Democracy And Dictatorship

Yuba Nath Lamsal

Parties are the key players in a multi-party democracy and they are the ones that run the government and maintain checks and balances. Checks and balances are necessary in democracy that make the government more responsible and ensure better functioning of the democratic policy. The absence of effective mechanism for checks and balances may give rise to dictatorship that would ultimately exterminate democratic polity.

In the name of multi-party democracy, Nepal's political parties are merely jockeying for power and scrambling to impose their own type of dictatorship on the people. The rhetoric, activities and behavior of Nepal's existing political parties indicate that they lack minimum political culture which is required for strengthening and upholding democratic values and practice. If we look at the history of democratic movement in Nepal, parties have played crucial role in establishing democracy in the country. In the absence of parties and their leadership, the democratic movements would not have been successful. However, at the same time, the parties, to certain extent, are responsible for the ruin of democratic system.

The seed of democratic movement was sown during the Rana regime which had summarily denied basic rights and freedom of the people. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi-led independent movement in India against the British colonial power and success of the Chinese Revolution under the leadership of Mao Zedong in China, some young Nepali revolutionaries spearheaded the movement organizing people both at home and in India to establish democracy in Nepal. Within a few years, the revolution picked up momentum and overthrew the oligarchic Rana regime thereby heralding a new era of democracy and freedom in Nepal in 1951. This was a historic achievement that brought about a new euphoria and enthusiasm in the people at large. However, this polity could not last more than a decade and the king trampled the democratic system and imposed his own style of dictatorship called the ' Panchayat system'.

The peaceful coup was staged by the king. But the ground was created by the political parties themselves. The absence of agreement on common minimum programmes among the parties emboldened and encouraged the king to take such a harsh and undemocratic move that kept the people of Nepal under dark days of dictatorship for almost three decades. During the period of one decade from 1951 to 1960, the parties kept on squabbling and got involved in mud-slinging against one another instead of working on the common agenda of strengthening democracy in Nepal. The king took maximum advantage from the power-hungry and rent-seeking mentality of the parties and leaders. The monarchy pitted one party against another under ' divide and rule' policy. As the Nepali Congress was the largest and strongest force of that time in Nepal, the sole objective of the monarchy was to weaken the Congress and alianate from the people in which other fringe parties played active role.

The parties committed blunder one after another right from the beginning. In the first place, it was a blunder on the part of parties and revolutionaries to trust the monarchy and ally with it. The Nepali Congress regarded the monarchy as the messiah of democracy. This was the flawed concept of the Nepali Congress. It failed to understand that the monarchy is in itself an anti-democratic institution and it can never be democratic. Nowhere in the world has the monarchy been supportive of democracy. Although monarchies exist in countries like Britain, Japan and some European countries, they are in the ceremonial form with no executive rights. In these countries, the monarchy was given the ceremonial position by the people. The monarchies accepted ceremonial role not by their choice but under pressure. In other countries where monarchies exist especially in the Middle East, they are dictatorial both in nature and substance and people have been denied with their fundamental rights and freedom. The political parties failed to understand this reality and trusted the monarchy which came to bite when it consolidated its position.

In fact, monarchy had been reduced to a titular position by Ranas. But the parties revived the monarchy in 1951. Ranas and Shaha (monarchy) belonged to the same feudal class and had same culture. The parties agreed to overthrow one group of feudals (Ranas) and reinstate the other group of feudald (Shah) in the name of political change in 1951. There was, thus, no fundamental difference in both nature and character of Shaha and Ranas which was clearly seen after the monarchy was restored.

The monarchy had been abolished right after the then king Tribhuvan fled the country. The parties should have declared Nepal as a republican country right after the success of the movement. Puspa Lal Shrestha, who is the founder of the Communist Party of Nepal, had raised this issue and demanded a republican set up right that time. However, Puspa Lal's call was billed as an extremist idea and was not duly heard. The Nepali Congress which led the 1951 anti-Rana movement considered monarchy as one of the two pillars of democracy in Nepal. Nepali Congress continued with this policy until 2005.

The analysis of Nepali Congress on multi-party system and monarchy has been proved to be flawed. In the first place, monarchy can never be the foundation and pillar of democracy. Secondly, parliamentary system alone is not the basis of a democratic system and society. There are different modes of democracy in the world. There is also a great debate on the very definition of democracy. Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as the 'government of the people, for the people and by the people'. If so, do the multi-party or parliamentary democracy and the government formed under this system represent all the people? No certainly not. It represents a section of the people who vote for it. It does not represent the people who do not vote for it. The other flaw is the electoral system that creates the condition in which the minority rules the majority. When any party secures less than 50 per cent votes cast, it is still a minority party although it may be declared the winner. In the election held in 1991, Nepali Congress secured only 37 percent of the total votes cast but it was declared the winner and Congress formed the majority government. The party which was rejected by 63 per cent voters was declared winner and formed the governemnt. This is a fundamental flaw of parliamentaryd emocracy. In such a situation, how can the government claim to have represented.

There is a rival school of thought that does not subscribe to the western definition of democracy. It describes the western model of democracy as a bourgeoisie system. The socialists or the communists describe the multi-party system as a piece in the showcase that is only to be seen not for use. According to them, the bourgeoisie democracy is the dictatorship of a small group of people upon the large mass of poor and downtrodden people. The poor people, who constitute the majority, have neither access to politics and other resources nor can they exercise the power they are entitled to. The participation in election once in five year does not allow participation of the people in the political and democratic process.

The advocates of western capitalist democracy and champions of socialism/communism accuse one another of being supportive of dictatorship. The capitalists dub communism or socialism as the dictatorial system as it does not hold periodic election and allow people to participate in free election. But the communists and socialists call the capitalist democracy as the dictatorship of minority over the majority. They are of the view that the handful of wealthy people and elites rule over the greater majority of poor and downtrodden people. The Marxists are of the view that the real democracy is the communist or socialist system where poor, proletarian and working people rule over feudals, landlords, compradosr and petty bourgeoisies. In Marxist philosophy, the government is the dictatorship of one class over the other. This is both academic as well as political debate that has been raging for centuries ever since two sets of political system emerged in the world.

We are currently in the process of writing a new onstitution and deciding the model of political system. This debate has been more raging in Nepal at present. One thing is true that there is no single model of democracy in the world. All models of democracy have their virtues and vices and it would do well if we incorporate positive aspects of different models and make our political system flawless.