Now that last month’s needless confrontation between the Nepal Government and the European Union has subsided and passions have cooled somewhat, it may be time for us to learn some hard lessons from the whole sordid affair.
Even during the federal and provincial elections in November, the EU’s Election Monitoring Mission was accused of exceeding its mandate by interrogating court officials in western Nepal. Its head Željana Zovko had been summoned by the Election Commission to clarify.
When Zovko issued the Mission’s final report on 20 March and, among other things, recommended that electoral reservation for upper castes be scrapped, it triggered outrage – mainly from political leaders from that community.
We happen to broadly agree with the EU’s suggestion: affirmative action is supposed to level the playing field, not uphold the status quo on skewed privileges. No one can question the dominance of men from the top caste groups and ethnicities in all three branches of the state. The letter of the constitution mentions proportional representation, but its spirit is about taking that extra step to expedite inclusion.
It could be argued that the EU over-stepped its ToR, that it had no right to tell a sovereign nation with a democratically-crafted constitution what to do, or even that it is hypocritical for the EU whose member states are electing fascist leaders to lecture others on democracy.
The social media backlash prompted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue a firm but well-mannered statement. We should have left it at that. Nepal’s narrow-minded and bigoted leaders had to grandstand in Parliament, and fan the flames by waving the flag. Even Prime Minister K P Oli could not resist the temptation to call the EU statement an “insult to Nepal’s sovereignty”.