Is it now a political tug-of-war between Oli, Prachanda?
By Sunil KC
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Prachanda, is struggling to keep the coalition intact after the Ravi Lamichhane of Rastriya Swatantra Party staked his claim again for the home ministry. But Prachanda’s CPN-Maoist Center party put pressure on Prachanda to keep the ministry with the party. Prachanda, for now, seems to be buying time. For now, he is keeping the ministry to himself. He said Wednesday that he will decide on the ministry only after the full text of the Supreme Court decision is available.
Mukul Dhakal of Rastriya Swatantra Party said the Prime Minister should abide by the understanding reached during the formation of the coalition of giving his party the home ministry and the party will decide on its candidate for the ministry after the prime minister makes up his mind. However, the Maoist party is in no mood to let the powerful ministry let go of its hands. Lilamani Pokharel of the party said Monday that there is no reason now to give up the ministry, again.
Lamichhane had several meetings with Prachanda and KP Oli, president of CPN-UML, the largest party in the coalition, in the last few days, demanding that he be re-taken into the government with the same portfolio. It is said Oli is considerate and wants the previous arrangement to be put in place. According to the constitution, the prime minister can take anyone, even non-parliamentarian, into the government for a period of six months. However, Lamichhane is adamant about the same status and position in the government and even said that his party might quit the coalition if Prachanda does give in to his demand. Prachanda, however, under pressure from within the party, was unwilling to make Lamichhane his home ministry again. The Lamichhane mess has put Prachanda in a tight spot.
A seemingly innocuous slip-up or a foolish oversight by Lamichhane has snowballed into a major legal and political strife putting the coalition at risk. The constitutional bench of the Supreme Court last Friday annulled his parliamentary seat in a verdict that Lamichhane had failed to follow proper legal procedure to re-gain Nepali citizenship after renouncing his US citizenship. That cost him a seat in the parliament, and government as well as the chair of his political party. The legal and political ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision rocked Prachanda’s coalition government in only a month of its formation.
Although Lamichhane was fast-tracked to citizenship Sunday, only two days after being kicked out of the parliament and the government for being a non-citizen he is not completely out on the shore. Lamichhane is said to be under further investigation regarding the unlawful use of his old citizenship card such as to get a Nepali passport. Under the law, the punishment for a such criminal offence is 1 to 3 years in prison or up to Rs. 500,000 fine or both. If convicted that will make him ineligible to contest the by-election from the vacant seat of Chitwan-2, which he had won with an overwhelming majority.
Some questions legal professionals are asking are: whether Lamichhane’s case was a simple oversight of the existing law or ballooned into an issue of political revenge to finish him off after his rise in politics within a short period of less than six months!
Lawyer Yuvraj Safal and his team, who filed the case against Lamichhane about his citizenship, were defiant in an interview with a tv channel that he was proud that he made Lamichhane fall from the top and added that Lamichhane should now be charged with fraud and deception for using invalid citizenship card to get Nepali passport and to file his candidacy. He clearly gave the hint that his motive was to finish Lamichhane off politically. “If convicted Lamichhane might get a sentence of several years and that will finish him off politically.” One important thing he revealed during the interview was that Prachanda and Oli would anyway have thrown him off the cliff in a year or so.
There are suspicions when Lamichhane, as home minister, started to take skeletons out of the cupboard of many cases he became a liability to Prachanda and KP Oli. As soon as he assumed office he ordered to reopen of the murder case of Nirmala Pant and instructed the police, first verbally and then issuing official notice, to search and arrest Laxmi Mahato Koiri of CPN-UML, the largest party in the present coalition government. Koiri has been charged with the murder of a policeman in 2016 AD during unrest in Madesh by dragging him out of an ambulance. Koiri was freed on bail but fled the law when the court ordered his arrest. The CPN-UML even put this fugitive as its candidate in the Mahottari district in the recent parliamentary election and he won.
Although ignorance is no excuse to breach the law, Lamichhane’s forfeiture of the parliamentary seat and other positions due to procedural lapse generated an uproar among the public, both for and against the verdict. Voices are being raised again to investigate the citizenship status of politicians like Rajendra Mahato, who is alleged to be born in Motihari, India, and also holds Indian citizenship, Sujata Koirala Jost, who is married to a German national, Prachanda’s daughters Renu and Ganga Dahal, who are married to Indian nationals, Devendra Raj Kandel, who is alleged to have once contested in an election in India, Dr Narayan Khadka, who is said to also carry a foreign passport, Anuradha Koirala and several others.
Some questions that remain to be answered are: why was he allowed file candidacy and subsequently allowed to run in the parliamentary election when a case was already filed against him for not being a Nepali citizen? After his victory by an overwhelming majority, why did the Election Commission give him the certificate of victory? More importantly, why did Prachanda, as prime minister, nominate him to the powerful post of the home minister when the prime minister already knew that a case was in the Supreme Court regarding his citizenship?
Senior advocate Bishnu Bhattarai argued during an interview that the Supreme Court also in its decision has voided all election processes undertaken by Lamichhane using his invalid citizenship. “This can also mean how can the party he founded, chaired and led in the election and afterwards in the parliament and government be legal and constitutional?” If things go that far, the Rastriya Swatantra Party itself might be declared unconstitutional making all its 20 members in the parliament illegal, he argued.
His point was, being a citizen of Nepal by birth before he took the citizenship of the US and was given a Nepalese passport and was allowed to run in the election, this whole fiasco could have been avoided because he only failed to follow the correct legal procedure of handing over the document of his relinquished US citizenship to the district administration office instead of the immigration department. But he pointed out that the Supreme Court’s decision was correct according to the constitution and the laws.
The decision was taken with serious concern by Nepalese living and residing abroad. Their apprehension is if a Nepali want to return to their country of birth with a purpose, why would they be subjected to criminal charges for some procedural error? Some of them even started a campaign not to send remittances home. Prachanda certainly will not want this backlash as he is more concerned about retaining his position as prime minister.
In the hindsight, is Lamichhane case now a political tug-of-war between Oli and Prachanda with the former trying to keep Prachanda under its fold and the latter trying to come out of Oli’s political shadow in the present coalition? Oli already has suspicion of Prachanda trying to distance himself from Oli after the Maoist party sought a consensus candidate instead of supporting a UML candidate in the presidential election next month.
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