INTERVIEW
This week, we talked to our political analyst and former minister Shrish Shumsher Rana, especially on the country’s fundamental base of foreign policy and the present foreign policy practices. Excerpts of the interview as given below:
Q. How do you view the present political scenario, especially after ratification of the American grant project MCC? It seems, Nepal, forgetting its standard foreign policy bases, has sided with the Americans. Is this true?
A. By the time the MCC received its parliamentary endorsement, it was sufficiently revealed that extraordinary factors had been introduced in the contract to which almost every single party and prime minister in the system had put their signature to and the addendum parliament introduced and approved in parliament outside the contract had necessary fixtures which should have been part of the contract before each Nepali government leader signed it. Such flagrant oversight in contractual obligations notwithstanding, we are now being assured that the other contracting party will absorb the late additions. This would be purely in the realms of bilateral goodwill despite the threat of parliamentary de-ratification. Concern must lie therefore on the Nepali hindsight and our eroding ability to scrutinize policy in course of the formulation. More, importantly perhaps, we cannot but approach with consternation how we have treated that goodwill politically. Never has an economic grant from a friendly country assumed such political proportions. Its end result has been the politicization of Nepal-U.S. relations which is detrimental to that goodwill.
This significant breach of our foreign policy priority will have been given yet another political twist of constitutional proportions by our parliament introducing an economic grant for endorsement since this goes beyond constitutional requirements. This is yet another example of how our current overlords have succeeded in tampering with the constitution proving that the constitution is merely an instrument to be utilized for policy endorsement. How foreign requirements are to be obliged in such a manner under this constitution merely mocks the very precepts of constitutional sovereignty and the MCC will have introduced yet another debilitating factor of longstanding import on the question of the permanence sanctity of the constitution currently in vogue.
When first I was questioned on the MCC some two years ago maybe, my response was that Nepal-U.S and Nepal-China relations would come under focus which was certainly not a healthy aspersion on our foreign policy. Unfortunately, it has. Official American and Chinese statements regarding the contract surely do not bear well on the independence of Nepali foreign policy and its choices. This should be deplored and we have only our bunch of leaders to deplore, unfortunately. The repercussions cannot but be awaited.
There are so many things to be said about the spurious parliamentary discussions in course of the endorsement, the process of parliamentary endorsement or the dramatics adopted. The argument, however, that the five hundred million dollars are a grant which must add to our empty coffers is perhaps the most disturbing since it impinges on national compulsions for which none other than our leaders should attribute themselves to. That this has been conveniently covered up in each party’s standpoint on their actions in course of the endorsement only suggests that the MCC has pilfered into the realms of the coming elections which does not bode well for the country which after all the grant is to serve as ardent promoters currently propagate.
Q. Just recently, the ambassador of Israel in Kathmandu publicly complained that Nepal by forgetting decades-old bilateral cooperation has voted against Israel time and again. According to him, if Nepal had any dissatisfaction, it could boycott the voting. Nepal’s voting against Israel in the UN and other international forum has disappointed Israel, the envoy had remarked. Similarly, on the Russian invasion of Ukraine also, when China and India boycotted the UN Security Council meeting, Nepal wished to denounce Russia, a friendly nation that has made a remarkable contribution in infrastructural development and industrialization of Nepal along with providing a large number of scholarships to the Nepali students. After Nepal supported Ukraine, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has phoned Sher Bahadur Deuba apprising the latter’s role. Doesn’t it prove that Nepal has wished to join the US block by neglecting the two immediate neighbours?
A. The Israeli ambassador will be one of the many foreign friends who will see possibilities in the seemingly random departures from foreign policy precedence that exceptions of the MCC sort will have opened in the conduct of Nepali foreign policy. The problem is that nobody is owning up to the departure as yet. There was this question put to me as to why we had not condemned the American action in Iraq if it was a practice to condemn foreign aggression on sovereign countries.
I am not aware that there is an American block as yet. But I do think we should be wary of an emerging world order where a rule-based international system is to be flaunted to favor the rich and powerful, both attributes lacking with us. The fact is that a unipolar system is seeking to justify itself in the transformation process and every other country is seeking adjustments. The problem, in Nepal as well, is that lures of money and democracy are being skillfully used to incur regime change and undermine the sanctity of state to demolish well tested national priorities so that other interests be promoted. This has encouraged severe contradictions in the established international order.
Russia, for one, has had to accommodate an eastward expansion of NATO and has put. Its foot heavily down after a “regime changed” Ukraine also attempted to further the expansion. Since, evidently, the new order is changing it would seem foolhardy on Nepal’s part to come to premature and untoward conclusions and be part of the flux. The Nepali politicization that MCC triggered is unsavoury in the least. That we border both China and India should be factored in as it does also factor American strategic policy.
One can only lament the seeming lack of coherence we demonstrate. This is, to say the least, dangerous.
Q. Many of the Nepali diplomatic missions abroad are yet to get ambassadors. Is this a good gesture in diplomacy?
A. This only attests to a foreign policy conduct that has fallen victim to the partisan whims of a system that ignores the very foundations of national interests. One need not say more.
Q. It has been proven that the present federalism has failed. Do you agree with it? Then why are the Nepali mass hesitant to go to the streets seeking a new system?
A. Again, the fact is that the monopoly over political organizations, political money and international clout exercised in the passage of the MCC (bill?) will be brought to bear with the lure for change in the coming elections demonstrating how democracy is to be used to perpetuate the political monopoly. This is, despite the fact, that all democratic institutions in the country have been disgraced, made defunct and paralyzed with the result that, by their own public admission, the country is close to bankruptcy. People like us can only see a solution by the reversal of the regime change and correcting the unconstitutionality of the scrapping of the previous constitution. Let us face it if we are not part of the solution, we remain part of the problem.
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