In normal times, the elected prime minister of a country may be entitled to ask his army chief for an explanation on why he is disobeying his government.

But these are not normal times. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal leads a party that still fields an army. He and his comrades have been making open threats to capture state power by coercion. His party has shown disdain for democratic norms and contempt for press freedom and human rights. We have witnessed a collapse in law and order in the past eight months since Dahal became prime minister. His cadre are still murdering people and getting away with it, and there is little to show that the Maoists are making much progress in the transition to open non-violent politics.

In such a situation, tampering with the national army, the institution of last resort, carries an ominous meaning. Whatever the army may have done in its ex-royal avatar, it has played by the rules laid out in the 2006 peace accord and the interim constitution. The army chief has on occasion made statements which could be construed as political, but with no defence minister speaking out for the rank and file during transition, it was his job to safeguard the morale of his troops.

Civilian control of the army is a universal principle and should be applied to Nepal only when the Maoist army has been disbanded, demobilised, rehabilitated or integrated. It only makes sense when the party leading the government stops behaving like it is still underground waging a violent revolution.

It could very well be that this is just a prestige issue for Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa who needs to show his own Maoist rank and file that he can't be pushed around. Maybe the Maoists needed this as a distraction to mask their governance failures. But those would be the charitable explanations. Much more probable is that the Maoists see the army as the last bastion that can stop them from grabbing total power and have decided to undermine it from within.

As Supreme Commander, President Ram Baran Yadav has a role and responsibility in resolving this issue before it derails the peace process. He has the right in grave circumstances to provide advice to the sitting government, and let the government know his concern and dissatisfactions. He can't do more than that, but that much he must do.
After all, he is not a ceremonial president but a constitutional one, with a constitutional function in a parliamentary democracy.

This crisis can be turned into an opportunity to focus attention on the much more urgent matter of integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants according to agreements reached before the elections. The issues of downsizing the army, and investigating and punishing excesses during the war remains, and cannot be diluted by any subsequent debate.

There can be no lowering the standards to induct the combatants, because the army as a national institution is meant to protect national sovereignty, and it cannot be weakened by induction of Maoist combatants as a group, even though individual entry can probably be managed.

The Nepal Army's capacity to protect national sovereignty when required should not be weakened. Surely, the Maoists don't want that. At least that is what we hope.