Former chief election commissioner Bhojraj Pokharel successfully conducted the first Constituent Assembly election in 2008. He resigned from the position in 2009, after which he dedicated himself in the study of national and international politics. The Secretary-General of the United Nations appointed him to serve on several high-level panels—for Bangladesh’s 2008 parliamentary elections and for South Sudan’s referendum process in 2010-11. The Post’s Thira Lal Bhusal sat down with Pokharel to better understand Nepal’s own electoral system and the influence of big business on its political parties.

The latest episode of Bhatbhateni Supermarket owner Min Bahadur Gurung providing land to CPN-UML and his announcement of a sophisticated party office building at the land has of late been a topic of hot debate. People see this as an example of how politicians and businessmen work in collusion. How do you see it?

Our legal provisions in this connection have some loopholes. The law allows political parties to collect donations to run their organisations, to contest elections and to carry out other activities. The law is silent on who can make such donations and how much they can do it. This is a gap in our law. Our political parties have for long been misusing the loopholes, and now they are doing so openly. The laws have also identified some sources of income for the parties such as the levy by their members, donations they get and the incomes the parties make in various ways. The amount they earn from these sources is negligible. But most major corruption cases, and mainly policy-related corruption, are linked to those who fund the political parties. This in turn is linked to the trend of elections increasingly becoming expensive. Politicians need money and those with money need access to powerful politicians. So, this is mutually beneficial for politicians and businesspeople. Such activities have been taking place for decades, but the level of such collusion has increased significantly of late.

Is accepting donations from Gurung problematic as there are pending corruption and fraud cases against him or is accepting donations from business people inherently questionable?

Our law hasn’t set clear criteria in this connection. Laws in some countries have categorically defined certain fundamental things such as from whom parties can take donations, how much and what type of money they can accept and how to make the deal transparent. In developed democracies, political financing is strictly monitored and regulated. In our case, we didn’t even fix the limit of the amount a businessperson can donate to a political party and whether that should be linked to the profit and tax the person pays to the state. Even the individuals who haven’t paid tax to the state citing losses in their businesses might be donating big sums to political parties or individual politicians. Therefore, there should be certain criteria to regulate political financing.

Certain provisions empower the Election Commission to take action. For instance, if someone wants to help a political party or a candidate financially with more than Rs25,000, the person has to give the money through a bank. The commission can cancel someone’s candidacy or take other actions if the candidate is found to have made excessive expenses in breach of election laws. But our agencies are weak in terms of enforcement. The political parties submit the details of their financial transactions but that is often audited by a chartered accountant who might be a party cadre. The Election Commission hasn’t succeeded in investigating such malpractices.

Will a law on conflict of interest help control such malpractices?

We need a couple of things soon. First, the state should formulate and enforce a law on conflict of interest. It will define certain issues on conflict of interest involving politicians, business people and other stakeholders and make the officials making decisions accountable. Second, there is a need to define what are policy decisions and what aren’t. Of late, there is tendency of making decisions from Cabinet meetings to avoid prosecution from the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) as the anti-corruption body is not allowed to investigate Cabinet’s policy decisions. The CIAA leadership has an excuse not to get involved in the decisions of the politicians who appoint them. All Cabinet decisions are not policy decisions. So, it has become urgent to define what are policy decisions and what aren’t and what kind of issues the CIAA and other investigating agencies can investigate.

People in general say that corruption has of late increased. Is that the case?

There is no society completely free of corruption. I have been observing the functioning of our state mechanisms for the past five decades. During the Panchayat [1960-1990], everything was controlled by the palace. And, the royals and their kin were linked when there was a high-level corruption case. In the 1980s, a corruption case involving the procurement of a Boeing surfaced. A commission led by a Supreme Court justice showed the involvement of prince Gyanendra [who later became King] but its report was not implemented as the then King Birendra didn’t muster the courage to take action against his own brother. At the time, politicians didn’t dare to get involved in serious corruption cases as there was a fear of action from the palace.

Over time, the volume of corruption increased with the increment in the amount of financial transactions. There is corruption even in countries like Japan and South Korea that have made exemplary progress in development. Leaders including prime ministers, ministers have been prosecuted and even faced jail terms on corruption charges. Based on that, some argue that corruption is somehow attached to development because there is mobilisation of huge resources. But there is a big difference with what is happening here. There, they take action against whoever is involved. Presidents and prime ministers have been jailed, some have even committed suicide. But in our case, top political leadership is not prosecuted. The other aspect is that after the reinstatement of democracy and the start of the republican order, the media made more corruption cases public, which was not the case during the King’s regime.

Do you see any connection between the political parties and the rampant corruption in recent decades?

Our party organisations became too burdensome. In developed democracies, political parties become active when there is a need for their role. At other times, they go ‘into hibernation’. The party leaders and members return to their regular businesses and remain busy there. For instance, at present, the Democrats and Republicans in the US have concentrated all their energy to help their respective candidates win. Once the election is over, they return to their regular businesses. Similar is the situation in other developed democracies. This happens when a democracy attains maturity. Conversely, in our case, the cadres are totally dependent on their organisations. And even general people want things done through party channels. From the grassroots to the centre, people go to party offices for recommendations to get something done from government agencies. This is how parties have become parallel power centres to the state agencies. The government bodies have been weakened. Hence, the way our political organisations, their leaders and cadres are managed has become the source of corruption. And it has weakened elected governments because they aren’t allowed to work independently. Government officials are also forced to work as per the order given by a head of the local chapter of a political party, not by the elected representatives with people’s mandate.

There is another more concerning trend. These days the government’s decisions are influenced by certain interest groups that have huge money. There are around two dozen big business houses who influence the state’s decision-making process no matter which party leads the government. First they make informal decisions on certain key issues. Then, the Parliament, a government agency, or a court, whichever is concerned, endorses it. So now the real power doesn’t lie with elected representatives or state agencies. The interest groups wield real power.

How to stop it?

The state should fund political parties to cover their genuine expenses such as election expenditures and regular costs needed to run party organisations. This helps break the nexus between politicians and business tycoons and to check corruption. Once the political parties get money from state coffers, their expenditures will be strictly regulated by the law. They won’t be allowed to take outside donations. After that, the Office of the Auditor General will audit their accounts.

But how can we ensure the parties and their leaders are taking no donations even after they get state funding?

The law will bar both the donors and recipients from being involved in offering and taking donations. Then, the donors can say that they can’t give money to the political parties as that will be a crime of breaching the law. The policy only works if the state agencies strongly enforce the law.

Other countries have made huge progress in terms of development despite corruption being rampant there. Why do we lag behind?

We adopted the form of governance that accepts Parliament as the most sovereign body. But, in reality, the power lies with the chiefs of three major parties. The Parliament rubber stamps whatever they decide. And, they are influenced by certain interest groups. The legislature seeks political parties’ decisions even to follow its procedures. The other most powerful institution as per our constitution is the prime minister. But, in reality, the prime minister always struggles to appease coalition partners. Another important state pillar is the judiciary, which has been weakened by politicisation. Constitutional bodies could have played an important check and balance role but the politicians wanted to use them to serve their interests. With the weakening and non-functioning of state agencies, misrule prevails. In other countries, laws and state agencies work, and therefore they progressed.

Is there a viable way to clean up our corrupt system?

First the leaders that messed things up and brought the country to this situation should retire. The leaders who led historic political movements have failed to maintain their height. The narrative of ‘there is no hope’ has spread. This will not stop unless the present leadership retires. Things will improve if they voluntarily retire from politics. But they aren’t ready for that.

How do you evaluate the present government’s performance after its 100 days in office?

I was optimistic at the beginning and expected that they would work differently and instil hope in the people, mainly on good governance. But they gave continuity to the same mistakes they committed in the past. As the two largest parties are in the government, they have a chance to sow hope in the country, but the signs in the past 100 days aren’t encouraging. They deserve credit for the initiative to amend transitional justice related laws and to begin the process to constitute the two TJ bodies. Also, the government successfully restored connection of the Kathmandu Valley with other parts of the country after the devastating floods and landslides.

Our major concern is that if this experiment of a government of two largest parties fails, it will raise questions over our system. It won’t be limited to the failure of the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, it will be projected as a failure of the system. A number of groups are unhappy with the system the present constitution adopted in 2015. The governing parties’ failure will give them a ground to raise questions over the system, at a time when a large section of the society is fed up with seeing “the same old faces”. Individual leaders’ failure may push our democratic system in a crisis. This is more concerning. At the time of forming this coalition, they said that they joined hands due to the special circumstances of the country. But they didn’t work as per the special needs.

You wrote a book entitled Preventing Election Violence Through Diplomacy in 2020 after a comprehensive research on some African countries. Do you see any similarities between politics of Africa and Nepal?

In the course of that research, I studied some elected as well as non-elected dictators in Africa and Latin America. The dictators always think along the lines of ‘me and mine’. Instead of strengthening state agencies, they want to turn the agencies in their favour. Over time, some dictators realise they are making one mistake after another and they reach a point where they want to quit. But the coterie that surrounds the leader doesn’t allow him or her to quit. Those who are benefitting from the rule even threaten to kill the dictator if he/she plans to call it quits. Then, the dictators want some external intervention, beyond the tight circle. I found such circumstances in my case studies. It is so unfortunate that I see something similar happening in Nepal. The way a group of people encircle our top leaders and defend even their wrongdoings, it gives me a feeling of deja vu. In our case, some leaders are advised not to quit as a true successor has not been groomed.