The Birthday Tremor
By PREETI KOIRALA
During the last 15 months of absolute rule, the 8 parties have clipped off all powers and privileges of the King, they have separated the army from the royal palace, even sought to remove the institution of monarchy from the centuries old cultural and religious practices that have prevailed as a binding factor among Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim religions and among so many ethnic groups. They have scrapped off the 1990 Constitution which they had themselves drafted, formed an interim parliament comprising of nominated, hand-picked individuals from their own party ranks and loudly claimed them to be the product of the historic People’s Movement of 2006. But looking at the magnitude of trepidation and frightened mentality of the eight political parties simply due to the 61st birthday celebrations of the King, one can easily gauge their utter sense of insecurity and the crumbling base of their arrogance. If they are so confident of the people’s support towards them and if according to their mouthpieces, the monarchy is an “out-dated and an irrelevant institutionâ€, why be so afraid of such a minor issue as a birthday party?
But their fear stems out from something that has been churning for quite sometime now. The whole of the Terai is burning; multifarious splinter groups have emerged out of two main agitating parties mainly headed by Upendra Yadav and Jwala Singh. The police and the armed police force have collectively failed to control the situation and almost everyday- bomb blasts, assassinations, day-light robbery and abductions have made life miserable. During the last one month there was 3 weeks of bandh in some districts of the Terai closing businesses and industries. Most civil servants including district court judges belonging to the hilly region have already fled from the area. Continuous strike in the main highway leading to Kathmandu has made daily essentials expensive. Long queues of fuel have compelled motorcyclists of Kathmandu to brave rain or shine for just 5 liters of petrol.
The law and order situation of the capital city is already so bad that abductions of businesspersons primarily from the Marwari families is not even being reported to the police; the relatives most of the time are resolving issues with the kidnappers all by themselves. Civil servants have likewise staged a protest rally within the Singha Durbar complex demanding security for them from the same government that they work for. Such an incident cannot even be imagined anywhere else in the world. On top of that, a recent meeting held in Patna of agitating parties of the Terai has hit the headlines – that some of them are even contemplating a total separation of Terai from the rest of Nepal. The present government started to shiver further when former prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa who has maintained excellent relations with New Delhi publicly asked for the resignation of the present government saying that the Constituent Assembly polls cannot be conducted by this “inept governmentâ€. And despite physical assaults by the YCL and negative propaganda, more than five thousand people did go to the palace to greet the King on his birthday. Put all these pieces in the jigsaw puzzle and then we can easily understand the reason behind the panic attack just suffered by the 8 party alliance.
While exploring the possible direction of Nepali politics in coming days, the role of the diplomatic community in the domestics of Nepal must not be ignored, although their actual influence maybe somewhat exaggerated. By covertly helping the Maoist movement since 1996 and providing shelter to the top Maoist leadership, India had hoped that a puppet regime could someway be created that would easily dance to its tune. The U.S., UK, Switzerland and some Scandinavian countries had desired to fish in troubled waters of Nepal and destabilize the country further into ethnic or religious contours which would then enable the United Nations to establish a huge presence in the country including troops presence in the name of “peace-keeping.†This could then be enlarged to orchestrate disturbances deep inside Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Creating hurdles in the path of China’s rapid economic and military influence is absolutely essential for these countries and the easiest way to do so is through Tibet which has borders with Nepal’s northern districts.
All this conspiracy came tumbling down when a series of recent high-level exchanges from the CPN (Maoists) with Chinese officials was reported by the Nepali media. According to the “Nepal†weekly, Chairman Prachanda’s son visited China and was accorded a warm reception last month. Deputy Commander of the PLA Barsa Man Pun (Ananta) also visited China and his smiling photograph in front of a television tower in Schenzen was given a full-page coverage. While the gesture was reciprocated by the Maoists by inviting a Chinese delegation to inspect the PLA cantonment sites and Chairman Prachanda and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai receiving another Chinese delegation in Kathmandu, it is expected that there will be many more such “fruitful†visits from both sides in the near future. India has time and again been checkmated by Beijing in its political adventures in Nepal. This is only an example of how spectacular that it can sometimes be. If the future rulers of a “New Nepal†are going to follow the same foreign policy directions of King Mahendra, what concrete did New Delhi achieve by doing all this?
There is still time however to revive what has already been dismantled and time to set right what has been an utterly wrong method of resolving the many problems that haunt Nepal. Since everyone seems to have realized that the present government either cannot hold free and fair elections or the post-election phase will be more traumatic than what this country has ever witnessed in the past; there is an urgent need to widen the narrow viewpoint of the government towards the rightist forces. The government must recognize that rightist forces exist in every country of the world except perhaps in Cuba or North Korea. Negating them and disallowing them to exercise their fundamental rights only brings more trouble. An all-acceptable, independent personality with full democratic credentials can meanwhile take the charge of holding free and fair CA elections, the results of which is acceptable to all. Since the two beleaguered police forces with many of their top rank and file named in the Rayamajhi Commission report neither have the eagerness nor the strength to curb the militancy in the terai, the army has to be brought out of its barracks to do what it is supposed to do.
This leaves us only with the issue of the monarchy. King Zahir Shah simply left Afghanistan and lived happily in Paris when his people ousted him but it were the same Afghani people mostly women and children and not he who suffered in the 3 decades of war and brutality that rocked his once peaceful kingdom. We ought to realize that it is we the people that need the monarchy especially as Nepal is at the crossroads of one of the worst volatile regions of the 21st century.
Celebrating the King’s birthday therefore was in fact celebrating the 3 hundred years of uninterrupted independence and territorial sovereignty of Nepal, a feature that none of our immediate neighbors can boast of.
