Mukti Rijal

The meeting of the apex executive organ of the Nepal Communist Party is reported to have decided to constitute the panel to recommend changes and alteration in the federal constitution of Nepal. According to the news report, the panel to be headed by the NCP leader Madhav Kumar Nepal will include Khim Lal Devkota and Subash Nembang as members though Mr. Nembang is reported to have rejected the offer. The amendment of the constitution is reportedly sought to clear the ways for a member of the National Council –Upper House of the Parliament – to become prime minister in the country.
According to the constitutional provision, only those who are members of the House of Representatives elected by the people are eligible to become prime minister. In most of the parliamentary democracies only those who are elected by the people to the national Parliament are eligible to become prime minister provided that he or she has support of the majority members of the Parliament. In the UK and Canada only the member of lower house of the parliament are appointed prime minister. In Britain there is no written constitution to stipulate the provision for election of prime minister. It is the convention that governs it.
Canadian constitution does not mention about it as it follows the British model. However, according to Indian constitution members either of the Lok Sabha (Lower House) and Rajya Sabha (Upper House) are eligible to become prime minister but he or she should have the backing of the majority members of the lower house of parliament. However, it is generally accepted that a member of the house of representatives should preferably and legitimately be eligible to become prime minister in the capacity of being elected by the people. This has been provisioned in the federal constitution of Nepal.
However, if the ruling party is mulling to amend the constitution as reported in the media this will be altered to clear the ways for the member of the upper House of the federal parliament to bid for the post of prime minister which can be construed as a kind of reversal to the democratic provision of the constitution in regard to the election of the head of the government.
The amendment in the constitution is being reportedly pursued to enable and ensure eligibility of the party vice president Bamdev Gautam to bid for the post of prime minister who can be nominated a member of the Upper House of the Parliament any time soon at the recommendation of the ruling party. If the ruling party is contemplating to alter constitution only to nurse and appease the prime ministerial ambition of a leader, it will invite criticism and even be resisted from within the party too. One cannot argue that the constitution is a static document which should not be amended at all.
But the amendment should be conceptualised in such a way that will contribute to democratise the polity and address the aspiration of the people. The move of the government to amend the constitution will be justified only when entire gamut of issues related with the implementation of the federalism in the constitution are evaluated and issues are identified for amendment to the constitution. The parties like Samajbadi Dal and Rastriya Janata party (RJP) have raised the issues on amending the constitution since when the federal constitution was promulgated in 2015 AD.
Both Rastriya Janata Party and Samajbadi Dal have been locked in loggerheads with the government because of the fact that latter has rejected their demand for the amendment of the constitution to correct the alleged inconsistencies seen in the federal structure of the constitution. The Samajbadi Dal quit the government not very long back due to the differences, among others, pertaining to the amendment to the constitution. Rastriya Janata Party (RJP) seems reluctant to join the government because of the alleged indifference shown by the government to address latter's demand for the amendment to the constitution.
It is in order to note that the Samajbadi Dal in the plenary meeting of the Federal Council had reaffirmed its demand for a shift from parliamentary democracy to executive presidency directly elected by the people. Moreover, the party has demanded for a national parliament elected through Proportional Representation (PR) in place of the mixed electoral system that is constitutionally provided in Nepal.
The current mode of elections in Nepal has been blamed for both creating political instability and also making the electoral contest very expensive and cost prohibitive. It is said to be responsible for engendering corruption and misappropriation of the national resources. The political party leaders and lawmakers set their sight to amass resources at their disposal even through illicit means so that winning the next elections becomes easier and convenient. In fact the country had been badly mauled in the past due to the political instability and sustained bickering marked by the frequent changes of the government. The frequent change in the set of the executive chief and ministers for the last several years had yielded adverse impacts in political, social and economic development of the country.
Today there has been a strong and critical constituency of intelligentsia, political leaders and civil society organisations that sees the directly elected presidency as the appropriate solution to the intriguing political instability and producing adverse ramification in the development of the country. The issue of the directly elected executive head was in fact abandoned during the time of promulgation of the new constitution in September 2015. The then Maoists had advocated for the directly elected president and accepted the constitution with some reservations. Accordingly, the erstwhile CPN(UML) had put forth its stance in favour of directly elected prime minister. Not only this, there was reportedly an overwhelming majority of the support from people in favour of the proposition for directly elected head of the government. If the ruling party is interested to amend the constitution it should take up these issues and review the constitution so that broader interest of democracy and federalism are served and critical issues addressed.

(Rijal, PhD, contributes regularly to TRN and writes on contemporary political, economic and governance issues. He can be reached at rijalmukti@gmail.com)