Time to emulate Africa’s “military-assisted transitions” for a smooth landing.
By Bihari Krishna Shrestha
GATHERING STORM OF PROTEST
Mangsir 7 (November 23, 2023) is now seen as the day of rage against the chor, daanka, taskar, and jyaanmaaras (thieves, dacoits, smugglers, and murderers) who have entrenched themselves as the governing syndicate with total impunity for themselves by having “their own men” appointed in positions that could subject them to the due processes of law. Examples of such crucial positions that are currently effectively paralyzed include the president of the republic, the anti-corruption watchdog, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, and reportedly judges in the judiciary, including recently retired Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the country.
As things stand, the call given by Durga Prasai, a controversial businessman by any definition who has a history of hobnobbing with the heads of these very corrupt parties and then breaking away from them for one grievance or another, is now seen as the catalyst for this gathering storm. He now stands solidly for “change of regime” and return of the monarchy, an issue that is now extraordinarily popular among people, even among the party cadres, who are now deeply disenchanted with the chronic corruptibility of their own leaders.
In a way, the people are re-living the Rabi Lamichhane moment, now an MP and chair of the Rastriya Swatantra Party that was hastily put together on the immediate eve of the general election last year. While he was a hard-hitting and popular TV anchor himself, the reason for his party to emerge as the fourth largest party in parliament was not because of their agenda–the party still does not have a manifesto that tells people what they stand for–but the fact that they seemed as the better option for the disenchanted voter masses.
While Prasai himself has given a modest figure of 50,000 for the turnout, all indications are that the actual turnout could be several multiples of that figure.
The government itself is already on its toes, declaring the main thoroughfare in Kathmandu off-limits for the protesters. A few days earlier, PM Prachanda held what can be billed as a crisis meeting of the three corrupt parties in particular.
MORAL CRISIS FOR THE SECURITY FORCES
While the security forces have been reportedly detailed to deal with the protest and include the army too in the outer periphery, what happens if the protest at some point ceases to be peaceful?
The reason dealing with popular agitation could pose a moral crisis for the nation’s security forces is that the people in this case stand for what is right for the people, ending corrupt governance in the country.
National security itself is defined as “the ability to preserve the nation’s physical integrity and territory; to maintain its economic relations with the rest of the world on reasonable terms; to preserve its nature, institutions, and governance from disruption from outside; and to control its borders.”
In the case of present-day Nepal, it is these corrupt parties and their politicians whose mindless actions have included grievous scandals masterminded by them while presiding over the governance of the country. The result has been that every single tenet of good security in the country has been ruthlessly and blatantly compromised. Every single Nepali bemoans today that the plight of the country has never been so bad.
The most notorious of such recent scandals include the so-called Fake Bhutanese Refugee scam, the Lalita Nivas land scam, the Widebody aircraft over-invoicing scam, the Cantonment scan that defrauded the government of billions in payment for non-existent Maoist combatants, and many more. As things stand, these scams have been perpetrated by these very parties at the helm.
The prime minister himself is the confessed Maoist killer who is considered to be responsible for the slaughter of some seventeen thousand fellow citizens during their decade-long insurgency some 25 years ago and has since been evading transitional justice, largely in collusion with fellow corrupt leaders.
One painful aspect of this story is that Nepal’s security forces –the police forces and the army–too have been victims themselves whose serving officers continue to live with the trauma and painful memories of their terrorist atrocities.
Just recently, two police officers in particular, SSP Manoj KC and AIG Shyam Gyawali have done an outstanding professionally-inspired job of prosecuting the perpetrators of the Fake Bhutanese Refugee scam who include senior politicians, sitting members of parliament, former home minister and so on who all remain behind bar awaiting trial.
Under this scam, Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, a sitting MP and wife of a former PM and NC president, SB Deuba is reportedly implicated for having received crores of rupees of fraud money. She reportedly feared that the policemen duo could pursue the case further and put her too in judicial custody. As the media reports go, the Deuba duo piled enormous pressure on the Maoist PM and the latter was only too glad to oblige them by removing the two professionally upright policemen from their positions.
Similarly, the government and president of the republic recently released from prison a Tharu politician who was serving a life sentence for his role in murdering several unarmed policemen a few years ago.
It is for the removal of the regime of such corrupt thugs the protest is being organized so that the security forces can be asked to quell it.
TAKING A LEAF FROM ZIMBABWE’S MILITARY-ASSISTED TRANSITION COULD BE A PEACEFUL WAY OUT FOR NEPAL
Reporting that “Civilian support for military coups is rising in parts of Africa”, author Carlos Rivero (The Conversation) has recently observed that researchers, analysts, and journalists in Africa point to “mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, economic crisis, and state weakness as the main factors propelling military coups all over the world and, of course, in Africa”. This is exactly the condition Nepal is passing through too.
One such example comes from Zimbabwe. The country’s eminent revolutionary hero Robert Gabriel Mugabe, now deceased, who had the distinction of ridding his country of white colonial rule in 1980, had over the decades come out more as “a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.” Mugabe’s 37-year authoritarian rule was characterized by brutal crackdowns, rigged elections, land seizures and hyperinflation that left the economy in ruins.
In his last years in power, the octogenarian leader then, in his bid to get his young wife, Grace Mugabe, to succeed him, maneuvered and ousted his vice president Mnangagwa who, for fear of his life, had fled to South Africa. That was when the Zimbabwean military, loyal to him all those years, thought that a red line had been crossed. Gen. Constantino Chiwenga, chief of Zimbabwe’s army, threatened to intervene. Mugabe’s resignation came days after military tanks rolled through the capital Harare. The coup was greeted with euphoria with tens of thousands of people pouring into the streets to celebrate. Mnangagwa returned to the country the following day and was inaugurated as interim president of Zimbabwe on November 24, 2017.
The army has since gone back to its barracks again. While what the Zimbabwean army did was a coup for all practical purposes, there apparently exists tremendous intolerance against such moves by the militaries that could invite punishing boycotts etc by Pan-African organizations such as the African Union and other similar entities.
In order to save such a crisis for the country, the Zimbabweans have recorded this military intervention as a “military-assisted transition”.
However, with timely planning and strategic moves, Nepal’s security forces could help achieve this transition more smoothly.
The takeaway here is that the security forces of any nation remain a vital national asset and Nepal must not view it differently.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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