The one lesson Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal seems to have forgotten even as he indulged in all manners of chicanery and machinations to stay in power was the simplest—two can play the same game. In his case, it was actually three but the end result was the same. For a public long wearied of his constant restlessness and the promise of even more instability, the universal reaction to the Oli-Deuba gang up against Dahal was either studied indifference or a feeling that justice has been served.

To now be known as the ‘Duplicitous One’ is a big step down from the ‘Fierce One’, the translation of his nom de guerre most commonly used in the heady days when Dahal had just entered mainstream politics. And rather than admit that he had been beaten at his own game, the prime minister has been on a whine, even singing a song about betrayal in love. Most of all, though, warning yet again that regressive forces were becoming active.

No record to whine about

One just wonders if Dahal(and his minions) now going to town about how the incoming alliance will take the country backward even pause to consider his own record. From engaging in mindless politicking to donning the daura-suruwal to complete his metamorphosis from revolutionary leader to an ordinary politician, what has he done to advance the cause of progressivism that is substantially different from other governments?

Since the issue of ‘inclusion’ is one that the Maoists, somewhat justifiably, can be proprietorial over, let us take the case of the different constitutional commissions aimed specifically at furthering that objective. Under ‘Other Commissions’, the 2015 Constitution has provisioned for the National Women Commission, the National Dalit Commission, and the National Inclusion Commission. Following these three are the Adibasi Janajati Commission, the Madheshi Commission, the Tharu Commission, and the Muslim Commission.

Why the latter four were not designated as ‘national’ beats reason as does why Tharus were granted a separate commission since, by law, Tharus are also part of the larger Adibasi Janajati grouping. Equally so, why there was no indication of what these ‘non-national’ commissions were to do. Grafted as they were into the draft of the constitution in the wake of the horrific Tikapur incident of August 2015, the political parties were in such a great hurry to assuage those with serious misgivings with the draft constitution that they simply declared that there shall be such-and-such commissions and left it at that.

Granted, the Maoists did not have much bargaining heft back in 2015. But they could at least have called for a more comprehensive copy-and-paste job with regard to these commissions. Not that it would have mattered one whit since, over time, all the commissions, ‘national’ or otherwise, have been given nearly the same reduced responsibilities as well as shrinking authority. And, the Maoists have played along without demur. To top it off, even though Dahal has headed the government for the past year and a half, the resource crunch in these commissions, both human and financial, remained wholly unaddressed.

These commissions will all be facing an existential threat next year since a review is a constitutional requirement. With barely anything to show over the years, it should come as no surprise if the commissions were written out of the constitution. But it is more likely that the Maoists and other parties will follow the politically expedient path of letting them toothlessly exist as they are.

Three ole men

Having said that, we do wonder what kind of political system we live under. All the goings and comings among and between the three major parties, the Nepali Congress, the UML and the Maoists, can hardly be called that. For it was not engagement among parties but just individuals. It is absolutely amazing that for each party, the president alone can decide the way forward. And the office-bearers elected and nominated are then left scrambling for post-facto justifications of their leader’s actions they mostly had no inkling about.

Hence, Sher Bahadur Deuba felt no need to take into confidence the party leadership when he decided to back away from the pre-poll understanding with Dahal on who would first lead the government back in 2022. Neither did KP Sharma Oli feel the need to explain to his cadre why he preferred a, b or c as the presidential candidate over x, y and z. Dahal being the self-styled disruptor and heading a party new to democratic politics, obviously would not deign to take anyone’s advice for anything. He now finds no one but himself to blame for the unsavoury situation he has led his party into. The tragedy is that the entire country is being held hostage to the whims of these three men and is likely to be so well into the future.

Country doing fine

These men’s efforts to hold back Nepal notwithstanding, we seem to be doing somewhat fine. As mentioned in an earlier piece, national poverty rates have shrunk despite the political dysfunction of the past decade. By one reckoning of the World Bank, measured against the ‘International Poverty Line’ of a per capita income of USD 2.15 per day, poverty has made an exit from Nepal. We will let the economists quibble over these numbers but the fact remains that in spite of the politics, the country is not doing so badly.

I would even argue that our democratic space remains open precisely because of the unstable politics we complain so much about. It cannot be just the role of the national character or other such attributes that Nepal is the most open in the region. Just look at the neighbourhood. Each country is in the grip of either a strongman (India, and, till recently, Sri Lanka), or a strongwoman (Bangladesh), or an undemocratic institution (Afghanistan, Myanmar and Pakistan). Our man Oli did try to pull a stunt a la Erdoğan/Orbán/Modi on us when he headed the most powerful government in Nepal’s modern history. But his ambition was cut short by, at times, the force of civil society opposition and, at others, an alert judiciary.

We do not know if Oli has tempered his autocratic instincts since. Coalition politics will certainly keep them at abeyance for now. Until the next election, that is. The real test of his and of other leaders will be if they were to lead their party into an emphatic victory. Will we then follow the path of so many other countries of sliding into some form of electoral autocracy? Or will our civil and political institutions be strong enough to withstand any such attempt to undermine them? I am betting on the latter and hoping against hope that I am right.