Thank god the negotiations for the distribution of National Assembly seats between the ruling coalition and the main opposition, CPN-UML, have broken down. They were a mockery of democracy. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Sher Bahadur Deuba, the leader of the Nepali Congress, the biggest coalition party, wanted to allot some upper house seats to the main opposition. (In total, 20 such seats will fall vacant on March 3. The election for them takes place on January 25). In return, Dahal and Deuba sought UML Chairman KP Oli’s help with the parliamentary passage of a long-pending and highly disputed bill on transitional justice. Reportedly, the ruling coalition duo also wanted to patch things up with the UML chairperson as they sought his help to cover up irregularities in a high-profile procurement for the Nepal Telecommunications Authority, the country’s telecom regulator. In keeping with the past, if the likes of Dahal, Deuba and Oli each saw personal political benefit in arriving at a seat-sharing formula, they would have devised one. They didn’t this time, as Oli started acting coy and declined to give anything substantive in return for a few upper house seats he was getting. Oli needed to offer unequivocal guarantees for Dahal and Deuba to consider suppressing the voices of the many aspirations for these seats from within the coalition.

The competition within the ruling coalition to get into the assembly is intense. The wannabe coalition candidates were livid that their top leaders would even consider giving some assembly seats to the UML. And so the discussions between the ruling alliance and the main opposition broke down. Yet the reason we should welcome this turn of events has less to do with who will eventually make it to the National Assembly and more with what these ruling coalition-opposition negotiations represented: a not-so-subtle attempt to subvert the democratic spirit. Just because these three men lead their respective parties, they cannot be allowed to impose their will on state institutions, or even on their parties. For one, the names of prospective candidates in the “chamber of experts” must be strictly vetted. The leaders of the Big Three also surely understand that for a democratic system to function, there should be a clear demarcation in the roles of the ruling and opposition parties. If the two start colluding to distribute power and perks among themselves, the whole parliamentary exercise becomes meaningless, and will eventually come crashing down.

The debased practice of a handful of leaders cherry-picking candidates for such vital institutions as the National Assembly, the Supreme Court and the country’s top academic institutions must end. These bodies are hollowing out as their leaderships spend more time appeasing the political masters who picked them and less on the improvement of these institutions. It is sad to see lower-ranking officials and cadres of these big parties often unquestioningly accepting the diktat of their top leaders. Yes, there are some principled voices of opposition. But these voices are far too feeble to be effective. If they cannot make themselves heard, they will abet their own decline—and ultimately take their mother ships down with them.