In his 1968 essay titled Tragedy of the Commons, ecologist Garrett Hardin discussed how individualistic human behaviour, pursuing self-interest without social and ecological considerations, will ultimately starve the planet of its scarce resources and bring a collective end to civilisations. Over the past decades, the metaphor has found its place across various academic disciplines, with economists and environmentalists using it to theorise and underscore the need for a sustainable co-existence. This piece attempts to use the same metaphor to explain how the unretiring Nepali leaders have over-exploited the political capital accumulated by their predecessors, leaving the next-in-line leaders high and dry.

The Nepali Congress is not just a political party in this country. It is a political institution, an organisation that was born in the 1940s, out of social and political revolt against a feudal autocracy. Over the last eight decades, its founding members and their torch-bearers have repeatedly led political and social awakenings of this country, fighting for a plural and democratic political system where people’s fundamental rights are protected. Due to the ingrained belief and conviction in democracy, the Congress was seen as synonymous with Nepal’s democracy. To earn such a stature, the party’s leadership has had to repeatedly live up to the reputation.

A famous incident that Congress leaders continue to cite is from the time of its former President Girija Prasad Koirala, who is both revered and controversial for his leadership style. Before the first Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, then Prime Minister Koirala had been sufficiently briefed by the party and government sources that his party was going to be defeated, with the newly mainstreamed Maoist party poised to secure a strong majority. Needless to say, the political stakes were high given that the CA was being tasked to draft the new republican constitution. Against the advice of senior party members, Koirala did not just ensure that the elections were held; he also honoured the results and handed over powers to a party that still had its guerrilla forces stationed across eight cantonments all over the country.

Unfortunately, the ideals set by the party’s towering figures do not seem to have survived to the current party leadership, who have squandered its democratic credentials through undemocratic behaviour. It has been more than a few years since the demand for a generational leadership change has gained traction inside the party. The party had been led by an ageing and ailing BP Koirala for many decades before his younger brother Girija Prasad (GP) emerged as the leader in the 1990s. Despite fighting for democracy his entire life, GP was not democratic enough to hand it over to his younger party comrades and reigned supreme inside the party. He passed away in 2010, appointing another ageing and ailing cousin, Sushil Koirala, as the interim party leader. Sushil Koirala stayed in power for the next six years until the current President Sher Bahadur Deuba was elected at the 13th party convention of the party held in 2016.

Over the last decade, Deuba, the young firebrand leader from Nepal’s remote far-west district Dadeldhura, the man who once split the party to challenge the authoritarian rule of Girija Prasad Koirala, has become a shadow of the man he had once opposed. Deuba institutionalised the coterie politics that Koirala had established. He mimicked Koirala’s undeclared policy of ‘divide and rule’ inside the party, often using money and muscle to subdue his political opponents. In a mockery of the party’s internal democracy, Deuba had reduced its central committee into a room of ‘yes men’, who could not find a voice to tell him that he was too old and lacked vision to lead the party in a country where the majority of voters are half his age.

Had it not been for the Gen Z movement of early September, Deuba would still be the party’s president, his wife Arzu Rana Deuba dreaming of taking over like an entitled heir. Unfortunately, Deuba’s unceremonious political demise has not necessarily restored democracy inside the party. The acting President Purna Bahadur Khadka, another leader from the remote Karnali region, has picked up from where his predecessor left off and continued with coterie politics. He continues to disregard the calls of the majority of leaders to hold the party’s national convention. It is nothing but an irony that the leadership of a party claiming to be the defender of Nepali democracy is scared of holding its own elections.

Khadka, who turns 70 in a few months, is not alone in this transgression. There are half a dozen ailing and ageing men who believe politics is a waiting game and have therefore earned their way into the party’s leadership position. There is absolutely no contestation of vision or agendas, not even a rhetorical battle of ideology that is common inside the communist parties. These leaders are prolonging their careers simply by overspending the party’s hard-earned political capital. They have captured the party’s resources and networks, forcing younger opponents to the margins. They are turning a blind eye to the nation’s demographic changes and aspirations of its young voters. They forget that political capital is like any other resource on this planet. It is finite, and in the wrong hands, its depletion happens quicker than anybody can imagine.

The Congress leaders, young and old, must realise they no longer enjoy the popular support they once did. The younger generation of voters does not give much credence to the party’s past achievements, such as the 1990 or 2006 movements. Instead, they have grown up seeing and listening to the same old heads leading the major parties, including the Nepali Congress. And their performance in the government has neither been exemplary nor without questions of integrity. If the Nepali Congress continues to persist with ageing and ailing faces, it will have little chance of convincing the new demographic of voters in the next general elections. The young voters are not short of choices in a country where political parties are opening like pastry shops!

This is the first of the three-part weekly series on Nepali political parties.