Barring a surprise ruling from the Supreme Court against the dissolution of the House of Representatives, it seems quite certain that we will soon be fully immersed in election season. Unfortunately, where the expectation of a fresh popular mandate for a new government should have engendered hope for the future, things are increasingly beginning to look more like the past. Instead of a dramatic makeover of the political system that one dreamt possible for a brief instant after the Gen Z revolt, even cosmetic changes are quite scant.

Nearly 400 years ago, sick of the prevarications of parliament during the brief phase of republicanism in England, Oliver Cromwell castigated it with these immortal words: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” The Nepali electorate does not seem quite ready to send a similar message to those politicians who have been around for decades with little to show for their efforts. There is thus little hope of a fresh set of faces being ushered into power. Rather, the hydra-headed political machine that has been our bane will likely continue to run the country, albeit with one or two more heads added to it.

Manifesto ritual

With our inexorable march towards parliamentary elections, we will soon be treated to another ritual playing out when writers of fantasy become active again. I am, of course, not alluding to our litterateurs but to the select few within the political parties who will be given the responsibility of crafting documents that promise the sun and the moon and the stars to the Nepali public should their party be entrusted with power. Clichés new and old will be bandied around as everyone tries to sway voters their way with fanciful promises. It is a given that none among the older parties will even bother to take a second look at what had been loftily articulated in earlier election cycles or find justifications for the mismatch between promises made and the reality.

There is no need either since one cannot imagine a political party being booted out for having failed to deliver on specific commitments made. Apart from high-profile instances of outlandish promises kept alive in public memory sometimes through folklore—with former prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai’s promise to flush the streets clean with water from Melamchi ranking high among them—people in general do not remember what would have been said some years earlier, let alone the contents of dense manifestoes. Even though such documents are useful in laying out a party’s vision, there is hardly anyone who relies on a party’s policy document to understand its stance on any particular issue. That is the case worldwide and even more so in countries like Nepal.

In theory, elections are supposed to be won or lost based on how closely the people identify with a party’s policies. That clearly is not the case in Nepal, at least since there is not much to choose between what one party has to offer compared to a second or third one. The only real differences evident currently are between the traditionalists, who would do away with federalism and secularism and perhaps even restore the monarchy and undercut inclusion, and the more ‘progressive’ ones who are diametrically opposed to them. So long as it suits them, that is, for one could not put it past the latter to reverse position on any of those four issues if it will result in attaining power.

On the other hand, our electoral system itself does not allow for political parties to be held accountable to their stated policies in election manifestoes. Even when we practised majoritarianism in the first three post-1990 election cycles, not once had a party crossed the 50 percent majority threshold to be able to claim the absolute mandate to introduce the kind of policy changes it would have promised. Since 2008, however, with the mixed system in place and coalition politics being the norm, the imperatives of following any one party’s policies have become moot in the name of the catch-all ‘common minimum programme’ (CMP) of the ruling alliance. It is a different matter that the fate of the CMP is no different from the individual party manifestoes. Considering that there is nary an internal discussion on the content of a party’s campaign promises when these are drafted and finalised, it perhaps serves everyone’s interests that these are quickly forgotten.

Recycled platitudes

I am reminded of an incident from 2000 when I had interviewed sociologist Krishna Bhattachan about the positions taken by the major political parties on the question of marginalised groups. Already a prominent voice calling for a more inclusive polity, Bhattachan had shown me a table comparing what the parties had proclaimed in their 1999 election manifestoes. This was years before the big duo, the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, had made U-turns and acknowledged the nature of exclusion historically facilitated by the Nepali state.

According to Bhattachan’s table, the then-Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Chand) turned out to have the most liberal views on group rights. That was a huge surprise given the party’s provenance in the myopic days of the Panchayat era when celebrating Nepal’s diversity was the province of solely cultural troupes. The apparent paradox was explained away by Bhattachan matter-of-factly stating that it turned out so because he had written the section on Janajatis for the Chand party. Seemingly, the conservative party leadership had not even bothered to read what Bhattachan had submitted and included it wholesale in their manifesto. Granted, the party had absolutely zero chance of implementing its programme. But it still says a lot about the relationship between the stated policies of a political party and what it aims to do about them—if at all.

We will certainly hear and read about good governance, rule of law, inclusion, Panchsheel, etc., etc., from the old parties. I wonder what the new parties will promise that will make them stand out from among the rest. But I have a strong suspicion that there will be nothing more than platitudes and more platitudes.