The new old

The new coalition government in Kathmandu might be made up largely of the discredited old guard, but it has an opportunity to bring the country together through effective government and pushing the peace process. Its members just need to stop bickering amongst themselves.

The 4 May resignation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal ('Prachanda') from the prime-ministership ushered in a period of high spirits in Nepal, even jubilation, among the Nepali Congress, the centrist Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and other political forces in Nepal opposing the Maoists. These parties (the Congress in particular) had entered a period of despondency and demoralisation following their poor showings at the Constituent Assembly elections in April 2008. During the nine months the Maoists were in government, this had developed into a frustrated helplessness bordering on rage. Much of the reason for this was the fact that the Maoists quickly made it clear, through their words and actions, that their interests lay largely in using their newfound position of power to expand their control over society – rather than in continuing with the peace process, which has as its major tasks the drafting of a new constitution and the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants. Meanwhile, however, the other parties had made few efforts towards 'rehabilitating' their own party machineries, or developing a political vision in line with the aspirations of the people. Thus, fear that their very survival was at stake pervaded the old parliamentary parties during much of the Maoist tenure in power.

Dahal's resignation subsequently opened the way for the formation of a new coalition. This is now led by the CPN (UML) and includes the Congress, the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) – which, with 53 seats in the Constituent Assembly, is the fourth-largest grouping in the country – and a constellation of 20 other parties. The initial jubilation that the Congress and sections of the UML felt following the resignation was based on the calculation that they finally had the opportunity to bring a halt to the Maoists' aggressive pursuit of their party interests through use of state resources. And that it was now time for the old parliamentary parties to use their positions at the helms of power to solidify their own positions and weaken the Maoists.

Cracks soon began to be seen, however, both within and among the parties of the new coalition. The first casualty was the MJF. Its chairman, Upendra Yadav, despite pressure from other political parties and India, displayed ambivalence towards joining the new governing coalition, and appeared receptive to the Maoist proposal to form a government with them – one that Yadav would lead. Facing immense pressure from other political forces, he finally agreed to 'support' a UML-led government, but was reluctant to join it. Meanwhile, he was vehemently challenged by a fellow MJF leader, Bijay Kumar Gachchhadar, who apparently had his own ambitions to become deputy prime minister and gain another lucrative ministerial portfolio. Gachchhadar managed to gain the support of a majority of the MJF's Constituent Assembly members as well as a substantial section of its Central Committee members, thus leaving Yadav in the lurch and the party on the verge of a split.

Turmoil continued as the new prime minister, the UML's Madhav Kumar Nepal, faced grave difficulties in addressing the demands of all of his coalition partners for ministerial portfolios. Negotiations were painful and protracted, with the MJF and other Madhesi parties refusing to give up their demands for choice portfolios, claiming the posts for their roles in making the coalition possible in the first place. In order to satisfy them, Prime Minister Nepal was eventually forced to split a number of ministries. The number of cabinet members reached 45 – a massive number surpassed previously in Nepal only by the widely derided 'jumbo cabinets' of Sher Bahadur Deuba and Surya Bahadur Thapa, in the mid-1990s.

The lengthy negotiations over ministerial positions and the size of the cabinet naturally bred cynicism among the public, and even within the parties in the new coalition. The whole situation was not helped along by the fact that many of the members of the new cabinet – including Prime Minister Nepal and Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala, daughter of the Nepali Congress president, G P Koirala – had actually lost during the 2008 elections, and thus were not members of the Constituent Assembly. Nepal had been nominated as a member of the Constituent Assembly mid-session to head the main constitution-drafting committee, while Koirala was not even a member. Naturally, this anointing of failed leaders became a matter of widespread ridicule.

National unity
These events have considerably subdued the euphoria that members of the new governing coalition felt in early May. Their credibility has already been dented, though not irredeemably so. It took a full month for the government to take shape, and Prime Minister Nepal and his partners now have a crucial window of opportunity in which to demonstrate their effectiveness. This includes the normal tasks of any peacetime government – running development projects and providing security (and after a decade of war, even these responsibilities would have been plenty for most governments to shoulder). But in Nepal's case, it also includes the crucial aspects of the peace process that have stalled – the drafting of the constitution and the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants. Given the circumstances, however, with the government widely perceived as one with a limited mandate and tenure, the crucial task of the new government – on which its reputation hinges – will be to engage with the Maoists and bring them back into the governing coalition.

Depending on the performance of the government and the circumstances surrounding it, there are broadly three potential paths that the country will take in the next few months. First, the government may indeed be able to accrue a degree of legitimacy by demonstrating its capacity to engage with the Maoists and bring them back into a much-touted 'national unity' government. This is the best-case scenario, but it is also the most difficult to attain. For this to occur, the prime minister would have to walk a tightrope between the demands of the various political forces, accepting some of them while remaining completely beholden to none. After the ouster of the Maoist-led government, staunchly anti-Maoist forces such as the Nepal Army have become increasingly emboldened; they will pressure the government to maintain a hard line against the former rebels, even as they try to expand their say over the government on other matters. In particular, the army will likely try to force the government to inform the Maoists that no integration of Maoist combatants into the army will take place, thus breaking a longstanding gentleman's agreement.

Given that the new defence minister, Bidhya Bhandari, is widely seen as being completely beholden to the army, the task of balancing the expectations of the military with other political forces lies with Prime Minister Nepal. In this task, he will have allies within his own party and among sections of the Nepali Congress. But he will also need to cultivate these sections, in addition to holding consultations with the Maoist leadership and keeping the army (and other forces who might be dreaming of a rightist resurgence) at arm's length. At the same time, the prime minister's position in power, and the backing he has from both New Delhi and the army brass, could help him to negotiate with the Maoists from a position of strength. If he does this, Prime Minister Nepal might well be able to negotiate a Maoist re-entry into government, even while enhancing the legitimacy of his own party and others in the coalition. If Madhav Kumar Nepal is successful in doing so, this will be a massive contribution to the peace process, and he will be remembered for it.

The second possibility is that the current fractiousness of the governing coalition will continue, its inability to perform will bring its legitimacy into crisis, and a substantial number of coalition partners will withdraw their support. Such a course of events will be dictated by which sections of the UML, Congress and MJF ultimately gain prominence. The eventual winners may well be those forces that have so far been unhappy with the proximity of the government to the forces of the right. The prime minister has already come under serious criticism from within his party, for instance, for submitting to the decisions taken by President Ram Baran Yadav to overturn the former Maoist prime minister's sacking of the chief of army staff, General Rukmangud Katawal. This decision, which directly precipitated Dahal's decision to resign when all the other parties disagreed and withdrew support, has subsequently been backed by the cabinet in mid-June. There are many within the UML itself who believe their party has been part of a movement towards the right – and, they fear, a de-legitimisation of the UML in the public eye.

If the government collapses, and in the meantime sections unhappy with the rightwards drift in Nepali politics manage to reach out and engage with the Maoists and contain the aspirations of the army, the alternative governing coalition could consist of these sections and the Maoists. In the short term, this would mean the resumption of the peace process and the avoidance of conflict and violence. But in such a scenario, with poor performance in government behind them, the parties in the current governing coalition will have lost much legitimacy. If the Maoists do manage to lead the next governing coalition, they will be back and emboldened, bent on continuing the path they had followed during their previous tenure in government. Their natural instinct would thus be to take aggressive measures to increase the control of their party over society and the state apparatus, thereby further alienating the other political forces.

If the Maoists do return to power, one factor that could moderate this trend would be the role played by the Indian establishment. New Delhi has sent a clear message to the Maoists that any re-entry on their part into the government would be conditional on their wholehearted acceptance of the principles of peaceful competitive politics. The major role that India played in bringing together the current governing constellation (and in marginalising the Maoists) demonstrates also the considerable sway New Delhi continues to have over Nepali politics. If the Maoists do re-enter government, they would possibly do so as a more subdued force due to Indian pressure.

National impunity
The third scenario, which would lead to the worst consequences for the country, would be a 'civilian' government backed by military forces replacing a de-legitimised governing coalition. There are already whispers around Kathmandu, particularly among some of the formerly royalist political forces also currently backing the UML-led government, that this would be a most desirable eventuality. The hardline within the military would like to have a greater say over the affairs of the state, and it believes that it could intimidate the Maoists into 'good behaviour' by the threat of force; at the same time, though, it also knows that it does not have the credibility to directly take control of the state. As such, the army needs a political face, which could take the form of a broad group of anti-Maoist parties coming together in support of a president-led, military-backed regime. Such a system would lead to even greater polarisation than what currently exists, perhaps even to anarchy and bloodshed. Such a regime, however, would be highly unstable and of limited tenure: it would neither command much legitimacy among the people, nor, as experience has shown, does the army have the ability to control society through force.

The government is likely to encounter further problems if it does not immediately reach out to the Maoists. Most immediately, they have been demanding that the president's decision to revoke the former Maoist prime minister's sacking of the army chief be overturned. With the new government having upheld the president's decision, the Maoists are now threatening to hit the streets. There have already been a number of occasions where the Maoist-affiliated Young Communist League (YCL) has paralysed life in various cities across the country by calling general strikes. This may only be a harbinger of things to come: with their massive organisation across the country, the Maoists have the capacity to cause immense disruption and even paralyse the state.

In addition, the turmoil within the MJF does not bode well for stability in the troubled Tarai region, where the party has its base. If Upendra Yadav does split away from the section of the party now in government, it is likely that he will go back to his constituency in the Tarai and attempt to radicalise them against the government. Apart from the immediate strikes that would cause major disruption across the Tarai, this could have a longer-term impact on Nepali politics, whereby large sections of the Madhesi population would feel even greater alienation from the state, leaving them less amenable to a negotiated settlement.

As during previous occasions of crisis as the peace process has unfolded, political instability in Kathmandu has distracted attention away from the many other crises confronting the country. Issues of the reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed during the lost years of the war, of transitional justice, and of the creation of a new, just state structure have been pushed to the sidelines. Meanwhile, in the absence of any effort to manage ethnic grievances in all their complexities, resentment towards the state – not only in the Tarai – is increasing. These are formidable problems that can be managed only by an effective government at the Centre, which would have to include the largest party that has gained legitimacy through elections. Today, Nepal's political leaders need to negotiate their immediate way forward by choosing options that will help in the accomplishment of these long-term tasks.

~ Aditya Adhikari is an editor with the Kathmandu Post.