Nothing can be more surreal than a country supposedly in the process of drafting a constitution in an environment that has exceeded the constitutional limits prescribed for the draft. The Supreme Court insists that the interim constitution limits the tenure of the constituent assembly to two years and allows and extension of, first, three and then another three months only in the extraordinary circumstance of a national emergency. The constitutional decree has been ignored not once by one year but again at the moment by another three months. In other words, this extension by amendments is itself unconstitutional. This is regardless of the technicality that the extension date was exceeded by a day. The illegitimacy of the exercise is as impudent as is the decision at the outset to insist on a republican constitution before the constitution has been drafted. This constitutional crime, moreover, is to be accepted as legitimate even if the very legitimacy of the total constitutional drafting exercise and the elections to the constituent assembly and even the restoration of the duly dissolved parliament by a king that was asked to accede to the demands of the Janaandolan 2. Indeed, that this agenda should be so blatantly endorsed and the unconstitutionality ignored by the external sponsors of 'democracy, human rights and constitutionalism' makes obvious the non-national agenda of the supreme law for this land and this, by itself makes the whole process surreal.

It is another matter that this external sponsorship of the perverted political process chose to ignore the democratic aberrations of the Janaandolan 2 in the very first place. A constitutional monarchy was asked by an elected prime minister to prolong his term in office without elections because he could not conduct elections for which he had asked the monarchy to dissolve parliament. A resignation not forthcoming, the king was given no choice other than to sack his prime minister and ask the parties represented in the dissolved parliament for a national government in view of the constitutional crisis. Party leaders, ignoring the need for an all-party government recommended themselves to the post and, if not, asked that the king nominate minority party leaders to head government and later combined to oppose such governments from the streets, remarkably, when these governments began dialogues with the primary threat to the constitution, the insurgent Maoists. Resignations inevitably forthcoming, the constitutional monarch then nominated the next best thing to a national government, a majority government in the dissolved parliament. That coalition government unable to evolve a common approach to the insurgency, the constitutional monarch who was the guardian of the constitution and the symbol of national unity sought the cooperation of all stakeholders in parliament under his chairmanship in order to put the constitution back on track. Strangely enough, these stakeholders sought to coalesce with the very threat to the constitution, the insurgents, at the behest of forces which had branded the insurgents as terrorists even before the Nepal government, isolated the monarchy and successfully launched Janaandolan 2.

This stark anomaly of the very political parties that defied the constitution now advocating another without the king and defying the very limits of the interim constitution that they set themselves only speaks of the surrealism evoked in the fact it is they being given the monopoly of drafting a new constitution. The fact is that, if the constitution is to be what the three major parties say it is, then the whole process of constitutionalism has already become redundant. That a media which actively partnered the change and the external forces which sponsored it refuse to see the continuing anomaly and the glaring impudence makes obvious that the agenda is much more than constitutionalism, democracy and human rights for the country. It is not for nothing that the sponsors dismissed as indulgent 'walkabout' of the king's countryside trips where the bulk locals dared to throng the king despite the real bullets and threats of the Janaandolan 2.

It took none less than the insurgency leader to publicly allege particular party leaders provoking the insurgents to fatally target candidates to the municipal elections held by the king in his bid to put the constitution back on track for which he had asked for a three year limit. Nothing is more surreal than the fact that this is the fifth year without elections and over nine years of no local government. What can underscore the impudence more than a supposedly caretaker government being allowed to introduce a national budget for the year along with a program to man the local bodies when the constitution- extended on the ruse of a five-point program- is due to expire in about two months now? It is not for nothing that this surrealism is, this year too, accentuated by the thousands who continue to throng the king (now former) to wish him a happy birthday today (Thursday) too. 

As a nationalist who chooses to remain in the country even without his throne and as a constitutionalist and democrat, the former king deserves his due from his people regardless of the organized foreign sponsored detraction.