GPK's waning influence

It´s increasingly becoming evident that Nepali Congress (NC) President Girija Prasad Koirala’s (GPK) decision to appoint his daughter Sujata Koirala as foreign minister and the party’s leader in the incumbent government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal and intense lobbying to promote her to the post of deputy prime minister (DPM) against the wishes of many senior party leaders is proving extremely costly to the octogenarian leader. Until now, while we were only hearing murmurs and one-off remarks by party leaders against GPK’s recent moves, the party Friday institutionally stood united against him by deciding to hold its Mahasamiti meeting as scheduled from Nov 1 to Nov 3 against GPK’s directives to defer the meeting to next year. This is undoubtedly a major shift in the Grand Old Party from the not-so-distant days when GPK’s wishes were almost invariably taken as commands.



According to party insiders, GPK wanted to hold the Mahasamiti meeting after the General Convention scheduled for March, next year, so as to thwart certain key changes in the party that could have proved as impediments to Sujata from taking up an important position in the party’s organizational structure. The General Convention is the ultimate body that endorses amendments in the party’s statute and holding it before the Mahasamiti meeting would have bought GPK time to secure an important position for Sujata in the party. Party insiders also say that his wish to push the Mahasamiti meeting was aimed at avoiding likely protests from party members against his recent steps, which could have had a spillover effect at the Convention.



While we congratulate the NC for sending out a strong message, albeit for the first time, that the party prevails over an individual, we also hope that this decision is a harbinger of a lot of changes and decisions that is urgent and necessary in the party. Meanwhile, we also hope that GPK will take the party’s latest decision in positive light and understand that his recent moves had been fundamentally wrong and needed a course correction. NC, after all, belongs to the people, not to any particular dynasty.



Importantly, the latest decision of NC’s Central Working Committee puts some perspective to the recent confusions that had cropped up in Nepali politics. It gives Prime Minister (PM) Madhav Kumar Nepal the confidence to shrug off GPK’s repeated demands to appoint his daughter as DPM without the fear of losing NC’s vital support to his government. NC top leaders have been quite vocal in recent times that they will continue to lend support to the present government but there were fears that GPK, unhappy with PM Nepal for not appointing Sujata as DPM, might be lured by the ‘reported’ offer from the Maoists to side with them in return for their support to make him PM. However, now that we know who are calling the shots in NC, we can safely predict that this government will continue, at least for some time.

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