So, what the Maoists started with their destruction of one-third of all VDCs in the country, this government has finished off. It has gone ahead and done exactly what the Maoists wanted.

Through a cabinet decision this week, it dissolved elected councils at the village and district levels. That the government is legally entitled to take that decision is not the point. The point is that after dismantling parliament to save his own skin in response to an intra-party feud, prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has now effectively dismantled democracy at the grassroots as well. After the Congress split, this has not just become a partyless government, but a country without elected leaders (except the house speaker). And how can VDC secretaries run village councils when one third of them have fled because of Maoist threats?

The government had a lot of other options, the most logical being the legal extension of the term of local bodies by another year. Since local officials are so important at election time (for the wrong reasons) Deuba kangresis probably think it will help them to have bureaucrats in charge. Such narrow, short-term thinking is just what we have come to expect from our politicians.

In that sense, this is nothing new. It is nothing new that state radio and television have become the blatant propaganda arms of the faction-in-power. It is nothing new that a plane carrying members of a rival faction is not given clearance to land. We don't really need any more proof about the pettiness of our politicians, but recent testimonies to their petulance has crossed all norms of decency.

Deuba's cronies are now going around using the disingenuous argument that the UML came to dominate local bodies because then-home minister Bam Dev Gautam rigged the local elections of 1997. If this reasoning was not so specious, it would be quite funny. Because it essentially means: "They cheated, now it's our turn to cheat."


We have in this space given Sher Bahadur Deuba a lot of benefit of doubt. But the decisions he has taken in the past months really force us to question his motives. We have also argued that if there was one thing that worked in Nepal after 1990, it was grassroots democracy. Party-based village and district-level elections had generally forced local political leaders to focus on development rather than on raw power.

It doesn't matter in Tinpiple VDC if you are UML, Nepali Congress, RPP (or even a Maoist), the citizens want the same thing: safe drinking water, a health post with a doctor in attendance, schools with roofs and text books, or roads to provide access to market for local produce. Locally elected leaders had started delivering these services because they were judged, and re-elected, on the basis of their performance.

Now, with one cynical and politicised decision in Singha Darbar, callous national-level politicians have wrecked what took 12 years to build. They may have suffered for democracy, but these fellows obviously don't believe in it anymore. They only believe in sticking on to power by hook or by crook. Mainly the latter.

The federation of DDCs, grassroots leaders and the opposition parties are understandably up in arms. You would expect the UML to oppose this move, since they are the ones who would politically stand to loose the most.
Ignoring everything else they have done, if there is one action of these fractious kangresis that shows extreme hypocrisy and myopia it is the fact that after saying local elections are not possible because of the security situation, they did not hesitate for a moment to dissolve parliament and call for general elections. Legally, Deuba could have extended the term of parliament also by a year.

If general elections are going to be held, as the Deuba government is saying, then we strongly urge that the delayed local elections now be held in conjunction with general elections in November. It would be the logical thing to do: it would save money, it would restore the peoples' faith in local leadership, and it would give the polity back its legitimacy.

But maybe logic doesn't work here anymore.