Submit your Article

We have been there, done that. Confusion again reigns all around as the country continues to reel under an acute vaccine shortage, and the prohibitory orders are being lifted in various parts of the country, including Kathmandu Valley.

Less than three percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. For those who have gotten only their first dose, or around a tenth of the population, there is no guarantee of a second. The procurement process for more vaccines, we hear, has long been underway. Yet as of this writing, it is unclear where the next shipment is coming from. Instead, some disturbing news on vaccine delivery has emerged. Many elderly folks have been turned away from vaccine centers that supposedly ran out of jabs. But then there are also reports of expired vaccines being thrown away. These vaccines had reportedly been set aside for VVIPs but many of them didn’t show up on time.

Separately, the recent vaccination drive in Kathmandu with the China-made Vero Cell had to be interrupted when ministers, bureaucrats, and even high-profile journalists started sending their kith and kin for jabs, usurping the right of those in the 60-64 age group to get their first shot. The drive has resumed, but it is cold comfort for the 1.5 million folks whose second dose of Covishield is long overdue. Experts have repeatedly pointed that only mass vaccination will help the country emerge from the corona contagion; the various restrictive measures will, at best, only slow down the rate of infection.

The Oli government has badly bungled the vaccination drive from the start. Now the country is reliant on the goodwill of the international community to provide it with enough vaccines, mostly through the WHO’s COVAX initiative. The initiative has promised around 350,000 vaccine doses by the end of July. That is nearly not enough. The restrictive measures are being eased but without enough vaccines to inoculate the vast majority of the population, it will only be a matter of time before they return. And it could be much worse the next time.

The controversy over the composition of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench has made a mockery of the judicial process. It has also raised fears that the hallowed democratic principle of separation of powers has been trampled upon. First, by ignoring the criteria of seniority, Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana made a blunder while choosing the five-person bench, the all-important authority to interpret the national charter. 

The plaintiff lawyers arguing against Prime Minister KP Oli’s decision to dissolve the House and call for a fresh election raised a fuss. Chief Justice Rana relented and reconstituted the bench on a seniority basis. Now, it was the turn of the lawyers defending the prime minister to object, as they accused the two new judges on the bench of being biased against the Oli government. Weeks of precious time that could have been spent debating an urgent issue of national interest were wasted. 

Compared to their low faith in the executive or the legislative, the public faith in the judiciary is much higher. Yet this trust is eroding. Judicial appointments are being made mostly along party lines. Senior judges often court controversy. Political leaders in positions of power often speak openly on sub judice cases—and get away with it. And now, there is the controversy over the judges’ impartiality as they sit to interpret the constitution. 

How can the public trust their interpretation? Ideally, we should have judges such as former Chief Justice Sushila Karki who simply refused to entertain any political meddling in the judiciary. She maintained a safe distance from political actors and interest groups. Her character was so clean that those who wanted to influence her to rule a certain way did not even bother to try. As a result, the decisions of her court were mostly beyond reproach. And that is how it should be. 

As the Constitutional Bench presides over this important case, the judges have a wonderful opportunity to restore public faith in the judiciary. For this, it is vital that the judges not be seen as being swayed by pressure groups and strictly rely on their conscience to interpret the constitution. People are waiting with bated breath. 

Monarchy had been an integral part of Nepali society since the unification of the territories currently clubbed under Nepal in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Without the Shah monarchs, there would be no Nepal as we know it today. Sometimes they ruled directly, at other times they did so through their elected or unelected representatives and, for another 104 years, they were only figureheads. Yet they endured, for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. 

Arguably, the first nail in the monarchy’s coffin was hammered in on 1 June 2001 when the entire family of King Birendra, the ruling monarch, was gunned down. The then crown prince Dipendra was named the culprit. He apparently took his own life after killing his family, and no new piece of evidence has emerged to suggest someone else was directly involved. Yet that is not how people saw it. The consensus then, and perhaps even now, continues to be that Birendra’s younger brother Gyanendra, who would later be the king, had a big hand in the massacre. 

As the monarch, Gyanendra started getting increasingly authoritarian: assuming all executive powers, outlawing political parties, and controlling the media. This only confirmed people’s doubts about him. By the time the Seven Party Alliance started a joint campaign with then warring Maoists to oust the autocratic king in 2006, public opinion had turned firmly against Gyanendra. When the king, cornered at home and ditched by the international community, gave in to protestors, he knew full well he was signing on the monarchy’s death warrant.   

Many Nepalis are disappointed with the course of events in the country in the two decades since the monarchy’s ouster. A sizable section of the population is again starting to hanker after the stable days of monarchy. But this will be a flawed course, for two main reasons. One, the federal-republic project in Nepal is only in its infancy, and it is too early to pass definite judgments on its success or failure. Two, there can be no going back from a situation where sovereignty is now fully vested in the people. On the 20th anniversary of the royal massacre, it is worth recalling the beloved Birendra and his family. But there is no point trying to revive an institution whose time has passed.

The writing for the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) had been on the wall since its formation in 2018. After a resounding electoral victory for their communist alliance, the KP Oli-led CPN-UML had completed the merger process with Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led CPN (Maoist Center) with the sole intent of, as it turned out, dividing the spoils between them. The understanding was that Oli would lead the government for two and half years after which he would make way for Dahal. Predictably, Oli refused to step down halfway into his tenure. Predictably, the NCP split.

Now it is the turn of the CPN-UML to undergo a formal spilt following the expulsion of 11 senior leaders by the Oli-led UML standing committee. Among those expelled are heavyweights such as Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhalanath Khanal, two ex-PMs. They were booted out after they petitioned with President Bidya Devi Bhandari to name Nepali Congress’ Sher Bahadur Deuba as the new prime minister. Once again, ideological differences had nothing to do with the latest fissure in the ruling party. It was an all-out personality clash.

The Nepali communist movement has been turbulent since the formation of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) in 1949 under Pushpa Lal Shrestha. But while earlier fissures in the communist movement were at least partly ideological—for instance, in 1962 the CPN split over the debate of whether communists and royals could work together—in recent times, such fissures (and later fusions) have largely, if not exclusively, been guided by personal calculations.  

Then there is the question of whether any of Nepal’s big, nominally communist forces are in fact communist. Of late, it is hard to distinguish the Nepali Congress from the CPN-UML or CPN (Maoist Center). Though all three swear by democratic socialism, in reality all of them support crony capitalism. Communist candidates are the biggest spenders in electoral campaigns and control big chunks of the economy. Their commitment to the welfare state is wafer-thin. Without greater ideological clarity and walking-the-communist-talk, Nepali communist movement faces an existential crisis.