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These are nearly hopeless times. Our lives have been thrown asunder by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic and health crises. Perhaps millions of Nepalis have lost their jobs or are making do with a fraction of their pre-Covid pay. There is uncertainty and misgivings about vaccines: are all the real and rumored side-effects worth the trouble? In these otherwise gloomy times, the Supreme Court verdict on the evening of Feb 23 restoring the dissolved lower house of the federal parliament provides a rare ray of hope.

The verdict suggests at least one of the three main organs of the state is still functional and above partisanship. More than that, the verdict has prevented the country from plunging into a serious constitutional crisis. Had the apex court vetted the decision to dissolve the parliament on dubious constitutional grounds, the country’s rulers would have been given a carte blanche to abuse the national charter; and the barely five-year-old constitution would have lost most of its legitimacy.

The current government has done precious little to institutionalize federalism, the bedrock of the new constitution. Instead, the focus has been on centralizing powers by impinging on the jurisdictions of provincial and local-level governments. Appointments to top constitutional bodies were made arbitrarily. A culture of demonizing political opponents was recklessly promoted. Meanwhile, civil liberties were progressively curtailed. Things only got worse without a parliament to check government excesses.

The Supreme Court has put the derailed political and democratic process back on track. The five judges who issued the verdict on Feb 23 must be lauded for upholding rule of law. But wasn’t it their job? It was. Yet their brave, principled stand must be lauded in these partisan times when nearly every state organ has been thoroughly politicized.  

Due process must now be restored and the next course of action left to the sovereign parliament. We already hear rumors of dirty horse-trading as the jockeying to form the next government has started. Complicating the picture will be the uncertainty of the NCP’s status as a single party. Yet we can all take heart from the restoration of Nepali people’s supreme representative body, and from the message that no one, however powerful, is above the law.

Sher Bahadur Deuba espies an opportunity to hang on to his Nepali Congress Presidency. Even better, he reckons he might be the next prime minister. KP Oli’s dissolution of the federal lower house has been a blessing in disguise for the 74-year-old, four-time prime minister. In normal course, Deuba would be under intense pressure to promptly hold the party’s much-delayed general convention, its supreme decision-making body that also picks its leader. He has already been party president for five years, a year over the original mandate, thanks to the covid pandemic. 

By all accounts, Deuba’s four years as president have been a failure. The party under his leadership was trounced in the 2017 general elections. Since the formation of the communist government, his voice as the leader of the main opposition has also been very weak. Hounded by his critics, and perhaps aware that he might not win party presidency from the general convention floor again, Deuba has looked to pack party committees with cronies and has repeatedly postponed the convention.

Now the party’s Central Working Committee has proposed to hold the convention on August 23-26, in around six months’ time. But it’s easier said than done, with the fate of the dissolved house still hanging in the balance as the Supreme Court hears the case. If the house is restored, there will be an immediate prospect of Deuba becoming prime minister, in which case he will again seek to buy influence in the party. If the house is not restored, the Congress party will be in on election-mode, which in turn will result in as yet unpredictable circumstances that Deuba can use to his advantage. 

Again, for the Nepali Congress, the problem is not so much the country’s current state of flux as the power-centric mindset of its top leaders, especially Deuba. The incumbent NC president has been ready to bend rules and subvert internal democracy to hang on. So far the intra-party opposition to Deuba has been weak, again due to other political leaders’ own calculations on distribution of power and privileges. Entirely missing is any kind of ideological discussion on the party’s future course. Given such petty and self-serving calculations inside the main opposition party, it is hard to see how a future Congress government will be any better than the current, much-reviled one under the divided NCP.  

The winter months have always been the peak protest-time in Nepal. This winter, the two main sets of protestors squaring off against each other belong to the same political party. Each faction of the Nepal Communist Party has declared a ‘third people’s revolution’ against the other. Yet protests of a different kind are also happening all over the country: the protests against the persistent rape culture. 

Enraged women have taken to the street following the rape-and-murder of 17-year-old Bhagirathi Bhatta of Baitadi district of the Sudurpaschim Province. Bhatta was raped and strangled to death on her way home from school. The crime is eerily similar to the rape-and-murder two-and-a-half years ago of 13-year-old Nirmala Pant of Kanchanpur district, also in Sudurpaschim. In fact, the two bespectacled victims look hauntingly similar.

As happens with most rape cases in Nepal, police never solved the Pant incident. Bhatta’s friends and relatives fear a similar fate. The fear is legitimate. Despite making big strides in women’s empowerment over the last 15 years, Nepal is still a highly patriarchal society that looks upon women as second-class citizens—even the country’s constitution discriminates against them. 

Now a new law makes it mandatory for women who want to go abroad to first seek the consent of their family and local ward office. Separately, the menstrual huts have long been banned and yet Nepali women continue to die from cold and animal bites after being thrown out of their homes during their periods. This is another illustration of the patriarchal state dictating how women should lead their lives. And if a woman is sexually abused or raped, it’s likely her own fault: she wasn’t wearing right clothes, she was being needlessly bold. 

This entrenched patriarchal mindset of feminine inferiority makes state institutions hesitant to investigate cases of violence against women and to punish the guilty men. Crimes of sexual violence are increasing, yet only the most gruesome ones come to light. It is men who impose this culture of silence. Yet the same men are expected to act as women’s protectors, 24-7, as is evident in the new requirement for women leaving Nepal. The protesting women are saying Nepali women don’t need men to guard their purity and conduct. What they ask for are equal laws and their equal applicability. 

Instead of elections, which Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has announced for April-end, the country seems headed for more political confrontation. The rival Nepal Communist Party Dahal-Nepal faction has upped its ante against House dissolution. The opposition parties and a big section of the intelligentsia are on the street, protesting the ‘unconstitutional’ dissolution and ‘illegal’ appointment of officials to constitutional bodies. On the other hand, the NCP’s Oli faction has ramped up its poll preparations. All this is happening even as House dissolution as well as the Oli government’s other controversial decisions remain sub judice at the Supreme Court.

As the government head who called for elections, it is PM Oli’s responsibility to create a conducive climate of trust. If he does want elections, why make controversial appointments to constitutional bodies and further provoke his political opponents? How will such unilateral and legally questionable decisions help build trust for elections? Even in more stable times, April-end elections would have been nigh impossible, with all the logistical challenges they entail. This in turn boosts the claim of his critics that the announced elections are just a gimmick to prolong PM Oli’s tenure.

The strange thing is, right now, even the legal route to elections has not been cleared. Oli’s supporters urge their critics to wait for the apex court verdict, which is a sound legal advice. But legal niceties, say his critics, can be dispensed with when the country’s democratic process itself is on the line. Whatever the merit of their contrasting arguments, neither side has the right to use violence to press its case. Yet, as things stand, more violence has become inevitable.

Whether or not the House is restored, there is no option to going to the people for a fresh mandate. A restored House will also be bitterly divided, and it will be impossible to get anything done there. So, politically, the Supreme Court verdict is really irrelevant. This is why it is important to create broad political consensus on viable election dates and remove the disquieting state of uncertainty. But, again, the onus of taking those on the street into confidence on this lies with the prime minister—in what will also be a test of his faith in the democratic process.