THE GREAT LEAP BACKWARD
Bhattarai started his tenure with the commitment to the people that he is going to form a small ministry. Two months later he has created a record of some sort: He has now the privilege of leading a ministry that is the largest in the history of the nation. Sher Bahadur Deuba who held this distinction in the past can now take some comfort in the fact that a Maoist leader dedicated to reducing the size of the government has surpassed his record. In fact, the prime minister recently admitted that he does not even recognize his own ministers.
Bhattarai has made austerity one of his focus in improving economic discipline and governance in the nation. But when it comes to staffing the prime ministerial office he has again set a new record. His predecessors, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Nepal and Jhalanath Khanal had hired less that 26 people as advisors and officers in the office of the prime minister. Bhattarai has now 46 people in his office, many with the status of state ministers. Apparently, when it comes to hiring in his office the whole idea of austerity is irrelevant.
As a show of determination to control unnecessary government expenditure, the new government announced that liquor will not be served in government functions. That similarly unnecessary entertainment expenses will be strictly controlled. But this rule was quickly violated. The Armed Police Forge gave a lavish dinner for over 2,000 people on its anniversary with adequate supply of all kinds of wine and liquor. So much for new rules! The interesting thing was that the PM was the chief guest in this party. People are now starting to believe that the PM is a showman and all his projections of a person trying to curtail unnecessary government expenditure are fake.
When it comes to enforcing rule of law Bhattarai seems to believe in the principle of doublespeak. This was clear from his defense of Prabhu Shah who was implicated by his own administration in the murder of Kasinath Tiwari in Birgunj. Similarly, the cabinet on the insistence of the PM passed a resolution urging the president to pardon lawmaker Balkrishna Dhungel who has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court for the brutal murder of Ujjan Shrestha.
The difference between Bhattarai and Baidya lies, not in their strategic intent, but only in the tactics to be adopted before the great leap to a Maoist state.
For the common people the decision of the prime minister conveys the message that Maoist cadres are free to commit any crime and get away with it as long as they are in the good books of top Maoist leaders. For a party that believes in the logic of class struggle, it is distressing to see the top Maoist cadres emerging as a new privileged class that is above the law. It is remarkable that a lawmaker accused of murder by no less a institution than the Supreme Court of the country is allowed to move freely and attend sessions of the parliament as an "honorable" member by a government led by a scholar-PM who frequently announces his commitment to upholding the constitution and leading the country towards the "great leap forward".
The PM is strong on the issue of good governance. It is interesting, however, that some of his ministers have murder cases against them in the court. And yet he talks of good governance without batting an eyelid!
The PM has said repeatedly that he knows how to handle bureaucracy. This is reassuring. However, the police administration continues to remain politicized as ever. It is now widely reported in the press that top positions in the police bureaucracy is open for sale to the highest bidder. And yet both the PM and his deputy continue the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" of corruption as a part of the strategy of great leap forward at full blast. In the meantime, top management of government corporations continues to be changed as soon as a new minister takes charge of the relevant ministry.
The spirit of neo-feudalism that tries to maximize rent from the CEO´s of public corporations continues unabated. In fact, a voluminous report prepared by a senior member of the Maoist party, Narayan Dahal of the Public Accounts Committee of the parliament, outlines comprehensive measures for improving the performance of government enterprises that includes a system for the hiring of top management and their performance evaluation. Apparently, the prime minister has ignored this report prepared by a senior member of his own party or is simply unable to implement it.
Based on the decisions of the last two months, it seems that the Bhattarai government is headed for a "great leap backward" in the area of governance. In this background, there is every possibility that “the Hello Sarkar” telephone complaint system that is seen as an innovation of the Bhattarai government may end up as a joke.
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD
On the question of completing the peace process, the efforts of the PM along with Maoist Chairman and leaders of other political parties needs to be appreciated. The seven-point agreement does represent a genuine step forward in resolving the political conflict in the country. However, the disagreement within the Maoist party on some of the clauses of the agreement is a cause of concern. The Dahal-Bhattarai team needs to find a way to take the Baidya faction into confidence.
The Baidya faction that includes some very influential senior leaders claims that the Dahal-Bhattarai team is fundamentally taking a revisionist and reformist line ignoring the true spirit of the people´s war based on Maoist doctrine. This, to Baidya, is a great leap backward.
Baidya has stated clearly in his written documents that Bhattarai follows the revisionist line while Dahal talks about revolution in speeches but follows a reformist line in action. For Baidya both these approaches represent betrayal of the original goals of the party. He would want to continue the people´s movement for the establishment of the people´s democratic republic, for which the party fought against the state for 10 years. The notion of a democratic republic based on reformism is, to Baidya, a disgrace and amounts to abandoning the fundamental tenants of Marxism- Leninism and Maoism.
However, PM Bhattarai, in an interesting document presented to the central committee meeting of the party over a year ago, does not disagree with Baidya´s goals; but thinks that to establish a Maoist state in Nepal the revolution has to go through four stages, one leading to another in a sequence. Accordingly, the first stage is peaceful agitation, leading to the second stage which is armed struggle. The third stage is the cessation of armed struggle for a new peaceful struggle leading to a reformist constitution.
Presumably, Nepal is now in the third stage. In his document Bhattarai claims that drafting a capitalist-democratic-people´s constitution in the context of the present day composition of the Constituent Assembly cannot be taken as a non-Marxist approach. Quoting his ideological guru Mao, Bhattarai argues that sticking to left extremism to the extent that it hurts the goal of the revolution must not be accepted.
But as an ideologue that he claims to be, Bhattarai is very clear in his writings that there is also a fourth stage which is the phase of people´s agitation for the establishment of a Maoist state. We will have to wait for the fourth stage until the third is completed. After the third phase, which now means a reformist constitution, the Maoists, according to Bhattarai, will proceed to the fourth stage which would lead to the establishment of a Maoist state (see: Bhattarai’s “Antar Party Bahas Bare Kehi Thap Spastikaran,” Central committee meeting, September 20, 2010). As per this logic a reformist constitution is a step before the "great leap forward" to a Maoist state.
The difference between Bhattarai and Baidya lies, not in their strategic intent, but only in the tactics to be adopted before the great leap. Both aim for the great leap to a Maoist state but the PM wants to follow his sequence which he presented in the central committee meeting of the party as a new model of Maoism applicable to Nepal. In the pursuit of this goal, Bhattarai is now telling the people to accept the great leap backward in governance, irrespective of its effects on them.
In practice it means a corrupt and anarchic government where those in power are free to abuse the resources of the state, all in the name of a coalition culture while the "revolutionary" prime minister remains a quiet spectator indirectly encouraging the loot and plunder. In this scenario, it is now clear that Bhattarai is rapidly losing his credibility among the people and his dream of moving to the fourth stage, which is the Maoist capture of the Nepali state, is turning into a mirage.
For the non-Maoist political parties, the true implications of Bhattarai´s new reformism should be clear. It is not the new version of liberal democracy that he is aiming for. The goal remains the capture of the state—if we are to believe his position paper presented over a year ago in the central committee meeting of his party.
The writer is the co-chairman of the Rastriya Janasakti Party
prakash_dr@hotmail.com
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