By D.M. Thapa
There is no war going on here in Nepal. But the country is in dire straits and people are having a hard time just making even their daily ends meet. But let me tell you, if we are not into a really conventional war, we are badly enmeshed in a political war in which lines have already been drawn, but who stands where is still not clear.
Like any other observer, we must first talk of the tug-of-war between the political parties for the election of a new President. The first question that comes to mind is, whether the President is only a ceremonial figure, but an alliance has already been broken by the major parties and even a new government is sure to be formed either before or after the presidential election just because the two major sides want their own person to be the ceremonial President.
Is this the work of foreign powers with our major parties only dancing like puppets to their tunes? Or is this really the political cunning of Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who presently heads the third biggest party and politically does not have the clout to become prime minister if the two biggest parties were not at loggerheads but he still has outwitted them? The two biggest parties, namely the Nepali Congress and the CPN (UML) have paved the way for Dahal to become Prime Minister when they themselves could not garner enough parliamentary votes needed to singly or with just some help of much smaller parties would have given them the strength to form the government.
That there will not be any peace progress or prosperity even if there is a new government is it is already almost certain. In fact, doomsday sayers are even speaking of much political chaos, fighting among the parties themselves and maybe mid-term polls, which the cash-strapped nation can hardly afford. But the political parties don’t seem to care, just like they don’t care about what is happening to the majority of the populace and the hordes who can make it are all flying abroad to foreign destinations to do however dirty or dangerous jobs. The foreigners and their NGOs, which speak volumes about the need for human rights say nothing even when Nepali people die of un-human factors and Nepalese women are bought and sold in the most violent of cities in those foreign lands.
The President should be looked on to as the guardian of the nation, belonging to no parties and who can take matters in hand when the executive and judiciary go out of control as we have seen happen several times in the recent past. In the name of holding a ‘fair’ election for example, an unheard-of solution was sought by making the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court the Prime Minister as well as retired bureaucrats as ministers. This was all done in a pie-sharing style with no party untouched.
So who is in actual control of this country? Is it foreign powers with huge stashes of funds? Is it the political parties who have never given any thought to the prosperity of the nation or the hardships of the people? Or is it the civil society with its own axes to grind or the ever-greedy bureaucrats? Despite these above-mentioned people and many, many others, no one actually seems responsible towards what they do and they are not accountable in any way at all.
Any of the so-called ‘experts’ will tell you, as per which party is in power, the country is in a terrible political wilderness and it has a very weak and vulnerable economy, a very bad, bad combination indeed. But no one wants to come forward and tackle these problems which could adversely affect the lives of the people and further push backwards the country. We could very quickly turn into another hot spot of the world if the present short-term gains are only looked into by the political leaders and the economy worsens further due to out-of-control factors like the Ukraine war for example. Nepal could be another Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, or even Ukraine itself if foreigners are to constantly meddle in the internal affairs of this country for the interests of their own. For example, we know the US and China are on the verge of another Cold War like the one the US had with the then-Soviet Union in the past. But where will their idle battlefield be? Nepal of course. It is the same with the animosity between China and India, Nepal will be the first choice of being a playfield for both of them, though the high Himalayas gives natural protection against China a wide open territory and easy terrain lies between Nepal and India. Ask any official, revenue officer or just security provider and they will all say the biggest challenge is the ‘open border’ Nepal shares with India.
Still, to come back to the Ukraine war, none of the nations led by the United States seems to talk about peace, they just always say loudly and clearly how much weapons they are giving to the former Soviet state and how much money they are giving them to buy more arms and ammunitions. Will arms and ammunition bring peace? Not at all. It is a shame that a joint communiqué could not be brought out after the G-20 meeting which was held in Bangalore, India just last week, because the Western powers wanted to thrust an unwanted issue in the communiqué regarding the Russia-Ukraine war.
Here, it would not be untimely to mention that Nepal too has been dragged into the US alliance, because despite its hard and fast rule of saying that non-alignment is the base on which Nepal’s foreign policy rests, it has taken sides with Ukraine due to the insistence of the West. The mistakes of the political leaders, the greed of the bureaucrats, the lack of accountability on the part of the judiciary, the constant interference by foreign forces in Nepal’s internal affairs, and the much willingness of Nepali intellectuals to work for foreign causes just because they get paid in dollars are causes which are pushing Nepal to the brink and making the Nepalese more poorer and their life harder to live. The media also has not always been responsible and played the role of being the ‘watchdog’ of society, this could be because of much politicization and foreign penetration in the media like in other sectors too.
Let us hope the nation and the people will not have to endure more chaos, political infighting, the rise of corruption, further destruction of the already weakened economy and more impoverishment of the people. By looking at the way things are moving ahead, the country is in for more trouble than it has seen before.
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