Submit your Article

Political meddling in the appointment, retention and promotion of top-ranking civil servants has become par for course in Nepal. One recent victim of this was Maha Prasad Adhikari, who was wrongfully sacked as Nepal Rastra Bank governor. The Supreme Court duly restored him to the post and dismissed the government’s flawed logic for his removal. Now an appointment in Nepal Police has come into controversy. On May 1, Additional Inspector General (AIG) Dhiraj Pratap Singh was appointed the new police chief. A day later, Biswa Raj Pokharel, second in command before Singh’s appointment, filed a writ at the Supreme Court, asking for the annulment of Singh’s ‘wrongful’ appointment made by violating seniority. 

Things are not so straightforward. Both Singh and Pokharel had joined the police force on the same day in 1993. But in 2019 the KP Sharma Oli government promoted Pokharel to the rank of Deputy Inspector General—ahead of Singh. A year later, it created an additional AIG post to adjust Pokharel, much to Singh’s chagrin. Now Singh has turned the tables on Pokharel. There is clearly a lot of politicking behind the appointment of the police chief—more so on election-eve.  

Over the years the government’s executive arm has behaved like a law unto itself. Whenever a new government is formed, it tries to appoint high-ranking judges and chiefs of security bodies along partisan lines, and the latest police row is part of the same trend. This is not to argue that a less competent senior officer must always be promoted over a more competent junior. But there is seldom any evaluation of competence when making these political appointments. 

Unless a system is developed to rigorously vet the eligibility to civil servants for top posts, the government would do well to stick to the seniority basis. After all, many officers are deservedly in higher ranks based on internal evaluations. Even if we don’t get it right immediately, in time, this will set a good precedent and boost the morale of our state organs. It’s never a good idea to break the natural chain of command without a solid reason.

Nepal’s recent improvement in the global civil-aviation regulator ICAO’s audit score could be wasted. It would have been the perfect opportunity to lobby with the European Commission to lift the ban on Nepali airlines from European skies. But the country’s entreaties on that score are likely to be scorned. A pair of bills in the federal parliament to split the regulatory and service-providing arms of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) have been cunningly shelved. The commission has repeatedly clarified that European skies will remain closed to Nepali fliers until the split: the overlapping of CAAN’s regulatory and operational duties creates conflict of interest, adding to the risk of accidents.  

Just when the bills were to be put up for a vote in the federal lower house on March 2, Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Prem Ale had asked the parliament secretariat to hold them back. He had done so under the pressure of the CAAN top brass (and their political masters) who feared a loss in their clout from the authority’s split. So even as the country’s economy is nearing a point of crisis, one measure that could immediately help revive it was shelved: the European Commission’s ban discourages European tourists from visiting Nepal with its ‘unsafe skies’.  

Nor is this just a question of our economy’s health. So long as CAAN remains intact, even Nepali air passengers will feel unsafe. The interests of a handful of people have been allowed to endanger common lives. Owing to continuous obstruction from the main opposition, the 10th parliamentary session has been prorogued. The two bills are now unlikely to be discussed until the election of a new parliament later this year. 

Both the ministry of tourism as well as CAAN have been keen to highlight the ICAO’s recent favorable ratings of Nepal. But they surely know that the ban will stay until the central issue of the break-up of CAAN is completed. Instead of waiting for international organizations to help Nepal, our politicians need to first show that they can ensure the safety of their own brethren.

Periodic elections give the electorate a chance to choose between candidates who offer a competing set of competencies and ideologies. Or so we would like to believe. But people’s right to make informed choices in the upcoming local polls could be curtailed after the five parties in the ruling coalition fought among themselves to get their candidates on the ballot paper. The brawl was particularly intense in major cities like Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Pokhara and Janakpur. Coalition partners were also fighting tooth and nail over other candidacies. 

But isn’t competition the essence of all elections? Yes and no. It would have been wonderful to see the parties fighting on behalf of competent candidates. What we rather saw was that the argument was not at all over the merits of individual contestants but rather over whether the wife or brother or financier of this or that top political leader should have been picked. These disputes had become so bitter that many in the ruling coalition were in favor of putting off local polls if they could not agree on common candidates.

Even if elections are now a near certainty, those who win important mayorships are likely to be chosen based on their party affiliation rather than competence. Most of the Nepali electorate is still not mature enough to vote for candidates from outside the major parties. So even as we all like to blame the major parties for robbing us of our right to have good mayors and municipal heads, a little introspection might also be warranted.

Of course, people also consider that if they elect, say, an independent mayor, he or she will not be allowed to work freely in the politically-steeped post-election milieu. Yet that is a poor excuse to keep voting for those who time and again disappoint—and this applies to the parties now in the ruling coalition as well as the opposition. If people vote for clean and competent folks irrespective of their political affiliations, the parties in the future will also be bound to select better candidates.

Some disagreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank, is not only expected but also desirable. The bank has a high level of autonomy so that it can craft monetary policies and regulations with minimal political meddling. The exercise of this autonomy can often cause friction with the finance ministry, which works with a different set of priorities. Only with the right balance between the functioning of these two entities can the country’s economy hum along. The goal is not to remove the friction but to use it to come up with carefully-weighed monetary and fiscal measures.

 Finance Minister Janardan Sharma, on the other hand, seems to believe that the central bank’s leadership should be beholden to him and seek his guidance every step of the way. He proposed for the removal of Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari—a proposal that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba promptly endorsed—on the charge that Adhikari refused to heed him on vital matters and leaked sensitive information to the press. Minister Sharma has furnished no good proof to substantiate his claims. Instead, recent media stories suggest his main gripe with Adhikari was that the latter refused to follow through on some of Sharma’s dubious directives.

 This is the first time Nepal’s sitting central bank governor has been removed for insubordination. A horrible precedent has been set at a time the economy is battling strong headwinds and steady hands at the central bank are desperately wanted. Even PM Deuba seems to have acted out of spite: Adhikari had reportedly blocked one of Deuba’s chief financiers from expatriating his money. This kind of reckless governance at such a sensitive time could cause grievous damage to the economy that is already battered by the prolonged pandemic and ever-widening trade deficit.  

 All evidence suggests it is not Adhikari who should be fired but the finance minister who seems to lack even basic understanding of the economy’s functioning or the limits to his powers. PM Deuba has miscalculated. With the public uproar Adhikari’s untimely sacking has caused, he and his party could have to pay for it in the upcoming elections–—and rightly so.