* Nepal’s Political Swamp
* India as a Great Power?
* Israel’s Fake Judicial Reforms
* Ukraine Resurgent
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Nepal’s ‘Development’ Escalating?
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Prachanda has claimed the pace of development in the country will escalate now as the government has almost got full shape with Saturday’s expansion of the Council of Ministers (THT/The Himalayan Times, April 1).
It is difficult to ascertain whether this was an April’s Fool joke/prank, a work in progress or merely aspirational.
Addressing a function at the 25th anniversary of the Reporter’s Club Dahal-Prachanda contended: “My experience in the last hundred days have bolstered my confidence that a lot of progress can be made in different sectors in a short span of time. We have got some success in good governance.”
As an example of ‘good governance’, he could only cite the instance that there are no long queues to obtain passports! As if this was the sine qua non of efficient administration!
He also made the very, very, very tall claim that after taking over the leadership of the government, he had started the work of creating some new records in terms of good governance, social justice, development, construction and prosperity.
Unfortunately, these are mere words and phrases neither describing what has actually been achieved or what will really be done.
He also made a preposterous claim that he was now planning to do something that would never die in history.
With such grand words, the Nepalese people can indeed be very hopeful, but the proof of the pudding lies in the eating.
As the great bard noted:
“Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
However, all is not well with the current state of the nation.
First and foremost, Dahal-Prachanda leads a very unwieldy coalition of 8 political parties.
Second, the inner wellbeing of the constituent members, i.e. the individual parties, is not up to the mark.
It is not only that there is a complete lack of inner-party democracy, the membership is also apathetic.
Third, Nepali civic society is in the doldrums. It has become dormant and leadership is non-existent.
Fourth, the majority of the Nepalese lack political culture.
Many are diehard supporters of the bigger, established corrupt political parties. For them, ‘their’ political party can do no wrong, in spite of glaring proof.
This especially true of the core cadres, who are dependent on the parties for their bread and butter issues. There is a special client-boss bond between them and the leadership.
There is no effective control over the leadership and no accountability. In fact, the leaders rule over their parties as their personal fiefs.
Add to these structural weaknesses, the inherent fragility of the current Constitution and we have a perfect storm not only in the domestic domain, but also in the external sector.
Thus, fourth, by all credible accounts, the country’s economy faces multiple challenges due to poor stewardship – also of the previous government of K.P. Sharma Oli.
These include:
- Low economic growth
- Slump in market demand
- High Inflation
- Poor government finance.
A trouble-shooter in the person of Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat has now been brought in to restore business confidence.
This will not be easy, given the enormity of the economic/financial task.
A doctorate in Economics [even from an American university] does not make him an expert in economic/financial problems. It’s the experience that matters and he has little of that to show. He had a short stint of about six months at the National Planning Commission.
Otherwise, he has been more of a party apparatchik in the last four decades of his political career and has had mixed results as foreign minister.
Fifth, the government has no good record of navigating the external waters.
The government is in dire need of repairing relations with its giant neighbours.
Comrade Dahal-Prachanda is still fishing for an official invitation from his former bosses south of the border.
On the other, relations – at the highest level – are in limbo, after he rejected an invitation to attend the prestigious Boao Forum in Hainan, China – at the very moment when Nepal badly needs economic support from our willing northern neighbor, including more Chinese tourists.
This is definitely not the decent or correct way to conduct foreign relations.
Bottom Line: There is something terribly rotten in the Federal Democratic Himalayan Republic – where federalism has remained an empty word with little or no devolution of power [ after more than 15 years! ] and the ‘secular’ president having monarchist and religious tendencies!
India: An Economic & Political Powerhouse?
Some Indian and international pundits are ruminating whether India is developing into an economic and political powerhouse, and specifically whether it can change the current world order.
The prominent NYT-columnist Nicholas Kristof poses the question: “Is India the world’s next tiger economy, poised to succeed a slowing China as a pillar of the global economy?” (April 1-2).
Kristof contends that this would not be anything new, as it would be recovering its traditional position!
In 1700, India accounted for about 24 % percent of global GDP, similar to the share now held by the United States or the European Union (EU).
But today India makes up only 3 % percent of global GDP, up from 1 % percent in 1993.
As India is poised to overtake China as the most populous country in the world, and as international companies seek new sites for manufacturing outside China, India has a unique and historic opportunity to recover its magic charm and power [both soft and hard] in a way that would change the world.
Some experts are wildly optimistic.
Bob Sternfels, the global managing partner of McKinsey & Company insists: “I fully believe this can be not just India’s decade, but also India’s century.”
And Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, says India is on track “for unprecedented economic growth” that will allow it leapfrog Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-biggest economy by 2027!
Kristol himself believes that India has a fighting chance to soar economically – if it faces up to three major challenges:
- It needs to improve education
- Boost women in the labour force
- Improve the business climate.
After his latest visit, Kristol concludes that Indian women face myriad discrimination and “subjected to a blizzard of sexual harassment, which persists because of a culture of impunity.”
However, today India has nurtured more strong, independent women than ever, and they are forcing rapid change.
Infrastructure has improved enormously and made it easier to do business.
Today, India has a new opportunity to attract international manufacturers and the point of manufacturing iEs really job creation.
English is widely spoken, it has a familiar legal system, low-cost, skilled workers and first-rate engineers emerging from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
India needs to promote even more pro-growth economic policies.
However, before India can recover its historical role as an economic powerhouse it has to bring its domestic house in order and avoid religious/sectraian strife – which can be a major stumbling block.
Under Narendra Modi and his extreme rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India is veering in a more authoritarian and Hindu nationalist direction and this is his Achilles heel.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda is definitely corroding India’s established democracy [ see: WPR/World Politics Review, April 3 ].
There is a colossal contradiction between Modi’s massive domestic repression and his attempt to project himself as the suave statesman in international forums – representing the so-, amiracle.
On top of that, he is flirting with Western countries attempting to contain China.
Authoritarian Rule/Pliant Judiciary
Modi has become immensely popular, and powerful through a combination of extreme Hindu nationalist politics and extensive welfare offerings heavily publicized in his own name.
He is tightening his stranglehold on India’s democratic pillars with national elections approaching early next year.
Modi and the ruling BJP is leaning on the courts to protect its own and target its rivals as he “pushes India’s layered and vociferous democracy closer to a one-party state” (NYT/March 31).
In the latest example, a local court in the PM’s home state of Gujarat sentenced India’s leading opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi [of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty], to the maximum of two years in prison for criminal defamation.
It is indeed ironic that this is just the exact period of time needed to oust him from Parliament and prevent him from being a challenger in elections for years to come!
According to legal experts, the case was not only flimsy, but the sentence was akin to “match-fixing”!
Until and unless there is peace and tranquility at home and abroad, it will not be normal to consider India as a great power and one of the pillars of the global economy.
And changing the world order for the better is a completely different proposition.
Israel Back from the Brink
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition have proposed reducing the power of the judiciary by giving Parliament the power to override the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court by a majority vote.
Attack on Democracy
Domestic critics of Netanyahu’s plan condemn it as actually threatening to severely undercut their country’s democracy, not strengthen it as he claims.
Law Professor Yaniv Roznai at Reichman University, Herzliya talks of the “risk of creating a monster,” by eliminating the courts as an effective check on majority rule (NYT/March 30).
Israel has often been compared to and inspired by the United States.
However, the Israeli system of government lacks the additional checks on majority power that the U.S. has.
Israel also has no written constitution. This means that it has few legal provisions that require an amendment process that’s more difficult than passing an ordinary law.
Israel also has a single house of Parliament, rather than two houses as in the United States, which can each check the power of the other.
There is also no clear separation between the executive and legislative branches and no federalist system that delegates certain powers to states or provinces.
“Political power is concentrated within one legislature,” according to Professor Roznai.
He adds: “Majority rule is the essence of democracy. But it’s not a sufficient condition. You need some separation of powers, some judicial independence, some protection for rights.”
Netanyahu has the reputation of being a political magician who can free himself of any personal difficulty.
Since weeks he had been attempting to push through the deeply contentious judicial overhaul that has split the nation and society amidst protests and strikes.
Now he is attempting another dexterous maneuver by interrupting the whole process for negotiations and the possibility of a mediated compromise with the opposition.
In the meantime, his unwieldy coalition of the far right extremists and religious ultraconservatives will stagger on, at least until the next crisis (NYT/ March 29).
Analysts decry his involvement in an unnecessary domestic crisis (of his own making), which distracts him from engagement with long-term priorities like strengthening Israel’s diplomatic relations with the Arab world and cooperating with the United States to combat the threat of Iran’s nuclear programme.
There is no end in sight in the zero–sum struggle between his principled opponents in the streets and his extremist allies in power.
Netanyahu is, in fact, between a rock and a hard place.
If he attempts to water down or cancel the judicial modifications, he risks an irrevocable rupture with the extremist
If he, on the other hand, he gives in to them and rushes ahead with the plan to weaken the Supreme Court’s independence and its ability to act as a check on the government, he risks deepening and prolonging a social, political and economic multi-crisis that has led to strikes at hospitals, airports and schools, and even precipitated unusual unrest in the military – posing a grave threat to national security.
Russia’s War in Ukraine
The Kremlin has maintained its unprovoked bombardment of Ukraine with the brutal war already into its second year.
Bucha: Symbol of Heinous Crimes
Bucha, a town near the capital Kyiv, stands as a symbol of the atrocities the Russian military has committed since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a formal ceremony marking the anniversary of the barbaric atrocities: “Human dignity will not let it be forgotten. On the streets of Bucha, the world has seen Russian evil. Evil unmasked” (AP/Associated Press, April 1).
Many of the murdered civilians were tortured.
Such organized cruelty – used by Russian troops in past conflicts as well, notably in Chechnya was later repeated in Russian occupied territory across Ukraine 2014.
The basic question arises: Why did the West keep silent to such horrendous human rights abuses?
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin stated bluntly last week: “I am convinced that all these crimes are not a coincidence. This is part of Russia’s planned strategy aimed at destroying Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation.”
In Geneva, the UN human rights chief Volker Tuerk told the UN Human Rights Council that “severe violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have become shockingly routine” amidst Russia’s outrageous invasion.
Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail
Last week, Moscow said it planned to place in neighbouring Belarus tactical nuclear weapons that are comparatively short-range and low-yield.
In the meantime, the Kremlin-allied president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko raised the stakes in the 13-month war by darkly warning that Russian strategic nuclear weapons might also be deployed in his country, along with part of Moscow’s tactical nuclear arsenal.
Strategic nuclear weapons such as missile-borne warheads would pose a greater threat, not only to Ukraine but also the whole of Europe.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is of the opinion: “Moscow is escalating the conflict at a time when other efforts to convince the West to stop increasing its military aid to Ukraine have failed” (March 28).
Why are China and India – the nuclear powers closest to Russia — keeping silent?
Belarus’ Trial Balloon
Out of the blue, Lukashenko announced in his state-of-the-nation address in Minsk last Friday that a truce must be announced without any preconditions and all movement of troops and weapons must be halted.
Did Lukashenko panic with the forced nuclear rearmament of his country – with the immediate threat of Russian military occupation?
Or was he simply muddying the waters?
His announcement was definitely not coordinated with the Kremlin, since its spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that Russia has to keep fighting, claiming Ukraine has rejected any talks under pressure from its Western allies.
Russia’s Presidency of UN Security Council
The presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC) – the executive arm of the world body – routinely rotates every month between the 15 member states ( 5 permanent and 10 elected temporarily ).
Russia, a permanent member, last chaired the council in February 2022.
Its role and status as a permanent member has been highly criticized.
The White House spokesperson said: “A country that flagrantly violates the UN Charter and invades its neighbor has no place on the UN Security Council;”
However adding: “Unfortunately Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and no feasible international legal pathway exists to change that reality” (AFP, April 1).
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Russia’s UNSC presidency ‘a bad joke’.
Since the UNSC is basically stymied, concerned members should look to possible means and ends to empower the UN General Assembly.
In the meantime, Russia can be shamed if UNSC members boycott forthcoming sessions to be chaired by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on so-called ‘effective multilateralism’ and the Middle East.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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