The RSP swept the election four month ago, benefiting from widespread public disillusionment with the past 20 years of misrule and poor governance by the old parties.
That was a vote for a departure from the past. And there were great expectations. Expectations can be unrealistic, but they stem from the hope. Decades of political dysfunction cannot be solved in months, but there are now signs of impatience in the public.
There are many who want to give this government a chance to set things right, but its high-handedness is putting too many people off.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah's government and his advisers seem to be resorting to distraction and deflection. Balendra Shah expected to win, but not with such a huge majority, so he is letting his advisers behave in the only way they know how — with tough talk, intimidation, and bypassing due process.
Instead of strengthening coordination and communication between line agencies, members of the PMO have been acting like a parallel government.
A widely-circulated investigation in setopati.com by editor Ameet Dhakal has meticulously detailed how the prime minister’s inner circle threatened officials, including the DG of the Passport Department Tirtha Raj Aryal and its IT director Sunil KC to cancel German e-passport deal. The CIAA chief Prem Kumar Rai was held hostage for hours in a PMO anteroom.
Also present were Foreign Secretary Amrit Rai and German Ambassador Udo Eugen Volz who were needlessly questioned and harassed for hours, Dhakal quoted sources as saying. Even when reminded that it would cost the country dearly, diplomatically and legally, they ordered proceedings against two German companies and 15 others.
Last year, the Nepal government awarded German companies Veridos GmbH and Mühlbauer ID Services a five-year contract worth Rs10.13 billion to arrange 6.4 million e-passports. The Department of Passports is alleged to have manipulated the procurement process to award the contract to the Germans.
The French company IDEMIA supplied Nepal’s machine-readable passports and e-passports until last year, losing the bid to Veridos GmbH and Mühlbauer ID Services after 17 years. IDEMIA challenged the decision in court but the Public Procurement Review Committee dismissed it. The French firm itself is alleged to have bypassed the Public Procurement Act through bribery, and the action against the Germans is seen as a retribution for losing the contract.
‘The way constitutional officials and state administrators were berated exceeding all constitutional bounds inside the Prime Minister's Office on 15 June over the passport procurement case is a troubling sign of a government run by a tight inner circle,” Dhakal later wrote in an editorial.
He continued: “By discarding established governance norms and democratic principles, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat operated like a shadow cabinet. Its chief qualification wasn't administrative competence, but the blind impulse of populism and an arrogant 'we know it all' mindset.”
The prime minister’s vocal supporters have applauded his move to thumb its nose at what they believe was a tainted deal by a previous government. They blame the messenger for exposing the bungling.
Bypassing the Foreign Ministry and acting without constitutional jurisdiction or formal expertise has harmed Nepal’s credibility in the international arena, and shown once again how feckless and fickle the PM’s advisers have been.
Evidence is growing that Balendra Shah and his kitchen cabinet are working to undermine the state mechanism, driven partly by their belief that two-thirds is mandate to uproot everything.
From the eviction of squatters to bungling international relations, Nepal is paying too high a price for signs of change that ordinary citizens have not yet seen. The last straw for many was the 3% equity tax on private healthcare and education. The prime minister appears to have read the writing on the wall and rolled it back (page 1).
The government had also proposed the Vehicle and Transport Management Bill, which introduced significantly harder penalties for traffic violations with fines up to Rs100,000, before the self-immolation of Ganesh Nepali after repeated traffic fines for illegal parking. To deflect scrutiny, supporters of the Balendra Shah government illegally parked their cars in front of select media houses, an act later condemned by their own party.
These recent cases show that one hand of government doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. Nearly four months into the RSP government, the cracks in the party’s formidable armour are beginning to show.
Everything came to a head this week with fresh rumours of the prime minister preparing to sack Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle over ideological and policy differences. Wagle’s equity tax was ill-advised in a country where those seeking private schools or hospitals are not necessarily the wealthy.
The Rabi-Swarnim chat at the Dustin Thani seems to have resolved the issue for now. It now remains to be seen how long party chair Rabi Lamichhane can keep doing damage control and keep the RSP together for the next five years. There are seemingly irreconcilable differences in personality and working style between the party and the PMO.
Feedback about international relations seems to be getting across to the prime minister who is finally meeting Indian and Chinese envoys separately later this week. He has also been holding consultations with the business sector.
The hope is that the PMO and the RSP will come together as they did during the election campaign and show greater accountability for their own good. Failure is not an option for the country, either.
Sonia Awale