Cautious hope

At long last the long-stalled bills on Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission on Disappearance are to be finalized following an agreement between the three major parties on Saturday. The bills on the two commissions, mandated by all major political agreements post-2006, including the Comprehensive Peace Accord, had been put on the backburners for some of the same reasons that political parties have failed to appoint office bearers in vital state organs like CIAA and NHRC. This owed to the mistrust between the parties that if one managed to lock up a top post, the others would be at a disadvantage in a polity given to appointing ´experts´ in state organs along political lines (we only need look back at the disastrous two-month tenure of the State Restructuring Commission to gauge the costs associated with such appointments).



But with less than two months to go for the end of the final CA term extension, the political parties are under pressure to honor past agreements devised to bring timely peace and constitution. The decision on TRC and Disappearance Commission comes hot on the heels of the breaking of a long deadlock between the Maoist and non-Maoist actors on army integration. The need for TRC had long been felt. Many rightly assess that part of the reason for the rising level of impunity in the country was the absence of a legal mechanism to investigate alleged rights abuse cases from during the conflict period. The conflict victims, for their part, have been clamoring for justice and redress since the start of the peace process. But to no avail. Without a proper legal mechanism to handle such sensitive cases, successive governments, and most notoriously the current government under Baburam Bhattarai, have tried to push through amnesty even for the most notorious right abusers in their midst. Hopefully, this state of affairs will now change.  



Likewise, the Disappearance Commission will go a long way toward establishing the whereabouts of the over 3,000 people who were made to ´disappear´ during the same 10-year period, both by the Maoists and the then state forces. We heartily welcome the twin development. But we are not yet convinced that the commissions will be able to work on a non-partisan basis. Whatever the parties now say, there is likely to be some down and dirty horse trading while appointing commissioners and heads of the two bodies. There is also a likelihood that, at the end of the day, the two commissions might emerge with conflicting verdicts, again along party lines, much like SRC which in the end created more confusion than it enlightened on the crucial issue of state restructuring. To retain what little credibility they have in the public eye, the political parties must ensure that the experts appointed to TRC and Disappearance Commission are not tainted by political biases. This is the least they could do for conflict victims.

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Democracy was saved but hope is all we have