Hi-Level Mechanism

Nepal is serious about democracy, and that is why we have to keep restoring it every decade or so because we believe in government for the people, by the people, and for the people in government.

We also put our faith in reincarnation, and that explains the pressure from some quarters to put the resurrection of the monarchy to a referendum vote, and await His Majesty’s Second Coming.

It is a sign of a well-functioning and mature democracy that parliamentary affairs are run by committees. When a dispute cannot be settled without comrades coming to blows, they set up a Special Committee which immediately forms a Sub-Committee to address grievances, and which decides to form a Task Force that will oversee a Working Group made up of members of an Expert Panel.

This being Nepal, even the membership of the Special Committee will be challenged in the Supreme Court, and that is when they will have to establish a Dispute Resolution Caucus made up of Caucasian males.

And when there is a dispute in the Dispute Resolution Caucus, Nepal’s leaders can fall back on extra-Constitutional means to resolve ego clashes and malcontent members ticked off because they did not get to be made Minister of Midwifery and Animal Husbandry as a reward for helping topple the previous regime.

And that is exactly what Prime Minister Dubya has gone and done. To balance both disgruntled and gruntled factions of the five-party alliance, he has constituted a three-member High-level Political Mechanism to decide who gets to be minister of what.

This Unholy Trinity is made up of individuals who think they should be in power but aren't. PKD was PM twice, and sorely misses it. MKN is still grumpy even though he toppled KPO. And SBD has found out that one can be prime minister five times in this country even if one loses an election.

Maybe we do need new mechanics to fix this mechanism called Nepal. Could it be that the three leaders are so high-level that they need supplemental oxygen just to climb up the stairs at Paris Danda? Soon, there is going to be a power struggle about who is the highest among the high-level members of the Mechanism, the Grand Ayatollah of the Mechanists.

Our best bet may be to set up a Not-so-high-level Non-political Mechanism (NSHLNPM) to appoint ministers by lottery to a Jumbo Cabinet. We are on the right track, though, going by making the owner of a hospital chain the Health Technocrat. In the same manner, the Educationist Minister should be none other than the Chair of PABSON, the Hydropowerful Minister can be the CEO of IPPAN, the Physical Infrastructure Minister should go to the Chairperson of the Federation of Tipper Truck Owners of Nepal.

Nepal’s problems are so intractable that thank goodness we have a fall back option: an Even-Higher-Level Political Mechanism that includes India, China and the G7.