With just 39 days to go for the expiry of the final extended term of the Constituent Assembly, political leaders, in keeping with their past record, are busy in hectic last-minute parleys to resolve key issues.
As of now, there seem to be tentative agreements on state restructuring (apparently, there will be 8-9 provinces, a midway point between NC´s six-state model and the Maoist proposal of 14 states), on government form (a mixed system with responsibilities divided between the president and the prime minister), and on electoral system (again, a mixed system with the proportions of seats from direct and proportionate components to be settled). Questions on judiciary and citizenship have, as expected, been less contentious.
But irrespective of the reassuring sound-bites coming from top leaders, it would be far too early to believe these knotty issues are headed for a swift resolution. For even while there might have been tentative agreements among party honchos, it is by no means certain that their decisions will be accepted even within party circles, much less by the broader population. For instance, indications that there could be 8-9 states could be misleading. For one, the negotiators might only be throwing up these numbers to gauge the public pulse.
While 8-9 provinces model appears a neat compromise solution, vehement voices have already been raised on any proposal that backtracks from the CA committee’s proposed 14-state model. Janajati leaders have made it clear that they won’t compromise on 14 states. Likewise, some Madhesi leaders have ruled out any north-south demarcation. This debate is likely to drag on for some time yet, well beyond the five-day extension the negotiators have sought from the speaker, even as politicians send out feelers and calibrate their options based on the feedback.
It won’t be easy because many Madhesi, Janajati and leaders from other marginalized communities are far from reassured on the intent of leadership of top parties, almost all of whom hail from the Brahmin hill-caste community. They fear that a conspiracy might be hatched once again to prolong the hold of the same people in the state machinery. It is for this reason they want the bulk of issues to be decided before May 27; the longer the wait, they fear, the more diluted their agenda will become (on a range of issues from restructuring, distribution of powers to question of autonomy and self-determination).
Just about any agreement that emerges from the current parleys will be contentious; this much is sure. But how contentious is anybody’s guess. Take the issue of One Madhesh. Before the current round of negotiations the Madhesi parties had more or less agreed to abandon the agenda provided the question of identity was properly addressed. But as Upendra Yadav made it clear on Monday, it is far from a settled issue. Even the Madhesi negotiators very well understand that they can ill afford to be seen as cowing down to the ‘diktat’ of Pahadi leaders.
The hope was that resolution of the peace process would pave the way for a timely statute. It was not an unreasonable hope. For over the last five years, there could have been significant progress on the constitution had the peace process been settled, say within six months of formation of the Prachanda-led government as planned. But what was equally true was that the political class had found it all too convenient to point to lack of progress on the peace front as an excuse for their failure to take the constitution agenda forward. Now that the peace process is nearly complete, the latent divisions could all come out in the open. Whatever their stated positions, there still exists a clear division between the status quoists who believe that they will be best served by tweaking the current political system and reformers who hold that only sweeping changes to the state machinery can bring them tangible benefits.
Again, the fact that most of the issues are being discussed among party leaderships top-heavy on hill-caste Brahmins does not inspire confidence among party cadres belonging to other communities who believe they are being willfully left out. This is one of the reasons the Janajati caucus in the CA has gained in strength; the Janajati leaders clearly felt that the chief negotiators were not serious about their issues and decided to take things into their own hands. The same logic might be applied in the case of Madhesi lawmakers and the wider Madhesi community.
Then, there are those black swans of contemporary Nepali polity: The events whose emergence and outcomes are impossible to predict. Who can say for sure what will be the outcome of the Baidya faction breaking away from the mother party on the eve of the crucial CA vote on state restructuring? Or what will be the eventual upshot of the intensifying Janajati angst? Bring in the Tharus and Rais and Limbus into the picture and the water gets muddier still.
If parties somehow muddle through next 40-odd days and come up with tentative agreements, Nepal’s political process can still be salvaged.
It also does not help that people´s skepticism of the political class is at an all time high; the selfsame leaders whom they see as having seriously let them down on timely conclusion of the peace and constitution process are again seen driving the national agenda. But a little skepticism of politicians might not be such a bad thing.
In their 2009 book Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism (2009), Matthew R Cleary and Susan Stokes argue, against the prevailing wisdom, that among the defining features of healthy democracies are skepticism of government and a belief that politicians act in their constituents´ best interest only when it is personally advantageous for them to do so. In other words, in healthy democracies people put more trust in the underlying institutions that can serve as mechanisms to hold politicians accountable than they trust politicians themselves.
The main problem with Nepal at the current juncture is that in the last 20-odd years of its democratic existence, the country has not made enough progress in buttressing its democratic institutions. That said, the achievements in the period should not be discounted either: Established political parties have deep penetration right over the country; the judiciary, though far from perfect, is more bias-free than it was at the start of the peace process; elections are largely free and fair; there has been an unprecedented development of the media since 1990; voter awareness is at an all time high. There is just about enough for a healthy democracy to take hold.
Thus, if the political parties can somehow muddle through the vital constitution related issues in the next 40-odd days and can come to tentative agreements on important issues, there might yet be light at the end of the tunnel. But it will be important that the political parties, in keeping with the spirit of compromise witnessed at the start of the peace process, negotiate in good faith. In this crucial period, it will be important to shun hard stands, which will serve no other purpose than giving more ammunition to the radical fringes. Given a little will, Nepal’s political process can still very much be salvaged.
biswas.baral@gmail.com
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