Editorial
The past three decades of democracy, the last ten years republican, allows the discerning to trace the ‘design’. People still have to ask the right questions to glean out the truth amidst the continuing partisan narrative that sustains the design. That king Tribhuvan did not go to Delhi to give up his nation may be discarded to history since events after that saw the country slowly assert. Having done away with wayward stories of monarchical manipulations undermining democracy, the country cannot but mull over the ejection of an elected prime minister amid monarchical ambitions. The Nepali people are only now digging out that party selection of B.P. Koirala for the premiership after the thumping election victory was against the public party standpoint of one man one post advocated by B.P.
Koirala himself and now, knowing the leader’s hold over the party, opposition to this decision would have had to manifest outside the party which it did in the form of the support king Mahendra’s ‘coup’ received from within the party. Indeed, that politics within the party could have otherwise affected the democratic system we practice is evinced in today’s political crisis that is being so underplayed by all parties even when the country has been at a standstill. It is not COVID 19 that ignores parliament where democracy should manifest. It is in the party.
Going back, perhaps King Birendra should have told then parliament speaker, Daman Dungana, that Girija Koirala remained party president and parliamentary party leader and that he led (yes, 36 and 74 notwithstanding) the majority party and had the parliamentary right to go to the polls. Instead, that is, of asking the judiciary which ruled in Girija’s faction nevertheless but without delving on the fundaments of the issue. Or perhaps Daman Dhungana, himself a senior advocate and long time champion of parliamentary democracy, should have been pulled up publicly for having politically soiled the apolitical monarchy by leading the thirty-six along with the UML to claim an alternative majority in a party system they themselves had introduced that insisted that the party was paramount and not its numbers. Perhaps Birendra should have told the Nepali public that a minority party asking the parliamentary king to dissolve parliament when proven options remained for the government was a strict no-no in a democracy. This would have avoided a similar call by Surya Bahadur Thapa stressing the monarchy. The absence of such fundamental parliamentary knowledge continues the partisan narrative that the king took over dismissing elected prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba manifesting his tyrannical, non-constitutional ambitions. In a democracy, an elected prime minister tenders his or her resignation when he or she is unable to conduct elections for which parliament was dissolved. But of course, Surya Bahadur Thapa whose advice Deuba sought was part of the design and would not have advised a resignation. For a Congress worker, perennial blowing accusations that Matrika Koirala delivered democracy to the ‘Palace’ doors by tendering his resignation there would have been a reason behind the advice as well since Girija Koirala, who was also part of the design, had already branded the Deuba Congress ‘Royal Congress’. It is now popularly said that King Birendra’s lament was that he was the only one following the constitution. We still have not heard such constitutional laments from king Gyanendra who must explain that he was constitutionally correct in an environment where the existing constitution has come to a glaring crunch. The country, after all, must move on even if the constitution is at a standstill. Too often have parties done so and there was always a king to bail the nation out.
People’s Review Print Edition
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