Politics has become a syndicate

Parties panic about former King’s message

By Sunil KC

The events of last week have rocked Nepalese political and economic sectors revealing their fundamental flaws and deep-rooted weaknesses on how the country is being governed. The resultant fiasco is a rude awakening on how low the political system and economic situation has befallen.

The political parties received a severe jolt when former King Gyanendra in a video message on the occasion of the National Democracy Day on Falgun 7 (February 19) appealed to the countrymen to join hands with him to save the country from sliding into further disarray. The message came amidst widespread frustration, disappointments and disillusionments in the general population against the political parties and their leaders and with an ever-growing number of people saying ‘enough is enough’ about the political parties’ self-centeredness, rampant corruption, horse-trading among leaders for power, and the lies, fraud and deception the leaders spew almost every day. The people are dismayed at the parties and their leaders for being totally oblivious and unmindful of the country’s state of affairs.

One glaring example is the mass exodus of young people for work and studies. In the last six months, nearly half a million people exited through Tribhuvan International Airport for work in different countries. This figure does not include those who cross the land border to India. Similarly, tens of thousands of students flew out of the country for higher education. This figure also does not include those going to India. When even the top leaders of the parties resort to accusations and counter-accusations like drunken bar brawls it is not difficult to guess that the country’s politics has reached its nadir.

In other words, people’s trust and faith in the political parties and their leaders have eroded completely and there is growing belief among people that if the present crops of political leaders continue to lead the country will spiral further down into economic, political and social chaos.

The fact that the former King’s visits to different parts of the country continue to attract thousands of people appealing to him to take the necessary steps to prevent the country from falling into further political, economic and social disarray is a clear indication that people see the King as the one who could bring some sanity to the country.

Obviously, taken aback by the message, the political parties and their leaders ganged up and rushed to issue one statement after another against the former King’s message. Panicked and fearing their grip on their reign of chaos might slip away, they have begun threatening active or forceful vengeance against any attempt to disrupt their malevolent rule.

However, recent revelations show how the country’s fabrics of unity were torn apart under foreign influence and pressure while formulating the new constitution in 2014. The damning evidence was disclosed in the US Congress recently that US money was used for federalism, religious conversion, secularism and for turning the country into a republic state instead of a constitutional monarchy.

Even within the country, people have begun speaking out about how those clauses were introduced in the constitution under foreign pressure or to appease certain interest groups. Bhim Rawal, former vice president of the CPN-UML, claimed that those were not the agenda of the movement of 2062 BS, but they were sneaked into the constitution under outside influence or pressure.

A scholar Dr. Bojindra Prasad Tulachan, a professor at the University of Seoul, South Korea, analyses the country’s current political situation as ‘not for the people’. In an interview recently, he said the political parties have unionized politics and have turned it into a syndicate with the country’s politics rotating among only three people. “This has forced people to vote or elect the same people over and over again through manipulation, temptation and fear-mongering making people revolve around the so-called democracy,” he further said.

He sees no hope from the existing group of politicians and almost zero possibility of the old politicians correcting themselves. What is sad, he said, was the complete erosion of moral democratic values in the political parties. He even said the country needs a benevolent dictatorship, who understands the geopolitical situation of the country and democratic norms and values, for some time to establish political and social stability.

When the political situation was bogged down in the swamp, Nepal faced another sticky situation with the sudden withdrawal of US funding for projects under USAID in Nepal when the new US president Donald Trump cited the almost 39 million dollars for projects in Nepal as nothing less than a fraud. The double whammy came when Nepal was put on the grey list by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for failing to curb financial crimes such as money laundering and controlling corruption.

These might lead to serious economic consequences. With the US assistance under USAID put on hold, the finance ministry said that it will have to readjust the budget for the current fiscal year accordingly scaling down or even postponing several programmes related to education, health, and environment/biodiversity. Even if the US assistance that is suspended for three months for now is revived there is little chance that the US assistance will resume in its earlier form.

Another concern is how this will affect development assistance from organizations like the World Bank and IMF, of which the US is the biggest contributor and whether other donor countries and organisations like the Asian Development Bank and the European Union will reevaluate their aid strategies.

The FATF in its plenary meeting in Paris last week cited Nepal has failed to take sufficient actions to enforce, investigate and prosecute financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing and on other high-risk sectors like cooperatives and real estate.

This is the second time in 15 years Nepal was put on the grey list. Nepal was on the grey list for six years from 2008 to 2014. When Nepal formulated some legal and structural modalities to fight financial crimes, corruption and money laundering it was removed from the list. Nepal had 10 years to put those legal frameworks into action but failed miserably. The FATF had warned Nepal about one-and-a-half-years ago for not complying or failing to implement its 40-point suggestions that included identifying black money, controlling money laundering and its spread in the banking sector, and investigating allegations of corruption in high seats of the governments and bureaucracy. But successive governments chose to remain oblivious or even ignore it. Now, the FATF has given Nepal two years to correct itself and has suggested a seven-point implementation plan that includes identification of black money, control of money laundering, strict supervision of banking, cooperative and real estate sectors and stopping transactions through illegal means such as hundi. If not, there will be further actions such as putting Nepal on the black list and even imposing sanctions. That will be devastating to the already crippling economy affecting the country’s banking sector, getting foreign investment and financial aid and loans, and might even affect the flow of remittances that is the backbone of the country’s economy.