+ Nepal’s Coalition Politics
+ China’s Peace Plan in Limbo
+ Putin Losing Momentum in Ukraine
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Nepal Going Nowhere
The recent change of loyalties in forming coalition governments has made many things clear about Nepali politics.
- It is more than useless criticizing our leaders for being incompetent and without backbone.
Like leopards, they will not change their spots.
There is also no sense in hoping for the better in our country, with these scoundrels around.
The only way out of the morass is by getting rid of them – fully.
[By the way, the leadership problem is not unique to Nepal.
Lets start with the bastion of democracy – the United States.
Donald J. Trump may have been elected legitimately, but he caused havoc domestically and abroad. Just imagine what terrible things would have happened in the world, if he, and not Joe Biden would be in the White House today. For one thing, Trump would have long acquiesced to Putin. Ukraine would have been part and parcel of the ‘neo-Russian Empire’ under the great modern czar.
Then take the Republican Party. Large parts of it are no longer ‘democratic’ with a small ‘d’.
Then there is the case of India, supposedly the world’s largest democracy.
India’s written constitution is truly one of the world’s most progressive. The architects of the constitution – among them the caste-less Dr. Ambedkar and the Kashmiri pundit Jawaharlal Nehru did a truly impressive job. But they could not foresee the depredations of a populist Hindu-majority party like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the emergence of a ruthless leader Narendra Modi with blood on his hands.
In Sri Lanka, the leadership of the Rajapaksa family has brought the entire country to its knees.
In South and Central America and the Caribbean, the other democratic countries could not check the autocratic tendencies of the leaders of Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicarago. Some of them have already gone to the dogs because of rampant corruption and suppression of basic human rights. In Brazil, an enlightened electorate re-elected a progressive leader who will now attempt to save the country and the world from the jaws of calamity [by saving the Amazon rain forest].
- Depending on the electorate is mostly a lost bet – Brazil is a pleasant exception.
India and Nepal are both ‘electoral’ or ‘’flawed’ democracies. Elections are largely free and fair.
However, in India the BJP, an openly Hindu-majority party is voted into power with huge majorities.
In Nepal, due to the electoral system which gives weightage to the proportional system, we have unstable coalition governments, and that mostly ‘jumbo’ ones.
Voting out unpopular governments is a dire prospect.
- The prospect of the ‘sovereign’ people rising up peacefully or in arms is also dim.
In Nepal, there is no spark to the fire burning in the hearts and minds of the deeply disturbed and disappointed people.
But here we have an ironical situation. On the one hand, we have these failed politicians, qua ‘leaders’ who are incapable of moving the country forward.
On the other, there is the dire need for a true leader or leaders willing and able to shoulder responsibility in the hour of need, like Zelensky of Ukraine.
None has (have) emerged as yet.
The people of Nepal have not shown the maturity to sustain a functioning, modern democracy.
This means that they are not willing or able to protect what they have already achieved and, therefore, cuts a very sorry figure in various lists, like the ‘Democracy Index’.
Nepal’s state of the political culture is highly undeveloped, regardless of the fact that economically, it is now in the take off stage to progress from least developed country to that of developing country.
This is a gaping contradiction and must be righted. The gains in the economic sector in the totality must be matched by progress at the individual and family levels.
The gross inequality between the haves and the have-nots must be righted.
The discrimination of women, ethnic groups and religious minorities must be removed forthwith.
This can only be achieved by increasing the volume of political participation multifold – in length, breadth and level.
Only when women have more say in every aspect of politics – which is the art of the possible (and not inherently ‘dirty’) – can we move forward.
- But how can we reach this desirable state of the nation?
As Lenin famously said: ‘What is to be done’?
We know that the corrupt, ineffectual and incompetent leaders have erected an utterly corrupt and defunct system suited their own personal and party interests – not that of the nation.
The primary question is: Can the political edifice be repaired or retrofitted?
Unfortunately, like the houses in south-eastern Turkey after the devastating earthquakes, Nepal’s political house will not survive the test of time.
Nepal’s political system will have to be rebuilt – from the bottom upwards – from the grassroots upwards.
China’s Ukraine Peace Plan Gains No Traction
For various reasons, China’s peace plan has turned out to be a damp squib.
Above all, it is too vague to be acceptable to the conflict parties.
For Ukraine, since there is no provision for Russia to vacate the occupied territories, there is little interest to join the negotiating table.
Western countries have rejected the peace plan out of hand. They have already accused China of supplying non-lethal material towards Russia’s war efforts. After the United States, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned China that the supply of lethal armaments would have very serious consequences. He did not spell this out directly, but at the least, this would mean economic sanctions.
This again would not be very helpful for the world economy, just recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Chinese government itself seems not very convinced of its own plan as it has not been pushing it very forcefully.
Perhaps it was more of a public relations exercise to convince the Global South of its bona fides – that it is indeed neutral in the conflict.
Russia Gaining Little Ground
Russia has been sacrificing conscripts en masse like cannon fodder in its aggressive war against Ukraine – but with little advantage.
The Russian military has been under great pressure from President Vladimir V. Putin to regain momentum in the war. Military analysts considered the recent attacks in the east as exploratory thrusts in a grand new offensive. However, the minor pushes have not come to a shove and have remained the best the exhausted Russian forces could manage (NYT/March 1).
Russia’s new big offensive may be underway, but not everyone is noticing it, joked Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence.
The fact is that the Russian military has suffered staggering losses – as many as 200,000 troops killed or wounded.
Russia is also running low on artillery shells and cruise missiles.
And many of its most elite, best-trained and experienced units have been decimated (NYT).
Instead, Russia is now relying on tens of thousands of newly conscripted soldiers rushed to the front with little time for training and badly equipped.
Plagued by a shortage of tanks and other vehicles, Russia’s offensive will “very likely culminate well short of its objectives”, according to the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The result is that the Russian military is bogged down in the Donbas, an area comprising the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.
According to a frontline Ukrainian soldier, the Russians’ “mistake is they don’t learn from their mistakes” [!]
And: “They have quantity, and we have spirit.”
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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