Premier Madhav Kumar Nepal is a lapsed Marxist. Even if he continues to believe in the Communist Manifesto, he has managed to keep his faith private. In public, he presents himself as a master of realpolitik. For the umpteenth time, he said that he was ready to resign. He left his readiness undefined. Since no political theory can explain his elevation to the high office, only politics can show the way of his ouster. Political science has no prescription to deal with the trust deficit between the leading politicos of the country.
Maoism is a radical version of Marxism. Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has read the same books that Premier Nepal read during his salad days. Both were born Brahmins. They know intentions of each other too well to believe what the other says. The more loudly Premier Nepal promises to resign, the more vehement Chairman Dahal becomes in asking for his resignation. Both know that it is an endless game, but none of them can afford to call it quits. Someone else would have to pull them apart. Unfortunately, there is nobody of the stature of Girija Prasad Koirala to tell them to calm down.
Saviors, however, sometimes emerge in everyday garb. Suresh Ale Magar is a Maoist, but he forsook doublespeak to state the obvious in so many words: A new constitution cannot be promulgated even if Dahal becomes the next prime minister of yet another majority government. A consensual decision was necessary to form a government capable of completing a new constitution before the extended term of the Constituent Assembly ends within a year.
Yuvraj Gyawali, the Central Secretary of CPN (UML), is another politician who prefers clarity to political correctness. He has identified the conflict of ideologies between Nepali Congress and UCPN (Maoists) as the root cause of delay in the formulation of a new constitution. What he left unsaid was that his party is heading the government only because it has no ideological position whatsoever. For the last 12 months, Premier Nepal could hold his party hostage because he knew that his flock feared Maoists too much to have any truce with them. That terror now seems to be receding. Lawyers aligned to UML and Maoists have once again come together under ‘progressive’ banner to defeat the democrats at the Supreme Court Bar Association. If the experiment succeeds, political relevance of Premier Nepal will be over.
A simpler answer is still a value-based comprehensive political agreement for writing a new constitution and going for fresh elections as soon as possible.
To keep NC in line, Premier Nepal did not even need to try very hard—democrats are still falling over each other at the BP Nagar party headquarters to buttress the tottering coalition. This may also change when the party finds that the value-free politics of UML has begun to hit NC hardest where it hurts most: At the grassroots. A disillusioned NC voter would have little hesitation in supporting watered down UML politics. No UML cadre, however, can ever come into the democratic fold; if they get frustrated, they would go over to the Maoists as they have always done.
A rethinking over their respective political positions is likely among the main three-party stalwarts. The main variable of the evolving equation is NC rather than the Maoists.
CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES
Paradoxically, Maoists may find NC easier to understand. It’s true the NC is a pale shadow of its former self. Nevertheless, it retains residual characteristics of a national revolutionary party. Despite the drift of the last decade, it has yet to discard any of its founding principles of nationality, democracy and socialism. Maoists may not agree with democratic principles of NC, but they cannot denounce the relevance of nationality and socialism in these turbulent times.
Marxists and Maoists find it hard to accept, but the core support base of NC continues to be composed of the poor, the downtrodden and the marginalized middleclass. Regardless of multiple failings of NC leaders, the party has been at the forefronts of every political struggle over the last 60 years. No politico—not even Sher Bahadur Deuba—has the capacity to transform NC into a full-fledged platform for advocates of free-market fundamentalism or social conservatism. As a catchall party, NC is perhaps forced to provide enough space to the zeitgeist, but it would be committing hara-kiri if it were to embrace the neo-liberal economic agenda and regressive cultural policies wholesale, as the UML seems to have lately done.
In comparison, the political position of even the Maoists is less clear. The Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist or Maoist ideology is intrinsically amoral—issues of justice and injustice, right and wrong, goodness and evil, would have to wait until the revolution is complete and struggles are over. Nepali Maoists repeatedly talk in parliamentary language and raise the issue of political morality, electoral mandate and the necessity of consent. For a revolutionary party, it is sacrilegious to dump endless struggle for elusive consensus. In that sense, Maoists appear to be headed toward bourgeois politics.
Once upon a time, Marxism had an answer to every question of political struggle. Its meta-narrative could explain almost everything, tell exactly what was to be done; its prescriptions were supposed to be valid for all parts of the world and for all times. Only religious or market fundamentalists—they are often one and the same—talk with such conviction these days. Ideological uncertainty has made political innovation a necessary condition of keeping the spirit of radical transformation alive. Revisionism need not be the dirty word that it once was in leftwing ideologies.
From contradiction of ideas, opportunities for accommodation materialize. No matter who is mainstreaming whom, but if NC and Maoists can find ways to understand each other’s compulsions, identify issues to cooperate and work in unison, it would not be difficult to make UML and Madhes-based parties fall in line for politics of consensus.
A NEW CPA?
Purists would be outraged, but there should be no hesitation in admitting that extant theories of political science have not been adequate to explain complexities of democracy in evolving societies. Almost all typologies of political parties are based upon experiences of the Western world. A Leninist Party for example is supposed to be the ‘organized expression of the will of society’. Stalinists in the Soviet Union stood for ‘the interests of the entire nation’. Maoists in China claimed to represent ‘the interests of the people’. Mercifully, Nepali Maoists are happy to be representatives of their own supporters.
European political theorist Angelo Panebianco has said that an electoral party, something that NC aspires to be, displays certain defining characteristics. Professionals with expertise in electoral mobilization, someone like Khum Bahadur Khadka for example, get to play a central role. Electoral parties value opinion builders more than the electorate. The pre-eminence of public representatives and personalized leadership becomes unavoidable. Financing is obtained from interest groups and public funds rather than members’ dues. And emphasis is placed upon issues and leadership rather on political ideology or action programs. Fortunately, NC is still partly free of these trappings.
The national politics of the future may revolve around a bio-nodal coalition system coalescing around Maoists on the left and NC on the right as UML disintegrates, Janajati parties gain traction and Madhesi parties splinter further into smaller groups. But for now, the center stage needs to be vacated for the Maoists.
To the parliamentary parties who allege that the people had betrayed their confidence during CA elections, German Bertolt Brecht—yet another German—has the most mocking solution to offer: “Would it in that case/ Not be simpler if the government/ Dissolved the people/ And elected another?” Then the CA can stay, the prime minister need not resign and Maoists would have no ground to complain.
A simpler answer, however, is still a value-based comprehensive political agreement for writing a new constitution and going for fresh elections as soon as possible.
cklal@hotmail.com
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