Country is in the least priority of parties

Yuba Nath Lamsal

Now the election is over that has again produced a hung Constituent Assembly. In the election, the earlier underdogs, the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML have emerged as the first and the second largest forces while the earlier largest party the UCPN-Maoist has been rendered to the position of the distant third with mere 80 seats in the 601 House. Although many have cast doubt over the fairness and impartiality of the electoral process, political parties that participated in the election have accepted the results with some degree of apprehension. Accordingly, the meeting of the Constituent Assembly has already started and parliamentary session summoned.

With the formation of the new Constituent Assembly, fresh process has started for both constitution writing process as well as the formation of a new government. The Constituent Assembly has twin functions—writing of the constitution and also carrying out the works of parliament. Thus, both processes are expected to be expedited so that this process would produce a result—positive result. In that sense, the present Constituent Assembly has to learn a lesson from the failure of the first Assembly and give the country a stable and strong government capable enough to handle with more confidence and competence the most prominent and pressing issues of the country. Thus, there is a high expectation of the people from the new Constituent Assembly. This is particularly true because the parties and candidates have promised to give the country a new constitution within a year and also a strong and stable government.

However, given the composition of the new Constituent Assembly that was formed by an election widely criticized as an engineered one, it seems less likely that this national task would be met within the period the parties have promised. This means that the country may not again get a new constitution and much vaunted stability mainly because of the behavior of the leaders of mainly two largest parties.

If we look at the behavior of the political parties and overtures of their leaders, one can reach an easy conclusion that our leaders and parties have not yet come of the age. The political leaders often make immature and sometimes ambiguous statements that provide sufficient ground for the critics to arrive at the conclusion that people who are currently at political helms of affairs in Nepal are just political upstarts but not leaders. It may take years for them to get maturity to become a leader, and, some of them, perhaps, may never attaint that level in their life time. Unless someone attains full maturity, he/she can by no means be called a leader, not to talk of the statesman.

Mature leaders and statesmen have certain vision, ideological clarity and set of goals that are clearly defined. This alone makes one different from the rest of political runners. In the absence of mature leaders and visionary statesmen, country’s politics remain embroiled in confusion, uncertainty and chaos, which is exactly the case of present Nepal. The chaotic atmosphere only provides ground to crooks, scoundrels and criminals to reap benefits. In such a situation, honest and genuine political activists and leaders are often pushed to oblivion and their role is always underestimated and undermined.

Politics is an art of statecraft which should ensure a better governance, better delivery of goods and better law and order through which politicians, leaders and parties prove their competence and win trust of the people. Politics is the engine that pulls the country towards right direction—the direction of peace, stability and prosperity. In the driving seats are always the politicians whose role and responsibility is to take the vehicle of the country to a safe and appropriate direction in which people feel safe, secure and relieved. If those in the driver’s seat are not well trained, well educated, well intentioned and do not have vision and orientation, they often meet with an accident risking the life of the entire fellow passengers on board. The country is also like a vehicle and the people like passengers. The steering of the country is in the hands of leaders. If leaders are badly trained or untrained, the country may crash having disastrous impact on the life of the people.

We have political parties and we call top brass of these parties as our leaders. We have no choice other than trusting them. In a multi-party democracy, political parties are the key players. Although their performance is poor and their capability is below standard, we must trust them because seeking alternative to political parties would be yet another political disaster.

In way, we, too, may be responsible for the kind of leaders we have. ‘As the people are, so are their leaders’ goes the maxim. It is also the failure of people not to keep vigil on leaders and check them from going into wrong direction. Good leadership is all about making life of the people better. But it is exactly the reverse trend in Nepal.

It looks as though the paramount objective of the Nepali leaders is to grab power and retain it as long as possible. They would do everything possible to cling onto power. Once they are in power, they think that they are in power forever. Being in power, their priorities change and immediately forget the people and their base from which they rose to power. While in power, their focus remains to amass wealth through any means—legal or otherwise. As a result, corruption becomes pervasive and good governance and service delivery remains only in rhetoric. The people suffer from bad governance, weak law and order and rampant corruption.

This is exactly the case in the present day Nepal. Corruption is rampant, delivery of service is poor, law and order is weak, inflation sky rocketed and hoarding and artificial scarcity of essential commodities is a daily phenomenon. This is what the people have got from their own government. This is not the case with any particular government but a general phenomenon.

Nepal is currently in political transition. All political transitions in the world are painful, which are often characterized by instability, uncertainty, weak law and order.  Scrupulous people always reap benefit from uncertain state of the country. This is not an isolated case of any particular country but a general trend. All countries in the world that went through political transition had experienced similar situation. Thus, transition needs to be shortened as early as possible. Nepal’s present transition has been unnecessarily long which has cost the country very dearly. This transition should have been over long ago. But transitions still continues and it is not yet certain when this transition would come to an end.

Nepal’s protracted transition, which is attributed to either incompetence of the parties and leaders or their sheer unwillingness to end this ugly transition. Had the political parties and leaders been serious, the transition could have been ended long ago. If parties and leaders were at all serious about the country, the first Constituent Assembly would have delivered the constitution. It seems that parties are deliberately prolonging the transition. The long-drawn-out political transition is, therefore, the making of our political parties because they want to reap benefits from the transitional politics.

With the formation of a new Constituent Assembly, people have expected that the transition would come to an end and the constitution would be delivered within one year. But preliminary indications do not portray better future. Parties have already started bargaining and blackmailing on power-sharing instead of focusing on the main task of constitution-making process. Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML are in the forefront of this ugly battle for power. The competition among the parties is not on issues concerning the constitution-making process, which is the only mandate given by the people, but on issues pertaining to who should get which position and posts. This is illustrative of the lack of seriousness of the leaders about the country and the people.