 BIKRAM RAI |
The parties may be in a state of denial, but the consensus politics which began in 2006 after the signing of the CPA ceased to exist the day Pushpa Kamal Dahal's government took over. Every government since then has had to resign under severe opposition pressure and the politics of negation which began in the aftermath of CA poll result continues with parties outside the government doing all they can to unseat the one in power.
This wasn't the way it was supposed to be in the transition phase. It was supposed to be all about agreeing to disagree, but getting along with the task of constitution and nation building. In any other country, an opposition with less than a third of the support in the last House could have done little to trouble a majority government. But these are extraordinary times in Nepal where nothing short of a consensus works, especially when it comes to writing a constitution and completing the peace process.
The government that fails to forge that environment inevitably comes under the hammer. Baburam Bhattarai may have the most revolutionary ideas to transform this nation but the populace grinding under a burden of survival during this transition is past caring.
"I have done everything with the best intentions, but somehow friends in opposition find a way to create controversy," the otherwise calm and collected prime minister said dejectedly in a recent interview. He seems to have realised that he cannot forge consensus with an opposition that is true to its definition. In a democracy, an opposition is supposed to put a spanner in the works, but our democracy is still under construction and requires working together.
The institutions of the state are too weak for their effective mobilisation by the government during the transition. The resulting failure of law and order, undersupply of public goods and services, and malfeasance in bureaucracy have triggered public wrath against the government. A man who had an envious public rating one year ago is today being hounded in both the mainstream and social media.
In her book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Miranda Fricker says prejudice becomes a powerful visceral force, especially when it is expressed less at the level of belief and more as a social-imaginative and emotional construct surreptitiously shaping public perception. Fricker calls it an epistemic dysfunction arising out of general frustration.
To be fair to Bhattarai, none of his predecessors did any better since 2006, in fact they were worse. And therein lies the rub: if it was so easy, anyone else could have done it. Bhattarai knew what he was getting into and now, unlike his predecessors he does not have an easy choice of making way for the next government because there is no constitutional provision for another government to take over without elections.
The NC and UML for their part understand that they can't coerce the government out of power, and must either agree with its agenda to either revive the CA or go for another elections. So the opposition is doing the only thing it can do: oppose.
Two weeks ago in this column I argued that a constitution declared by any other body except a constituent assembly elected by the people would be illegal as per the interim constitution and go against the spirit of the 2006 people's movement. The decision by the NC conclave this week to pressurise the government to hold parliamentary elections (and not a CA election) is sure to further widen the rift between the ruling coalition and the opposition.
In the coming weeks, expect the usual verbal platitudes from leaders about a consensus, but you can be sure they will do nothing to make that happen.
