Review of World Politics
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
HoR Reinstatement: A Fresh Start?
After suffering one-year-and-half of a dreaded natural calamity and terrible politics, the Nepali people are keenly expectant of a new beginning. The more so since the Supreme Court has apparently come to the rescue of “Nepal’s fragile democracy” (TKP/The Kathmandu Post).
Last Monday, the 5-member Constitutional Bench of the apex court overturned Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s dissolution of the House of Representatives (HoR) and ordered President Bidya Devi Bhandari to appoint Nepali Congress President as prime minister as per Article 76 (5) of the Constitution.
However, it is too early a days to jump to a conclusion, or even to celebrate. Without descending into legalese or constitutional jargon, it can be plainly said that the Supreme Court is offering us ‘new wine in old bottles”, or a cynic could even say that it is, in fact, old wine that has turned into vinegar being offered in new, but fragile bottles!
Leaving aside the legal questions to the legal luminaries and the constitutional ones to the learned pundits, we can summarize the basic political aspects of the state of the nation:
- The Supreme Court decision does not change by one iota the miserable state of the Nepali people.
- The Supreme Court has effectively destroyed the hallowed system of checks & balances, the sine qua non of constitutional democracy, whether parliamentary or presidential, between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
- The current Constitution has malfunctioned. The political and institutional actors feel exceedingly free to interpret it according to their own needs and interests.
- The Election Commission must be cut down to size. It has become too powerful.
- Sher Bahadur Deuba may become PM for the fifth time, but as the saying goes: ‘the leopard can’t change its spots. H.M. King Gyanendra famously designated him as ‘utterly incompetent.
- The two main political parties – the Nepali Congress and the UML – must be reformed inside-out and top-to-bottom to re-emerge as viable, sustainable governing parties.
- The apparatchiks of the various political parties in Deuba’s coalition government are rubbing their hands in glee – its high noon for bhagbanda– the sharing of the spoils of office.
- But in the meantime, it is time for Monsoon Madness, or rather the complete overhaul of the political system.
Afghanistan Betrayal?
Last week, US President Joe Biden tried to defend what was basically indefensible. He has insisted on withdrawing all remaining US and NATO combat troops from Afghanistan and ending the so-called ‘forever war’. In point of fact, not US and NATO troops but the Afghan security forces were engaging the Taliban militants in a low-key insurgency, which is quite different from an all-out, full-scale war. There have also not been any US fatalities for a few years!
Together with many other academics, former diplomats and commentators, Peter Berger, the distinguished CNN national security analyst and professor at Arizona State University, has been extremely critical of Biden’s ill-fated Afghanistan policy: “On Thursday President Joe Biden spoke in defense of his ill-considered, hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, in remarks peopled with straw men and littered with false assertions.” This was the worst speech of his presidency to date (July 10).
First and foremost, Biden claimed that he was bound by the 2020 Trump administration agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all US troops by May 2021. Biden was, however, not at all bound by a previous administration’s agreement. Moreover, this was predicated on the Taliban breaking with the terrorist al-Qaeda. According to a U.N. report released last month, this has not happened.
A key aspect of the Trump-Taliban agreement was that the Taliban would engage with the legitimate Afghan government in ‘real’ peace negotiations. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who heads the “High Council for National Reconciliation”, told CNN last week that there had been “very little progress” in this regard.
Second, Biden contended in his speech that the “US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation”, Zalmay Khalilzad, would “work vigorously” for a negotiated solution between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
This is an outrageous notion to expect from the same Khalilzad, who under the Trump administration had ceded much to the Taliban, without any meaningful concession from them. Moreover, he had purposefully, cut out Afghan leaders from his bilateral negotiations with the Taliban.
The so-called Khalilzad-led peace process hadn’t worked out at all for three years, and there was no reason to hope that the basically craven appeasement policy would suddenly succeed.
Third, Biden argued that the US can’t be in Afghanistan “indefinitely”. Yet there are some 28,000 US troops in South Korea, three-quarters of a century after the end of the Korean War, because the US has a strategic interest in defending the country against the North Korean Kim family despots [backed by China], especially after it became nuclear-armed, which South Korea is not.
Thus, the US could have left its remaining 2,500 troops in place in Afghanistan and kept its Bagram airbase as a strategic presence, to enable the Afghan government to fight the Taliban and its jihadist allies, such as al-Qaeda, Islamic State.
Fourth, Biden deceptively implied that if the US has troops in Afghanistan then somehow this would negatively impact its capability to “meet the strategic competition with China and other nations.”
This is a laughable argument considering that the US have 1.3 million active-duty personnel all over the world. A mere 2,500 troops in Afghanistan would have achieved much for little. Domestically, it would have helped the Afghan security forces keep the Taliban in check, and internationally, it would have helped to keep the balance among regional and great powers.
Bergen also points out other grave fallacies in Biden’s arguments. After his speech, Biden told reporters that it’s “highly unlikely” that the Taliban will take over Afghanistan. This contradicts the assessment of his own intelligence community and those of past and currently serving top military brass.
It also seems that Biden has to brush up on history in general [or be much better briefed], since he also professed that Afghanistan has never been united, considering that the country has existed since 1747, after Ahmad Shah established the Durrani dynasty in Kandahar making it older than the United States [vide: Peter Tomsen: The Wars of Afghanistan, 2013, pp. 32].
In response to a question whether he saw any parallels between his withdrawal and the haphazard US exit from South Vietnam in 1975, the President asserted: “none whatsoever.” He went on to say with a straight face that “There’s going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.” Yet an urgent, emergency evacuation is exactly one of the contingencies US military planners are preparing for with the remaining US soldiers in the embassy compound in Kabul, according to CNN information. According to Bergen, Biden made a complete mess in his defence of the Afghanistan exit—it was hogwash, baloney and yakety-yak!
Republican House Representative Adam Kinzinger, himself an Afghanistan veteran, lamented the U.S. withdrawal: “It is a crushing defeat and I’m really sad about it honestly” (NBC/Newsweek, July 11). The congressman added: “The Taliban always had a saying: ‘America has the watches but we have the time’…The Taliban have outlasted the will of the United States…and we may have to go back now.”
Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn described the withdrawal as “arbitrary” and said the decision “abandons the 20 years of sacrifice and dedication our brave men and women have expended to defeat the Taliban.”
Ethiopia’s PM: From Peace Prize to Wartime Leader
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his newly formed and ruling Prosperity Party were declared the landslide winners of the June 21 federal elections by the National Election Board. The Election Board Chairwoman, BirtukanMideksa acknowledged challenges but said the “voting process has guaranteed that people will be governed by their votes. I want to confirm that we have managed to conduct a credible election”(DW/Deutsche Welle, July 11).
PM Ahmed claimed the vote was the country’s ‘first free and fair election’ and a “historically inclusive election” (BBC, July 11) despite opposition boycotts and the fact that the voting could not be held in three of the country’s 10 regions. The detention of opposition figures and serious security concerns in some parts of the country led the US to call the vote “significantly flawed”.
Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won 410 of parliament’s 436 open seats in the election. One-fifth of seats in the legislative body remain vacant as a result of postponed voting in some constituencies.
Voting in the Harar and Somali regions was postponed over security concerns. It is now scheduled for September. No date has been set for voting in the breakaway province of Tigray.
Fragmented Opposition Declares Election Tainted
The country’s divided opposition won just 11 seats. Birhanu Nega, leader of the main opposition party “Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice” (ECFSJ), said his party filed more than 200 complaints with the electoral body.
Ethiopia is Africa’s second-largest country after Nigeria and has more than 37 million registered voters. The Election Board declared the turnout at over 90 % percent.
Five More Years of Abiy Ahmed Rule
The resounding but flawed election victory means a second five-year term for PM Abiy Ahmed who was appointed by the country’s ruling coalition in April 2018, after his predecessor Hailemarium Desalegn resigned amid widespread protests. He now finds “the surge of hope that accompanied his initial appointment three years ago significantly diminished” (AFP, July 11).
Ahmed’s appointment was preceded by his election as chairman of the coalition known as the “Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front” (EPRDF). He established himself as a political reformer and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end his country’s war with neighbouring Eritrea to the north. He then colluded with same Eritrea to jointly crush the rebellion in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region.
He also began to backtrack on political and media freedoms.
Ahmed Dissolves the Ruling Coalition & Fractures a Nation
Ahmed consolidated his power by first dissolving the four-party ruling coalition EPRDF to form his own Prosperity Party in 2019, in which authority and influence started to concentrate. His moves led to a quarrel with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had dominated the coalition for nearly three decades.
The situation erupted into armed conflict in Tigray last November, leaving thousands dead and displacing some two million people, internally and in neighbouring Sudan. The U.N. has warned of famine in the region. Ahmed’s handling of the bloody conflict has brought intense international criticism.
A New Crossroads
Merera Gudina, an opposition leader from the Oromia region whose party boycotted the elections, told AFP: “I think he’s [Ahmed] stuck somewhere. He started to behave like a lost child at a crossroads. Such a child cannot go back because he doesn’t know where he came, and he cannot proceed because he does not know where he’s going.” This would also sum up the nonsensical behaviour of our Nepali leaders, whatever they are called—whether Oli, Nepal, Deuba or Dahal!
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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