As the country was celebrating the 93rd BP Koirala Memorial Day, Prime Minister Koirala decided to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious elder brother. In the teeth of opposition from parliamentarians, human rights activists and his own party cadres, he appointed General Rukmangat Katuwal as the new Chief of Staff of the Nepal Army.

Katuwal received the official insignia of his post from the man he had done everything to deride, defame, and denigrate. The Chief assures us that he will not deceive the democratic leadership. But if his past utterances are anything to go by, he will need to make a tremendous effort to outgrow his pathological distaste for pluralistic politics.

BP had put himself and his party at risk by reposing his trust in a member of the old ruling elite. Stakes in GP's decisions are much higher. It's going to be either a secured loktantra backed unquestionably by an army under civilian control or military dominance leading towards protracted civil war, anarchy and loss of sovereignty. Almost at the end of his political career, he has gambled big. (Koirala has promised to retire from politics once elections for a constituent assembly are over.)

The choice of Katuwal was controversial right from the beginning. Whatever the reality, the perception is that he was instrumental in the ruthless suppression of the April Uprising. The commission formed to investigate the excesses of the security forces during King Gyanendra's direct rule has already quizzed him.

Rewarding an alleged perpetrator is akin to rubbing salt on the wounds of the victims of the uprising. But a quest for stability seems to have prevailed over the need for retributive justice. Koirala probably figured he could overlook the past by looking to the future.

The validity of his judgement is open to question, but it's not without international precedence.

In post-Franco Spain, the Pact of Oblivion was reached between the military and the political elite to ensure the democratic government was free from the possibilities of mutinies and coups, which may have been incited had the government insisted on prosecuting Franco's trusted lieutenants in the security forces. For any transitional government, it's quite difficult to pursue perpetrators when there are too many to convict and when most remain socially, culturally, and materially powerful. At the risk of being seen as patronising the culture of impunity, transitional governments often make peace with the old elite and allow the political process to take its own course.

In Nepal, the case is slightly more complicated. For one, loyal royals have repeatedly betrayed trust reposed in them by democratic forces. Second, international meddlers as donors and loaners play an exaggerated role in the country's internal affairs while remaining traditionally soft towards the military's adventurous tendencies. Third, the Maoists are still armed and their concerns can't be just wished away. And to top it all, even though the king has been divested off his powers, his mere presence is frightening to a populace frequently trampled upon by three generations of Shaha kings since the 50s. In autocratic experiments of every monarch, the then Royal Nepali Army was complicit in the crimes of ruthless repression.

Amnesty requires selective amnesia. It takes fortitude to forget and foresight to project the future potential of suspicious individuals. Premier Koirala probably believes that his fellow countrymen possess the gift of resilience and forgiveness in excess. We can only hope his intuition in taking a calculated risk turns out safer than the selection of his late elder brother.