Mukti Rijal

Almost six years ago, this writer had participated in a training course on multi-stakeholder dispute mediation led and facilitated by conflict mediation expert Chris Spies who hailed from South Africa.
Chris is an experienced conflict transformation practitioner and facilitator of capacity building workshops in a wide variety of settings in Africa, Asia and the beyond. The multi-stakeholder disputes do constitute the type of conflicts, which involve two or more parties or groups having substantial stakes and interests in the process and outcome of their settlement. Such disputes may be inter-group, inter-community, inter-party, inter government, inter-state and so on. The parties involved in such issues are affected directly or indirectly by the occurrence and escalation of disputes. They have stakes, concerns and interests in the resolution or non-resolution of the conflicts and the issues involved in them.

The previously mentioned training was almost a six-month long course based on action research method. The action research requires the trainee participants to engage in a real dispute resolution setting in local communities away in the ground. The process allows training participants to learn from the real and effective engagement. The participants re-assemble again and again to reflect and share the field learning and experiences to each other.

Action research is a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in a field situation. It is done in order to improve the rationality and practicability of their own practices and experiences, understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are accomplished. It is claimed to be a tested method for conducting research to bring about transformative change through simultaneous process of taking action and doing research. Both action and research are linked and interlocked together through critical reflection.  
The erudite action research facilitator from South Africa Mr. Chris Spies possessed a rich knowledge and extensive experiences in international conflict mediation. He used to remind the Nepali training participants time and again about the role of a mediator and dialogue facilitator which, according to him, should focus on to assist the disputing parties to negotiate positively in participatory and mutually engaging ambience to reach to a gain-gain settlement.

Mandela's Guidance
Chris spies had shared some of anecdotal episodes of the long drawn out political conflict negotiation process in South Africa between the African National Congress (ANC) led by Nelson Mandela and the Apartheid regime headed by the White president De Klerk during the late nineties. According to Chris Spies, the negotiation process was mentored and guided by ANC chief Nelson Mandela himself.
As the process was nearing a breakthrough with ANC team having negotiated deftly and extracted a maximum of gains and concessions from the Whites, Nelson Mandela called the ANC negotiators for a meeting and advised the group to accommodate the basic concerns of the Apartheid team on certain issues to assure and satisfy the Whites that they have also won from the negotiation process.

The Whites should feel assured that they will have meaningful space and their rights guaranteed as an important minority community in the post-apartheid democratic dispensation in South Africa. Those who dominate, bargain tough and prevail in the negotiation may, of course, take all reducing the other party into a condemned loser in the process.

It will not lead to securing a durable solution to the conflict and heal the scars of the divisions among the Blacks and the Whites. Realizing that White people would be the minority and lose their societal privileges with the ending of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela wanted to make sure on behalf of ANC they would be protected from any majority oppression.

This realisation forced Mandela to truly display empathy and adaptive posturing to his oppressor (the White minorities). This is an incredibly difficult skill, but one that made Mandela such principled negotiator. He used this as part of the ANC negotiation tactics to implement broader strategy and to convince President de Klerk of the reality of an equitable and multiracial democratic South Africa.

He also wanted to ensure that white South Africans were still represented in government politics. Because they were a minority, this could be easily taken away by the sudden influx of black South Africans voting and electing the Black majority government. On behalf of the African National Congress, Mandela represented the interest of ending Apartheid, he wanted full rights granted to all black South Africans, as well as other people of color including the Whites. Mandela understood the barriers that prevented minority citizens from voting had led to many years of oppressive regimes in South Africa.

Even though the minority White government president De Clerk was relatively open, the other White racist leaders as a whole were not. The white people wanted to retain control of state apparatus by continuing Apartheid. Had not Nelson Mandela shown this sense of moderation and accommodation of White’s interests, the South African conflict was difficult to come to an end, and the Blacks would not have thrown off the yoke of the apartheid regime.

I have cited and referred to this example from South Africa at length after I came across my friend Kumar Sharma Acharya's social media comment posted not very long back on the ongoing intra-party conflict wrecking the unity and integrity of CPN(UML) that dislodged the party chief KP Sharma Oli from the position of the powerful prime minister.

Kumar Sharma Acharya is a senior advocate who is long involved in promoting mediation as a dispute resolution mechanism in Nepal. He was among the participants in the action research course mentioned above. In the social media posting, he has rightly indicated the possibility of resolving the UML intra party tussle using mediation in which neutral mediators and independent facilitator structure and design the process of facilitated dialogue to resolve the issues. The dialogue facilitator can conduct the dialogue separately in the form of caucusing and jointly with the feuding factions.

The intra- party conflict within the ruling CPN (UML) party was expected to come to a settlement through negotiation conducted by the task force comprising key second-rung leaders representing the feuding factions. However, the Supreme Court ruling to install Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba as prime minister dislodging K. P. Sharma Oli has taken a new tangle and twist in the intra-party tussle. As senior UML leader Madhav Nepal and around two dozen members of the House of Representatives did ally with the opposition to extend vote to the coalition PM Deuba, this complicated the negotiation process.
Unexpectedly, Prime Minister Oli got dislodged and vowed that the people who sided with the Opposition at the expense of one's own party will not be pardoned and re-inducted in the party. Madhav Nepal camp stayed confused for long as it was caught between the devil and deep sea.

Clash Of Ego In UML
The leaders in this camp had been all aware and cognisant of the difficulties and risks involved in the process of forming a new party through split but also knew that that they will not be properly accommodated in the UML fold unless they surrender to the mercy of the party president KP Sharma Oli who is dead against dissidence within the party.
Finally, they chose to shift their loyalty to the UML party establishment, which has strengthened the hands of the party president KP Sharma Oli as Madhav Nepal and his comrade in arms broke away and formed the new party.

Intra-party conflict in the UML has its history for long as Oli and Nepal had fought last party leadership battle and headed the two different factions within the party. Oli and Nepal had been allegedly ranged against each other for long not because that they have major differences on key party organizational matters or the country's socio-economic policy. The tussle between these two UML leaders was engendered as a result of ego and personality differences.

Conflict experts say this consists as the most difficult type of conflict to resolve among the party leaders because one's ego, dignity, or self- esteem, or self-respect, or pride are involved. Conflict researchers opine that the best way to respond to such type of conflict is step out of the naming and blaming game. Leaders should focus on the larger substantive issues and interests. They need to reject the puerile logic of honour codes and status rivalries, and enter a more civilized logic to resolve substantive issues.

Giving Up Hardened Stance
In resolving such type of ego driven conflict, the contesting leaders should throw off their negative emotions and come out of their hardened positions. One should not go to the extent of creating a compelling situation for other to compromise and surrender at the cost one's own dignity.

The major focus should lay on separating persons (leaders) from the problems (issues). Often in a negotiation, accorder Roger Fisher and William Ury, internationally renowned conflict experts, people will continue to hold out not because the proposal on the table is inherently unacceptable but simply because they want to avoid the feeling or the appearance of backing down to the other side. Both UML leaders Oli, Nepal and their respective factions only kept focus on their positions and failed to appreciate properly the shared issues and interests to save the unity and integrity of the party. With a view to resolve such political conflicts there was a need to shift political center of gravity from confrontation to dialogues, from bullying and epithets to open and honest communications, from closed-hearted to open-hearted conversations, from power- and rights- to interest-based forms of problem solving, from lying and enduring enmity to truth and willingness to come to terms.

 In order to facilitate settlement of such political conflict, as mentioned by mediator Kumar Sharma Acharya, assistance of trained and experienced mediators and dialogue facilitators is needed. But in Nepal party leaders consider and brag about themselves as the all–knowing specialists, turn their deaf ears to expert advice and suggestions.

(The author is presently associated with Policy Research Institute (PRI) as a senior research fellow. rijalmukti@gmail.com)