate authority´´´ of the Maoists in the countryside and the human rights abuses of the security forces. In the extempore remarks made at the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on 21 December 2006, with Pushpa Kamal Dahal seated at his side, Koirala jokes of his fear of coming back to earth as a "bhoot", a ghost, if he is not able to resolve the Maoist problem and deliver peace. Alert to his age and his progressing infirmity, Koirala repeats the refrain in the following pages, "This is the last struggle of my life. Let others not have to struggle like I have had to."

The speeches and statements in this book, then, are about fighting royal regression and bringing the Maoists into the mainstream. It is a modest compilation of the pronouncements of the central player of Nepali politics between 2002 and 2006, an actor´s narrative of what he believes to be the most crucial issues of contemporary, lived history. Those who seek more – an account of Koirala´s experiences in the Panchayat era or of the workings of the Nepali Congress party, his opinions with regards to ´internal democracy´ within the party or his extended family´s influence over it, personal recollections of family life, comments on his times as prime minister, thoughts on missed opportunities in development, governance and administration, or reflections on mistakes made and triumphs achieved in a political career spanning 60 years – will not find it in this volume. Neither will they find here reference to issues that have now come central stage on the road to the constituent assembly – ´inclusion´, federalism, affirmative action, electoral systems and so on, issues to be picked up and responsibly taken to their logical conclusion by those who would aspire to fill Girija Prasad Koirala´s shoes.

The content of this volume constitutes a first-hand observer´s account of the Nepali democratic transition, and besides grist for the political mill it provides primary material for students of this riveting period in the country´s history. Koirala presents, in these pages, a living testimony of and a perspective on the struggle against a king in a time of insurgency. These are not Girija memoirs – those the public has yet a right to expect from him, as Soon as he takes his hands off the political reins. There are no personal recollections in this volume – of a childhood in desultory exile going back to the time of the Ranas; thereafter a career completely invested in ´the party´ with hardly a ´personal life´ for others to see; and the accident which took away his wife Sushma on 2 April 1969 leaving further and daughter, Sujata, on their own.

The figure unacknowledged yet present in these pages is Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, whose vision of a modern, pluralistic Nepal is the one by which his youngest brother and acolyte has been guided. ´BP´ was the towering visionary of Nepal´s modern era, but it was ´GP´ – long described as an organiser and foot-soldier who the opportunity to chaperone society during that period, and he seems to have learnt on the job. The simple convictions of Girija Prasad Koirala, based on the philosophical foundations laid by his brother BP, have in the last four years helped shape the conditions for the people to move forward and make democracy work for them. As for GP´s overall record, let history be the judge.

If Nepal achieves, at long last, political stability and inclusive democracy through the medium of a constituent assembly, economic and social leapfrogging will be assured. What we will then see, finally, will surely be the first glimpse in all of South Asia of democracy working for the people at large at the level of the nation-state. As and when this happens, it is the political class that will have to be given the credit, for having worked to crush the king and for having magnanimously made space for the Maoists to join the task of nation-state building. And among the political class, it is the contribution of Girija Prasad Koirala that will be valued for having been decisive. As Nepal achieves economic and social progress, in democracy and political stability, Girija Prasad Koirala will be remembered, finally, as a statesman.

21 January 2007

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