By P Kharel
Baburam Bhattarai first made the proposal. He was not looking at it from any national interest but his own and with his limited knowledge about a prime minister directly elected by mass voters. Once the nation was arbitrarily declared a republic, Bhattarai encouraged his workers to bandy about the “intellectual prime minister” without explaining why the lofty diadem was arrogated.
The only hint given was that he topped the exams for School Leaving Certificate in 1970 and emulated the performance two years later at the Intermediate level in science. Nepal of the new millennium has scrapped the “topper” listing in a declaration against the disproportionate adulation accorded the categorization. After all, such listing was not practised in universities across the US, Europe and virtually all reputed educational institutions elsewhere.
RichardNixon in the 1970s was accused of being an imperial president. George W Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, are accused of overstretching the constitutional interpretations to suit their expediencies.
Actually they meant elected autocrat. Inherent right and presidential privilege have had killing effects on the constitutionally defined functioning of government
Americans took great pride in rejecting monarchy because they had suffered much under British colonial rule, and lost blood in securing independence. Hence monarchy was anathema while much of the world in the 18th century was a monarchy, including Europe, when Germany and Italy were composites of a dozens of kingdoms. For that matter, there were nearly 600 principalities in British India at the time India became independent in 1947.
American people have the habit of ignoring or forgetting the wrongs they might have inflicted on weaker countries or even domestically as long as raw success accompanies their government action. They would be indifferent even if their agencies did not suffer any decisively clear defeat.
When teaching as university as a Constitutional professor before taking to a political career, Barack Obama made a complete U-turn once he was elected president on a Democratic Party ticket. His professorial talk about the Congress being made a rubber stamp was replaced by his presidential accusation that Congress hindered the process of addressing national interests.
He taught balance of power emphasised by the shortest constitution’s founding fathers back in 1787 but made a presidential propagation that a the Congress should acknowledge inherent presidential power and privilege for governing in the best interests of the people and country.
US presidents in the post-World War II decades have frequently waged wars circumventing Congressional approval. Yet they survived as president. Some of them are hailed for making “great” contributions to advancing the nation’s interests. The harm done on hapless civilians in other countries are taken lightly or dumped into the black hole of irresponsible silence. That is what an elected executive leader can do and get away with it.
SOUTH ASIAN PRACTICE: Barring a few exceptions, South Asia has a form of parliamentary political system. Part of the reason is that the world’s most-populous region was basically a British colony for nearly two centuries. Nepal, however, was never colonised by any power, including history’s largest imperial rule.
If the rest of the newly independent countries adopted the West Minster-style political system, it was no surprise that Nepal’s modern political democracy commenced in 1951. Elected governments were new in all colonised countries. The Second World War’s end inaugurated worldwide call for popular representation, elected governments and the rest of the democratic paraphernalia.
Although many countries embraced elected system of governments, the system so enthusiastically lauded last only brief spells, disrupted by military coups, electoral frauds, emergency rule and rampant horse trading as well as machinations for toppling those in the seat of power.
Bauram, Balen and even Rajendra Lingdel…Pushpa Kamal Dahal…also. The big question is if a prime minister supported by parliamentary majority drifts from his expected course and resorts to misdeeds, as witnessed in the whole of South Asia for decades, how would a directly elected executive prime minster fit in a country like Nepal?
Foreign powers vying for funding and manipulating political leaders across the political landscape in an economically backward country locked between two giant neighbours with opposing political ideologies, 75 years of border dispute, fierce economic competition, media accusations of foreign intelligence agencies active all over the place and a host such other issues.
RISK-RIDDEN: Given the vulnerability, poverty level, in a country with at least 124 ethnic communities and almost equal number of languages…foreign interest groups would find the place most fertile for pushing their agendas in the name of identity, culture, interest group representation and other forms of politics that make the country extremely prone to proxy politics.
Bhattarai, Dahal and Balendra Shah might look primarily at their own personal interests than in the larger interests of the existing political mechanism, oblivious of the likely fallout on the country’s democratic stability and economic progress. Local conditions, ethnic combinations, economic constraints and geopolitics are among factors that affect individual decisions affecting the entire nation.
Nepalese have witnessed with despair and disgust the manner in which coalition governments got installed and toppled, as organisational alliances were patched up and torn apart with no ideological basis but the principle of staying in power or obtaining better terms and plum ministerial berths.
The Mahakali Treaty had no defenders. Its critics frequently revive the “betrayal” narrative while the various parties that signed and hailed it as a landmark have remained silent for three decades. The silence tells how massive the loss is.
Login to add a comment