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The war of words between the two Nepal Communist Party factions—or should we call them separate parties now?—is getting uglier by the day. Prime Minister and NCP co-chair KP Oli has tossed aside any decency as he criticizes senior leaders of the rival faction in most unseemly terms. Angered by Oli’s constant provocations, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Madhav Kumar Nepal, the two rival-faction leaders, are also throwing their own ugly jabs. On Jan 13, Dahal referred to Oli as a ‘joker’. 

What is essentially a clash of egos between senior communist leaders has also thrown the country into deep political and constitutional turmoil. Each faction claims to represent the ‘authentic’ NCP and deserving of the original party name and the much-sought election symbol of sun. The Election Commission is considering their claims, even as the issues of House dissolution and some constitutional appointments are sub judice at the Supreme Court. We are afraid that the internecine struggle in the NCP could have a damning impact on the Nepali democratic process and its nascent federal architecture. 

It is not only the Nepali Congress that has gotten a new lease of life as it looks to profit from what is a de facto NCP split. The Madhes-based Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal, the third biggest force in the national legislature, is making its own calculations as it looks to dust off its old constitution-amendment agenda. The big danger though comes from the royalists, the supporters of the monarchy and Hindu state. They essentially want to overturn all of Nepal’s post-2006 political achievements.

The growing involvement of India and China in Nepal’s domestic politics will further complicate things. A big chunk of the Indian establishment would like to see Nepal as a Hindu state, and reckons now is the perfect time to push the agenda. China too seems determined to preserve the clout it enjoyed under the NCP government. Like it or not, these two foreign actors will play a big role, direct or indirect, in shaping Nepali politics for years to come, including in the determination of future electoral outcomes. 

As the grip of Nepal’s principle democratic actors on national politics loosens, various domestic and foreign elements unhappy with Nepal’s recent political changes will seek to push their destabilizing agendas. This will put Nepal’s federal democratic project at an imminent risk.  

In the early hours of January 6, in what were surreal scenes even in an era dominated by Donald Trump, the American clown of a president, potentially thousands of pro-Trump supporters barged into United States Capitol, the federal legislature. Four people were killed in the melee. US Senators and Congressmen were seen scrambling for cover. The march on Capitol followed exhortations by Trump to his supporters that they “would never take back our country with weakness”. The occasion that had drawn these people together was the legislative confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

The American democratic system has been a frequent butt of jokes the world around following Trump’s election as the US President in 2016. It became a laughing stock on January 6. The dictatorship of Venezuela issued a statement, expressing its concern over the violence in Washington DC. “The United States is suffering the same thing that it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression,” it read. The foreign ministry of Turkey, another enemy of Trump’s America, said it believed “the US will overcome this internal political crisis in a mature manner”. Both the countries were mocking previous US statements on their domestic affairs.  

It is easy to ridicule the Trump-era American democratic process, not to mention the country’s ‘imperial’ interventions abroad. Yet what transpired on January 6 was also, in a way, a sign of the resilience of American democracy. Biden’s victory was confirmed despite every effort by Trump to discredit the US electoral system. On the same day, a Black man was elected as US senator, for the first time in the history of the state of Georgia. In the process, the Democrats also took control of the Senate— the US House of Representatives was already in their bag—in what was yet another instance of popular rejection of Trumpianism.

A similar sequence of events in other democratic presidential systems, for instance in Turkey or Russia, could very well have culminated in successful coups by their all-powerful executives. Democracies around the world now find themselves in crisis, partly as a result of the ultra-nationalist right-wing populism unleased by the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro and Modi. The final act of Trump’s repudiation by the American electorate and its democratic institutions on January 6 will, hopefully, make other potential dictators and Trump idolizers pause before they think of bending the democratic process to their will.

The year 2020 was a forgettable one, for the whole world. In some ways, it was worse for Nepal. Like most other countries, it was battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, with nearly 2,000 lives lost to the virus as of this writing. Many more barely survived. The year, declared a ‘Visit Nepal Year’, ended up decimating Nepali tourism. Then, near the year-end, Prime Minister KP Oli unceremoniously dissolved the federal lower house and called for mid-term elections. The poor focus on covid-prevention was made worse.

The start of a brand new year might be the perfect time to take stock of what went wrong in Nepali politics, and devise ways to mitigate the damage. The formation of big political parties is something to be celebrated in countries where political instability is the norm. So most Nepalis supported the Maoist-UML merger, including with their votes, with the belief that if nothing else a strong, single-party government would deliver much-needed stability. This in turn would pave the path for prosperity and development.    

This proved to be misplaced dream. Now as they bid farewell to 2020, the least people hope for is that Nepali politics will soon get a definite direction. Both the NCP factions, each of which is now functioning as a de facto political party, have said that they are not averse to reunification, if not immediately. More than that—and whatever the Supreme Court verdict on House dissolution—the country has now well and truly entered election mode.

Even if the dissolved House is restored, it is hard to see a stable government formed from its floor. The national polity bitterly divided, more likely is a repeat of 2011 when Nepali Congress’s Ram Chandra Poudel had to withdraw his candidacy for prime minister after his bid was defeated in parliament for 16 times. This way, too, there is no alternative to getting a fresh mandate.

As it is, the country is not ready for a quick election. The timeline the prime minister has set—late April—is unrealistic. It will be a herculean task for the Election Commission to hold a nationwide election in such a short time. April elections will also deprive millions of people who have just entered voting age from casting their ballots. Thus the best 2021 gift Nepali political actors can give to their people is a clear and mutually-agreed timetable for fresh elections. But, again, it cannot be a unilateral decision.  

A democratic culture is not something you develop overnight. Nor is it a given that it will materialize. The responsibility for its flourishing largely falls on the shoulders of the country’s top political leaders. To do so, they must abide by legal norms, realize the importance of check and balance, and commit to building strong institutions. As important is a periodic transfer of power. As in any other discipline, the competent ones need to be promoted, and the old generation paves the way for the next generation. Nepal’s current political leadership is deficient in all these fronts. 

Be it Nepal Communist Party’s KP Oli, Nepali Congress’s Sher Bahadur Deuba, the ex-Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or Baburam Bhattarai—they have all at one time or other been complicit as prime ministers in playing fast and loose with democratic norms and values. Across the board, what we see is top leaders using every dirty trick to remain in positions of power and to sabotage their political rivals. They thus become ready to dissolve parliament on fictional constitutional grounds, to politically interfere in the national army, to install a sitting chief justice as the chief executive, and to plot against their party colleagues: there really is no limit to what they can do. 

What we don’t see is a party leader who loses an election quit active politics or to at least vacate the top position. We don’t see them groom successors. This is why the same cast of characters who have been repeatedly tried and been found wanting have been running Nepali politics since the 1990 change. They want to forever remain in power, literally, until their last breath. 

Prime Minister Oli’s unconstitutional house dissolution is thus hardly a surprise. Like most of his predecessors as prime minister, rather than have the guts to realize his weaknesses and see the failures of his government, he smashed the government machinery that was being taken away from him. Again, this is not to imply that his (former) party colleagues in Dahal or Madhav Nepal have in the past proven themselves to be better leaders, either of their party or their country. Yet past mistakes cannot be an excuse for present failures. The wise rather learn from past mistakes and apply the lessons in the present. Unfortunately, our incumbent all-knowing prime minister is not taking any lesson from anyone.