View from America
By M.R. Josse
GAITHERSBURG, MD: As the year 2020, when everything changed, comes to an end what is one confronted with here in America – and back home in Nepal?
In a nutshell: ominous, even scary, portents of turbulence are visible as a changing of the guards is scheduled to take place at the White House, less than a month from now. In Nepal, the political mess birthed by a sordid, largely externally-driven, ‘regime change’ drama climaxing in 2005-06, seems destined to get a great deal messier than it has been for some time now.
U.S: TOUGH TIMES AHEAD
As far as this columnist’s stab at clairvoyance goes, the incoming Biden administration will face enormous challenges, apart from the Covid-19 pandemic, including those in the foreign policy and national security domains deliberately created by an angry, frustrated outgoing president who continues to absurdly claim, despite no hard evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In Nepal, the ugly political chickens hatched by foreign intervention; the stinking miasma of widespread corruption, including in high places; the long-standing political or ideological contradictions and absurdities inherent in the new regime; the frailty of the unaffordable federal structure constructed on a patently flimsy economic base; and the willful attempt to snuff out the essence of an ancient and overwhelmingly Hindu society and a monarchy, which served through the hoary past as a symbol and bastion of national unity and vehicle of historical continuity, have now definitely come home to roost.
Admittedly in America in the week just over, there have been the some good tidings, including the avowedly welcome arrival of a good-to-go-in-the-arm second Covid-19 vaccine – and with the outlook for other vaccines on the horizon – as well as the eleventh hour deal of a modest pandemic relief deal worked out in Congress worth $ 900 billion for laid off workers and shuttered businesses hit by the health and economic crises.
That has however been largely overshadowed, in my view, by a massive and ‘extraordinarily sophisticated’ cyber attack, purportedly by Russian entities, on more than 40 organizations, including such U.S. government agencies as the Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, State, Defense and Commerce.
While former CIA Director John Brenan referred to it as a new ‘Pearl Harbor’, a raft of other national security experts have firmly pointed at the Russian government which denies the claims. According to Microsoft President Brad Smith’s blog post, although 80% of the attacks have been targeted in the United States, similar cyber assaults have been directed at Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, Britain, Israel and the UAE.
Amazingly, President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of the severe cyber attack, preferring to keep mum for days on end. Eventually, when he finally decided to say something about it, he claimed – without a shred of evidence – that it was China, not Russia, which was responsible!
That not only was counter to what a passel of American security/intelligence officials had charged publicly, it also contradicted what Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, an acknowledged Trump acolyte, averred days earlier in a radio talk show. In that recording, Pompeo declared categorically: “We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in that activity.”
The hack, targeting software made by American firm Solar Winds, was discovered last week but has been going on for months. Among the agencies targeted was the office that manages nuclear weapons.
As Samantha Vinograd, who served in President Obama’s National Security Council, 2009-13, has written recently: “Putting an end to the attack and containing the damage is critical, but that is only one piece of the puzzle…The fact that this attack can be traced to March and that as many as 18,000 entities may have been affected makes the magnitude of this ongoing attack hard to overstate…It is now clear that Trump is leaving behind a legacy of empowering Russia, rather than deterring it.”
This sentiment was echoed by the Guardian which stated that it was a “brutal reminder of the Russian problem facing Biden.” Russia, predicted the British journal, would be Biden’s “biggest foreign policy headache.”
So, what has Biden had to say on the subject – publicly? Queried on the issue, Biden was quoted as declaring that the United States, during his administration, “will not stand idly by in the face of cyber attacks on the U.S.” He also pledged to “disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber-attacks, in the first place.”
Only nominally less ominous than the massive and prolonged cyber attacks on sensitive American agencies, purportedly by Russia, have been a flurry of media stories in multiple broadcast and print news outlets alleging that a recent talk in the Oval Office in the White House centering on the subject of imposition of martial law in swing states to overturn the 2020 election results in Biden’s favor, triggered a slanging match or ugly or heated exchanges among participants.
The subject of martial law imposition was reportedly introduced by retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a short-time national security adviser to Trump who was convicted of lying under oath and recently pardoned. Though more details of such an extraordinary verbal joust in the Oval Office are not readily available, it led to an avalanche of withering criticism from all sides, including from prominent Republican figures, such as Senator Matt Romney of Utah.
For example, on Jake Tapper’s State of the Union talk show on CNN, 20 December 2020, he immediately interjected, “Well, it’s not going to happen” before adding that such an episode was really “sad” and “embarrassing” for an America understandably proud to be perceived – till lately, that is – as a model for modern, democratic governance.
AND NOW OLI’S ‘COUP’
As Nepali readers do not need to be reminded of every single milestone on the road leading to what has widely been described as Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s coup d’etat – referring to his government’s 20 December 2020 recommendation for the immediate dissolution of the House of Representatives and the prompt endorsement of the same by President Vidya Devi Bhandari, who announced two dates (30 April and 10 May 2021) for the first and second phases of new elections – I shall not expend any more of my time and energy doing so.
Rather, I believe it would be more useful, at this juncture in our political history, to take a long, hard or unsentimental look at how Nepal has come to such a sorry pass.
For starters, let me begin with this reminder: Oli’s dissolution of parliament comes almost exactly 60 years after King Mahendra’s “coup” of 15 December 1960! Has Nepal, then, turned full circle in 60 years?
Would Oli’s “coup” (at the time of writing, the Supreme Court has not pronounced it to be unconstitutional) mitigate to some extent King Mahendra’s alleged sin in dissolving the first elected parliament in Nepal?
Alternatively, does it, or does it not, throw cold water on the pat assumption that only kings and other sundry dictators – be they of the military ilk or other breeds – can, by definition, be the perpetrators of coups against elected representatives of the people?
It may be helpful in our discourse to recall not only how undemocratically President Trump has behaved, especially after his resounding 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden, but also that terms such as ‘fascist democracy’ – normally an oxymoron – have begun to gain currency in many parts of the world, including in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India.
At this point, I’d like to refer to a quote attributed to noted constitutional lawyer Bhimarjun Acharya in a news story in The Indian Express by Yubaraj Ghimere. As it appears, Acharya labels Oli’s draconian measure of parliament dissolution as a “coup on the constitution by the executive head.” Let’s now wait and see if the Supreme Court similarly reacts.
Without any pretentions to being a legal-eagle, I wonder whether, or how, the Supreme Court can dismiss as “unconstitutional” an elected government’s political decision, especially one so promptly endorsed by the president, since the dissolution has been conjoined with the solemn commitment to hold fresh elections, in a few months’ time?
Changing gears, who doesn’t know that the never-ending power struggle within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP), particularly between the Oli and Prachanda wings, has been at the heart of the disgraceful present state of affairs? Or that, in practical respects, the endless game of musical chairs and the esoteric ideological debates of the past three years have essentially been all about the loaves and fishes of office?
That said, one is left with the distinct feeling in the pit of one’s stomach that, in the end, the majority of political parties and their lead honchos will be tempted by elections in the not too distant future. After all, wouldn’t it be more attractive for the RPP and even the Nepali Congress – despite its present stance of protest – to try their electoral fortunes in April-May than to be out in the political cold for two more years?
One doesn’t have to be a soothsayer to surmise that the NCP – a mammoth hoax of fictional unity to begin with – will split soon; the significance of Oli’s surrogates’ move in registering his old party, the UML, with the Election Commission is not lost on anyone.
Similarly, one needn’t be a perspicacious political science pundit to conclude that what we are witnessing in Nepal today is a systemic failure of governance – not merely that of specific political parties or their bosses.
Phrased otherwise, wasn’t it a sham to begin with to hoodwink the people with the notion that a social democratic party – which the erstwhile UML was in all but name – could work in harness with the ‘revolutionary’ Maoists, wedded to the idea of a single-party state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat?
Going back into time, can political changes brought about, essentially, by foreign powers for the furtherance of their interests be relevant to the people’s interests and be true to their urgings, their history, culture and traditions?
Who can deny that for far too long Nepali politics been at the urgings or mercy of competing foreign interests? Will that ever end – and how?
Indeed, who can deny the genesis or external roots of the Maoist and several other parties? Wasn’t that one of the fundamental factors that moved King Mahendra to dissolve Nepal’s first parliament sixty years ago?
Frankly, I do not see anything other than perpetual political instability in Nepal for years to come, in the circumstances of the present.
The hope that the monarchy will be restored – by whom, how – is thus no more than just that. A monarchy re-installed by India or any other power will be denuded of any legitimacy and hence extremely fragile.
On the other hand, if matters get out of hand who will lead the effort to bring things under control? The Army is the only organized force. Thus far, one hasn’t detected any hint that it may be prepared to step in one way or another.
Hence, one is bound to conclude that the present mess will get messier. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
The writer can be reached at: manajosse@gmail.com
Login to add a comment