Nepali Times

Among the main reasons given for the dissolution for the first Constituent Assembly last May was the deadlock over the demand for federal units based on single-ethnic identities.

But the endless political tug-o-war among the 601 honourable members of the Assembly during its four-year tenure, makes it clear that the most exclusive legislature ever elected in Nepal’s history had its limits.

The House served as a proxy battleground for the parties and most representatives were simply pawns at voting time. There were strong demands relating to class, caste, ethnicity, gender, and region, which, although premised on historical political ostracisation, the parties stoked populist sentiments.

The revolutionary communists demanded the drafting of what they called a “people’s” constitution, while at the other extreme some felt even reverting back to the 1990 constitution would be better. Some leaders held that the new constitution would be impossible to issue without any provision for single ethnicity-based federalism, while those opposed warned that the country would disintegrate if the path of federalism was pursued. It was perhaps too ambitious of us to expect the Constituent Assembly to accommodate such widely opposing viewpoints.?

So the CA was dissolved. But blaming the Assembly may not be wholly justified because it was allowed to lapse by powerful forces which prevented it from working out a political compromise. The new Assembly, if it is ever elected, seems similarly doomed because the political actors are the same, the issues are the same, and there has been no work done to come up with a meeting point. In fact, positions have become even more entrenched, demands have hardened, the largest party has split, and new ethnicity-based parties have been formed.

The opposing political parties have already demarcated their manifestos ahead of the elections, making self-fulfilling prophecies that the new CA will also not succeed if their demands for provisions in the new constitution are not met.

So the question on everyone’s lips is: what guarantee is there that CA-2 will succeed where CA-1 failed? Many political parties, openly or secretly, do not want the new CA to come into being. The current political talk fest will only go to prove the hypocrisy and lack of statesmanship of Nepal’s political leadership. The roundtable talks proposed by the Mohan Baidya Maoists entail demands for the revocation of all political agreements so far, including the one that formed the present government, the 11-point deal, the formation of the High Level Political Committee, and even the Interim Constitution. But treading that path will be a dead-end, taking us back to pre-2006. If we accept Upendra Yadav’s proposition, we go back to the Madhes Movement of the winter of 2007. And if we take on the demand of Ashok Rai and his ethnic party, we resurrect the situation in the CA before its dissolution.

The HLPC possesses no political and constitutional authority to force parties to take part in elections. And the CPN-Maoist, Madhesi People’s Rights Forum, and Federal Socialist Party all seek the nullification of the HLPC’s negotiating role. Neither the incumbent government nor the political parties have any political and constitutional legitimacy to address these demands, however. So why the travesty of talks, then?

The only reason is that everyone is banking on the November elections being unlikely. The stubborn position of the CPN-Maoist and its allies has only served as a good excuse for the others who secretly want polls postponed. Some of the leaders have even begun to profess that the CPN-M will participate in elections on condition that it is postponed until March next year.

Among Baidya’s demands, it seems the one for postponement of the election will automatically be fulfilled and it will undeniably bring him great political victory. It will also lend the other parties a face-saving and blame-throwing way out of the debacle of November polls. The non-political government and its chairman and President Ram Baran Yadav will not lose much sleep over this outcome, either. If politics takes such a course and it is looking increasingly likely it will, the politicians will get what they want, but at the cost of seriously undermining democracy.