Chaos and Crisis in Nepal

Nepal is in a state of lockdown. A young woman sits outside a maternity hospital in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, with nowhere to go and no chance of returning to her hometown with her newborn baby. Hundreds of thousands of others are also stranded amid a nationwide general strike launched by the opposition Maoist party.

“We did not want to call this strike, we wanted peace and consensus, but it became imperative,” Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who led a 10-year guerrilla war against the government before signing a peace pact in 2006, said during his May Day address at a mass rally in the capital on the occasion of the 121st International Workers’ Day.
 
“But the government does not want to conclude the peace process and write a new constitution. So we need to have this third people’s movement to create tremendous public pressure.”

The nascent Himalayan republic, which had been expecting to boost its war-torn economy by drawing 1 million tourists next year, has been dealt a deadly blow by the strike. The two main highways connecting the land-locked country with neighboring India and China have been cut off by cadres wielding bamboo sticks. There is no traffic on the roads save an occasional UN or diplomatic vehicle, ambulances and other essential service vehicles, which have been exempted from the strike.

Shops, industries and educational institutions remain closed. Baton-wielding mobs have smashed shop fronts for daring to defy the strike, set vehicles on fire and clashed with security forces in several towns. Tourists are planning quick departures.

Prime minister under fire
 
The Maoists are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who heads an alliance of 10 parties and has the support of nearly a dozen more.

“This is the most corrupt and ineffectual government in the history of Nepal,” Dahal, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda (‘awesome’), told ISN Security Watch. “It was ready to enter into a clandestine agreement with the Indian government and barter away national security. Any other government would have resigned on moral grounds after the deal was scrapped by parliament. The PM is a man who lost the election from two constituencies. Only the prime minister’s resignation can create an atmosphere for dialogue.”

Once the prime minister steps down, Prachanda says there should be a new government headed by his own party since it emerged as the largest after the elections, with nearly 30 percent of seats in parliament. Only this new “national” government, he insists, can deliver a new constitution.

But so far, the prime minister has ruled out resigning under pressure.

“It is undemocratic to try to topple a constitutional government through street warfare,” says Commerce and Supplies Minister Rajendra Mahato, whose Sadbhavana Party is an ally of the embattled prime minister.
“The PM has the support of the majority of MPs. If the Maoists want to unseat him, they have to show a majority in the house. But they have failed to do that. The other option is consensus. We are willing to reach a negotiated settlement but for that, the Maoists have to call off their strike first,” Mahato told ISN Security Watch.

The ruling parties have their own conditions.

“There can be a change in the government,” Yubaraj Gyawali, former minister and senior leader of the PM’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, told ISN Security Watch. “But the Maoists have to empty their guerrilla cantonments first. They have to also dismantle the Young Communist League, which is actually paramilitary in nature. They have to return the public properties they captured during the insurgency.”

The Maoists’ guerrilla army - the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) - has proved to be one of the most serious obstacles to a negotiated settlement. There are nearly 19,600 PLA combatants, who, as per the peace pact of 2006, were to have been inducted into the national army. However, the army as well as the ruling parties are now against the merger after a leaked video tape showed Prachanda claiming that his party had inflated the PLA’s strength in order to control the army.

Now, the ruling parties say they are willing to take about 3,500 PLA fighters in the army while the Maoists are still pressing for an en masse induction.

Constitutional crisis

While the deadlock and the strike continue, Nepal is hurtling toward the most severe constitutional crisis it has ever known in a turbulent history marked by massacres, coups, two pro-democracy protests and the overthrow of its royal family.

The peace agreement and the ensuing interim constitution promised that by 28 May the country would get a new constitution, which, for the first time, would be written by the people themselves. Now it is certain that the new constitution will not materialize by the deadline.

Constitutional experts and political observers are divided as to what is likely to happen after the deadline.

“The constituent assembly that was elected to write the new constitution - and also serves as the interim parliament - would lose validity,” Shambhu Thapa, former chief of Nepal Bar Association, told ISN Security Watch. “If there is no new constitution, the interim constitution becomes null and void, parliament gets dissolved, the government ends and there is utter chaos.”

But the government can extend its term by six months if there is a civil war or financial crisis or any other national emergency.

“My feeling is that the government will announce a period of emergency and extend its term by six months,” said Thapa. “However, we recommend there should be fresh elections to choose a new constituent assembly.”

Should that happen, the Maoists would lose the most.

“In the past, the Maoists were a banned guerrilla outfit,” Mahato said. “They gained acceptance and respectability after the 2008 election that saw them emerge as the largest party in parliament. If parliament is dissolved, they lose that status. Since they are not in the government, they will have no standing left at all. The only option for everyone is to reach an agreement and amend the constitution.”

A provision in the interim constitution says the constitutional deadline could be extended by six months if two-thirds of the 601-member parliament agrees. However, the ruling parties cannot attain this goal unless the Maoists also agree.

The question is, will they? In an increasingly catch-22 situation, Prachanda has ruled out calling off the strike unless the prime minister resigns first. “We will continue the strike till that happens,” he told ISN Security Watch. “This time, we have the power to do so.”

But it could be an empty threat. There are reports of protesters abandoning the strike after outbreaks of diarrhoea, dysentery and other illnesses due to lack of adequate food and drinking water. Anti-strike protests by farmers and daily wage earners have also started. And there is growing pressure from civil society and the international community to call off the strike. 
    
“It is increasingly clear that the current situation cannot hold,” Richard Bennett, chief of the UN rights agency in Nepal, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement to the media.

“Nepal’s political leadership on all sides needs to come together to find a peaceful solution to the current stalemate, and avoid an extended strike that will have a negative impact on the ability of all citizens to exercise their rights.”