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From Far & Near

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

The Himalayan Kingdoms

In the dawn of the new era for a Himalayan monarchy, the times were changing fast. The country had the reputation of Shangri-La, but it was thrust into the modern world where leaders were speaking on behalf of the ‘downtrodden’ people and demanding a say in the governance of the country. The capital still had pristine beauty and was known as the ‘Emerald Valley’. All that charm has long disappeared and the capital is fast becoming a concrete jungle. The self-proclaimed leaders – many generations of them – have not been up to the task, and indeed made a hash of it.

That country is not Sikkim, nestled in the high Himalayas and boxed in by Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and Darjeeling. It was also a candidate for being another Shangri-la but was at the same time of great strategic importance. The Indians cleverly manipulated events, used the dominant ethnic Nepalese [in their quest for ‘democracy’] and their renegade Lepcha leader, the Fascist Quisling and snake-in-the grass, Kazi Lhendup Dorji to forcibly annex the kingdom. The Chogyal or Maharaja had been outfoxed by the wily Indian bureaucrats in the Anschluss to the Indian Union [see: Sunanda K. Datta-Ray: Smash & Grab. The annexation of Sikkim, 1984/2013; Andrew Duff: Sikkim. Requiem for the Himalayan Kingdom, 2015].

Nor is it the ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon’ or Bhutan, which has been able to keep its environment, culture and way of life intact. In fact, it can be said to be the last ‘Shangri-La on planet earth. The last Himalayan Kingdom narrowly escaped Sikkim’s fate or ‘Sikkimization’, if it not had expelled many ethnic Nepalese and above all their leaders who were increasingly clamouring for ‘democratization’.

It is, of course, the former Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal which we now have the great privilege of calling a ‘Federal, Democratic Republic’, which if truth – not ‘alternative fact’ – be told has neither a functioning ‘federalism’, nor is it in any way a ‘democracy’ or even a ‘republic’. Just because elections are held regularly doesn’t make it a functioning democracy [see: Russia, Belarus]. Vibrant people’s participation is the sine qua non. It has now reached this unenviable condition although previously it was indeed a functioning parliamentary democracy with constitutional monarchy.

There is little doubt that the country is ‘failing’ [in the sense of not succeeding, foundering, deteriorating, collapsing], i.e. teetering on the brink, in many respects; in many areas, it has already ‘failed’ [i.e. already unsuccessful, fell through, met with disaster, collapsed, gone bankrupt, crashed, gone into liquidation !]. Nepal as a nation-state has become dysfunctional.

Nepal’s Failed Leadership

Let’s start at the top. The plain fact is that we do not have any leadership at all. It is like in Trump’s ‘Amrika’. There is absolutely no competence. There is an absence of respect for scientists and professionals.

What about the state institutions? For some time now – not only since the arrival of the glorious Communist Revolution – they have now been manipulated/exploited to serve the interests of the political parties in power, and not by any chance the people! Some people even claim that the main opposition is also in cahoots with the ruling party.

They say that political parties are essential for the functioning of parliamentary democracy. But wherever you look, our political parties are a pathetic lot! They have a de-legitimized parliamentary democracy. All Nepali political parties also suffer terribly from leadership problems. The so-called leaders are incapable of sharing power and lack vision. The parties as a whole also do not practice ‘inner-party democracy’. How could they then practice ‘democracy’ – the current Nepali equivalent ‘loktantra’ has become a dirty word through and through.

Republica [associated with the New York Times, the world’s leading daily newspaper] in its editorial on 20 October, was only one of many representative voices: “There is widespread worry and rage across the spectrum that the government is there not to serve the people but to dole out the state funds to ministers and lawmakers…when the government does not fear the people, the people will rise to displace the government.” This was a very mild statement, but did go to the heart of the matter!

Not a Government of the People

To twist and paraphrase the great Abraham Lincoln, the current Nepalese government is:

  A government of the Communists [not of the people],

         By the Communists [not by the people],

And for the Communists [not for the people].

Lincoln concluded that a true democracy “shall not perish from the earth.” But the majority of the Nepalese people yearn for the day when ‘Loktantra’ perishes from sacred Nepali soil.

Information and the Media

When so much is at stake during the planetary pandemic, has the information policy been exemplary?

To again paraphrase Lincoln, the Oli regime’s policy has been:

[in the short term]: To fool all of the people some of the time

      [in the middle term]: Fool some of the people all the time

 [and in the long term, Oli, Dahal and their apparatchiks think that 

         they can get away with]: Fool all of the people all the time!

We are currently in phase II, it remains to be seen whether Oli/Dahal and cohorts have the guts to proceed to phase III, and whether the Nepali people somehow offer resistance.

Oli/Dahal’s Sins of Commission & Omission

Domestic

  • The Oli regime is so chaotic that even ministers don’t know of many of the cabinet’s decisions. Ministers admit they rarely speak up, either because they fear retribution or are hardly given the chance, as the boss is the one who calls the shots every time (TKP/The Kathmandu Post, October 16, 2020).
  • The government had failed miserably in its efforts to control the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • The country’s economy was devastated by the pandemic and people had lost jobs and income but the government did nothing to ameliorate the situation because it was completely indifferent towards the people’s suffering and was also plagued by intense factional feuds [thereby grossly neglecting the primary duty of governance] in the ruling Nepali Communist Party (NCP) at the central, provincial and local levels. Even in such terrible times, ministers were instead busy with ‘get rich quick’ schemes, like adopting strategies to award procurement tenders to their favourite businessmen (THT/The Himalayan Times, October 17, 2020).
  • government has not provided any kind of relief to industries and businesses affected by the pandemic. Nearly 500,000 small and medium-size enterprises have gone out of business but the government has been incapable of formulating any plan to revive the economy and create employment opportunities within the country.
  • More than 70,000 Nepali emigrant workers were stranded in foreign countries and wanted to return home, but Oli and his comrades ignore their plight or ignore the situation as unworthy of their attention. After all, they have better things to do. In the meantime, aircraft of the national carrier is lying about idle!
  • Like in ‘Amrika’, the federal government’s failure to provide adequate resources to the lower levels of states and municipalities to combat the pandemic was also responsible for the aggravated impact of the disease.
  • Now, to add insult to injury, the government has decreed that all federal MPs and their secretaries and aides will receive a Dashain festival allowance amounting to their full month’s salary [Rs. 64,070 for lawmakers and, of course, much more for ministers] (THT, Oct.18). This is indeed the last straw at a time when hundreds of thousands Nepalese are having great difficulty to make ends meet and their children are suffering from malnutrition.
  • The Oli government has also not been transparent regarding the millions in donations received at home and abroad for pandemic relief, including the hundred lakhs from H.M. King Gyanendra [forcefully, illegally and unconstitutionally removed from office, against hallowed Nepalese tradition].

The time of the pandemic has, therefore, brought forth such systemic and structural deficiencies of the state at all levels that a piecemeal reform or restructuring will not suffice. The Oli/Dahal conglomerate has malfunctioned wholesale. It will require Herculean efforts to remove the rot and put a new structure in place.

Unfortunately, the road forward seems to be blocked. Even in such autocratic and authoritarian countries like Russia, Belarus and Thailand courageous people are demonstrating for their basic human rights and to be masters of their own fate. They have all been let down by their so-called ‘leaders’. In Belarus, women are showing the way, while in Thailand young people and students are calling a military dictatorship and an antiquated monarchy out of tune with the people to account. We are still waiting for the spark to ignite and consign our own Communists to the dustbin of history.

Abject Failure in External Affairs

The Oli regime has played havoc with Nepal’s external relations. It does not have any inkling on how to conduct foreign policy. Its national security policy lies in tatters. Its decision-making process is most opaque.

Nepal’s geographical position is such that it can be a bridge between the two great civilizations of Asia. It is no longer a ‘land-locked’ buffer as during the British imperial era. Prithvi Narayan Shah the Great had already enunciated the doctrine of ‘equidistance’ between the two major Asian powers, and to cap it all King Birendra has declared our country a ‘Zone of Peace’ [which was fully accepted by the overwhelming number of nations of the world].

Now Oli’s government has allowed relations with our southern neighbour to deteriorate to an alarming extent and is dangerously tilting towards China. Strangely, even one year after President Xi Jinping’s much-hyped official visit to Nepal, none of the many bilateral agreements have borne fruit!

In a spark of madness and against all diplomatic protocol, Nepal’s current ambassador in Beijing and a former foreign minister at that, had a few weeks back, the effrontery to attack India in an exclusive interview with the Chinese state-owned ‘The Global Times’.

The Bottomline

We can again take recourse to the great words of wisdom of the inimitable Lincoln [in another context]:

This country, with all its culture, traditions and institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it [and not by any means to the Communists…If the time comes when they get tired of or detest the existing government or structures, they can exercise their inalienable legal and constitutional rights to amend and change them, or their inherent revolutionary right [based on the universal principles of liberty, equality and fraternity] to dismember or overthrow them!

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com