Stability Requires Improved State's Indicators

The seven-point deal reached between leaders of two dominant political parties - Communist Party of Nepal - Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) chairman K P Sharma Oli and Nepali Congress (NC) president Sher Bahadur Deuba on June 2, 2024 for a grand coalition government with the exchange of Prime Minister’s position on rotational basis has altered the political equation. On July 14, Oli was appointed Prime Minister replacing the CPN - Maoist Centre and CPN-UML dominated government led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. The deal promises a national consensus government, amendment to certain Articles of the constitution, protection national and public interests and keep good governance through corruption control, brisk development works and secure political stability. 

These promises are striking but they remain vague unless the indicators of Nepali state are bolstered to improve its output legitimacy through its institutions’ strengthening. Though the government’s will is derived from legislative strength, critics argue that it has created a bumpy flash for a vibrant opposition and hatches a power bloc politics. Without considering the opinions of several countervailing forces and soliciting support from the opposition, it is hard to rectify imperfections of the polity, constitution, institutions and political culture of leadership. Nepali polity is beset by the rising costs of subsidising politics and administration, upswing of unfulfilled expectations of people, overload of economic and ecological burden and scream of societal protests against political vices. 

Capacity building 

Political stability requires capacity building of state and the ability of its institutional authorities to act impartially for public welfare. Stirred and stunned, three parties - Maoist Centre, Rastriya Swotantra Party (RSP) and CPN-United Socialist have vowed to stay in opposition. Maoist Centre and Unified Socialist party have revived their Socialist Front (SF) formed two year ago to act as leverage in the parliament, street and the public arena to wield pressure on the government to realise the socialistoriented economy. The other components of SF are: CPN led by Netra Bikram Chanda and Nepal Samajbadi Party (NSP) led by Mahendra Yadav. Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal led by Upendra Yadav has snubbed to join it after his party’s split. It was one of the constituents of the Front. Rastriya Prajatantra Party is strident to smash the system in favour of Hindu state and constitutional monarchy. 

The constitution lays down rules to review its own legal and operational flaws, local and provincial governments and several inclusive commissions within ten years of its implementation. The tradeoff between governing parties’ aim for harvesting constitutional change and small parties bargaining for power-sharing must be settled before opening the Pandora’s Box of the constitution. Without this, political change will be disorderly.  The state as a frame of stability is limped to perform basic state functions of security, social discipline, economic stability, social peace and public goods so that Nepalis have satisfying life and channels of disaffection can be drained.

The explicit strategic goals of the government are: develop two-party system in the nation by increasing electoral threshold from the current 3 per cent popular votes in the House of Representatives for gaining the rank of national party to a scale where only NC and UML become national parties, emasculate the ability of Maoist Center, RSP and RPP and small parties to improve their seats through proportional representation and cut their free-riding tendency serving as source of political volatility. NC and UML can improve the electoral threshold by amending Political Parties Act 2015 and Election Management Bill through legislative approval. The cost of amending the constitution aiming to reduce the size of proportional representation and marginalisation of small parties may be high. It may ignite a wave of resistance from the unity of opposites. 

The growth of parties is caused more by the nature of transactional leadership, its growing factionalism and split, lack of inclusive spirit in the decision-making platforms and performance deficits than by the heterogeneity of Nepali society. The personalised nature of parties signifies the de-institutionalisation of the party system, growth of cronyism and familism, political culture of horse-trading in the parliament to stay in power, weak inner-party democracy and intra-party trust deficits breeding political instability.  The great wall of worry of Socialist Front is that the government’s strategy to amend the constitution may flag an inclusive, federal, secular democratic republic and throttle the anti-corruption move. 

It has appealed to the ethnic, regional, caste and other social forces whose associations are on mutually cooperative relations to remain alert about it. It vows to protect the spirit of the constitution, safeguard the mixed election system, vouch for the direct election of president and chief ministers in provinces and threaten to lodge effective resistance against constitutional reform. Given the anti-incumbent tendency of Nepali voters, it is absurd to believe that a two-party system will be evolved by popular mandate. In this sense, informed deliberation and confidence building with the opposition and small parties is necessary for any substantive reforms and enforce a culture of democratic accountability. Stability requires reducing inequality in politics between generations, gender and social classes.   

Responding to the Socialist Front’s fear of the subversion of the current political dispensation NC president Deuba revealed that the amendment is aimed to consolidate the political gains.  The opposition stratagem cannot go too far. It is the part of the same political establishment though its legislative clout is markedly diminished and suffers from its own internal flaws, despite noisy populist utterance. Securing political stability, however, requires the restoration of the monopoly of the state power so that polity can run impersonally with effective checks, balance and devolution of powers among its organs.  Stability also demands the autonomy of constitutional bodies and public institutions operating in a neutral manner in the delivery of public goods.

 In high-pressure circumstances, stability depends on the public service orientation of admin and local bodies providing equality of opportunity to all Nepalis.  The empty promise of neo-liberalism must be tempered with the edifying role of the state in public order, welfare and peace while civil society, media and business not flouting the state laws and inflaming the mass.  Autonomy, integrity and consistency of the functions of constitutional bodies and maturity of public institutions are vital to inspire people to keep trust in the polity perceiving that it can ease inclusive governance and provide a semblance of distributive justice to the needy. Similarly, political stability also requires the state management of extra-parliamentary, extra-constitutional and anti-system forms of political activism and special interests groups acting against the laws of the state. 

Multiplicity of societal associations who are represented on a cluster basis, countervailing powers,  oversight institutions of voice and truth-revealing bodies needs to be given due weight. It can remove their misgivings that constitutional amendment does not veer to reverse direction to further marginalise the weaker sections of society. The need to re-correct the proportional election system by including those who are left out can discourage patronage and cronyism, influence of money, special interest groups and leaders’ coterie. The earlier amendments of the constitution twice sought to mollify Madhesi groups who demanded proportional seats on the basis of population, not only geographic size, and inclusion of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura in the new Nepali map. 

A slew of issues that requires consensus are on how to address transitional justice laden with complexities, refresh the ailing economy, deal with Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), electricity bill of industrialists, management of the pavements of Kathmandu municipality, repatriation of Nepalis joining the Russian and Ukrainian armies, one native in Hamas control and another 11 in Serbia and vigorously promote public interests. Hoarding profits from politics through impunity, spin, subterfuge and blame culture and power monopoly is a flip step towards the leveling of playing field and politics of negation — the sources of instability. 

Informal sphere 

The flourishing of the informal sphere of society, economy and politics have impoverished the public sphere of democracy and suffocated the ability of state to address the concatenations of national problems. State is fundamental in creating security, order, public goods and social peace. Nepal’s problems cannot be solved by politics-as-usual either with electoral reform or revision to the Political Parties Act. It requires transformational leadership’s new ways of thinking to open opportunities for the people and acting in concert with dynamic actors of society towards making Nepali state effective, non-partisan and outcome-oriented.  Social, economic and political discipline in the nation is highly desirable to solve national scandals and enforce constitutional behaviour of leaders and people. Democratic political culture of accountability and transparency entails the integrity of office and moral awakening of leaders to the people's needs and rights rather than remained gripped by power lust without calibrating strategy to correct path of improving the state indicators and enabling it to perform universal state functions, not the sole extension of party politics. 

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)