Monopoly politics is not new: Jung Bahadur decimated his opponents and limited major government positions to members of only one family. When Rana rule ended, the ostensibly democratic centrists banned the leftists for a while to prevent their access to power. Political exclusion became a refined art with the Panchayat's tightly supervised democracy: one could be a member of the national legislature only if one were a bonafide member of any of its "class organisations". When the 1980 referendum forced the panchas into adult franchise, they came up with a Panchayat policy politburo that could filter out undesirables.
These could be laughed away as shenanigans of the past, except that they are unfortunately very much our democratic present. It all started with the 1990 constitution itself where the larger parties in the interim government introduced article 113(2) that handicapped campaigning by competing smaller parties: only "national" parties that had garnered at least three percent of the total votes would be entitled to an election symbol.
Today's Maoists were inside the parliament till they were excluded from "national" stature by the election commission and the supreme court, and forced to prove their political point from without. The district government in Rolpa, which had their elected majority, was hounded out with brutal police action in 1994 on trumped up charges, leaving them no official space to express their grievances. Today, this exclusion has pushed out the UML as well as the Koirala loyalists: the rump Deuba Congress has refused a year extension to all the local government bodies, allowing them to lapse into limbo because five years ago the opposition UML managed their elections. The clear message: "It's now our turn to rig and exclude you."
Such undemocratic sequestering has not helped the larger parties either, since the process of exclusion, once started, does not stop at the party office gate. If the name of the political game is merely to control the rent-seeking apparatus of HMG, it will inevitably seep into the politburos and the central committees. While a few in the top leadership of the Congress and the UML helped themselves to duty-free Pajeros and life-long pensions (mercifully struck down by the Supreme Court), the vast majority of their party cadres felt swindled.
The politics of exclusion and the infighting it entailed has now brought the system to a dead end. If this system-and more importantly, the country's economic future-is to be saved, all the three major political forces will have to begin the painful politics of inclusion. The Maoists who represent genuine rural anger must realise that angst without a theory of governance will only force them into mindless violence, which cannot succeed because all its opponents can never be wiped out to establish a one-party dictatorship. If they continue on the current path much longer, it will severely compromise their nationalist credentials.
The traditional forces, including the army, cannot wish the Panchayat back and must realise that the monarchy must represent not just the past but also the future of all Nepalis, especially those who think non-traditionally. The Congress and the UML, who have represented the aspirations of the urban modern sector from 1950 to 1990, will be around as a force in one form or the other as long as a modern economy dependent on the consumption of traded mass goods is around. It is mostly they who have to understand that, to be relevant in Nepali politics as creative force, they must initiate the politics of inclusion. How can they do that?
They can begin the process of reform, ridding themselves of their corrupt image with credible effort. Calling the CIAA efforts "politically motivated" is actually moving the wrong way, that of eventual political irrelevance. If there is any indication of such a change of heart, then the following three steps to peace may stand a chance.
- An immediate ceasefire by the Maoists. It needs to be followed by the army holding their guns and initiating the negotiations for arms surrender. (If a political force is going to keep its goons and guns, we can forget peace, development or anything else.) With this process underway, the king may have to announce amnesty for Maoists without criminal "Alok tendencies" and war crimes.
- Better if the Congress and UML take this initiative, but failing which the king should call a roundtable of all political forces, use article 127 to postpone impractical national elections, form an appropriate interim government, announce a constitution reform commission, and instruct the interim government to hold local elections to municipalities and VDCs one by one. Reviving politics at the grassroots and beginning the process of inclusion from there upwards is important to produce fresh and untainted political leadership and to allow democracy to survive.
- A vigorous debate on constitutional reform should be carried out for one year and local elections should be seen as mini-referendums. These reforms should be implemented using the Article 127 provisions, and a national election should then be held to constitute a parliament that has the right to change whatever it
wants in the constitution with an overwhelming majority.
The alternative to such a middle course would be the suffocating stagnation of restrictive party politics and the terrifying extremism of the Maoists, neither of which the country can afford any longer.
