Bishwa Prakash Sharma, one of the two Nepali Congress general secretaries, has come up with a unique proposal in his latest ideological paper. He proposes that politicians be allowed to be the country’s President just once, prime minister just twice, minister thrice and member of parliament no more than four times. Most Congress leaders have lampooned the proposal as ‘immature’ and ‘impractical’. Even the national charter allows for a Nepali to occupy the President’s chair twice, they aver, and in a country where governments change every nine months or so, the proposal for a two-time prime minister is not feasible either. These critics have a point. Sharma’s paper is restrictive.

Yet the party as well as the broader polity would also do well not to dismiss his proposal outright. As Sharma argues, since the 1990 political changes, the same three or four leaders have ruled the country. In this time, the Congress party too has been under the grip of a handful of leaders, he reasons. Sharma was talking about the Congress, but he could have been referring to any of Nepal’s other major political parties. While the CPN (Maoist Centre) chair and three-time prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has been at the party’s helm for 35 years, the CPN-UML chair and three-time prime minister KP Sharma Oli also has an unshakable hold on his party. (The incumbent and two-time Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba is a five-time prime minister.)

In more mature parliamentary democracies like Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, political leaders tend to rise and fall with elections. If their party does well, the leader is feted with a long tenure. On the other hand, if the party bombs at the polls, he or she gracefully bows out. But the electoral mandate hardly seems to matter in Nepal. There is no tradition of top leaders accepting responsibility for their party’s electoral debacle and making way for someone new. Instead, they resort to all kinds of tactics to cling to their positions. They accuse fellow party leaders of ‘betrayal’, blame an alliance partner for sabotaging their campaign, or hint at election rigging. It is never their mistake. In this light, Sharma’s proposals may be a little impractical, but they hint at a more ethical and accountable politics.

They also prompt some logical queries. Is it really the case that there is no good replacement for the current set of leaders of Nepal’s major political forces? Can these leaders claim with evidence that Nepal has progressed and prospered under their repeated premierships? The case is the opposite, in fact. There would not be such widespread scepticism of Nepali politics and politicians had these leaders governed well, had the service delivery in the country been even half decent and had corruption been under some control. In every functional sector, there is a provision of reward and punishment. People retire based on age and number of years served. Why should politics be an exception? These hard questions must be asked and widely debated. For if politics does not change with time, it becomes obsolete.