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 Continued from the previous column…

In the early days of their corpora­tion, both the CPC and the KMT were sincere. Mao Zedong, for example, was secretary of the cen­tral bureau of the CPC and acting head of the KMT’s central propa­ganda department. In order to build a strong revolutionary army, the KMT established the Whampoa mil­itary academy in 1924 with the help of the CPC. Zhou Enlai, the newly returned leader of the European branch of the CPC, served as a politi­cal instructor in Whampoa, teaching a course in political economy. As the political basis for opposing imperial­ism and warlordism was the same, members of the CPC and the KMT called each other comrades.

The cooperation between the CPC and the KMT created a great revolu­tionary power. In 1925, the revolu­tionary government of Guangzhou defeated the warlords of Guangdong province, making Guangdong the new base of revolutionary forces. In 1926, the 100,000 revolutionary troops led by the KMT and CPC began a war to eliminate warlords in the north. Starting from southern China, they liberated large areas of central and northern China in nine months. In 1927, the revolu­tionary army took over the conces­sion of the British colonists in Hubei province. In this process, the CPC mobilized the masses to provide logistics to the revolutionary army. The underground organization of CPC also organized labor unions in warlord-ruled areas to launch labor movements in support of the revolu­tionary army.

But the seed of instability had sprouted years earlier. Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer in Beijing in March 1925. After his death, infight­ing started in the KMT. The increas­ingly close relationship between the CPC and the left wing of the KMT aroused the resentment of the KMT’s right wing. At the same time, ideological differences between the CPC and the KMT began to emerge.

The KMT was a bourgeois party, representing the interests of the urban bourgeoisie and the rural landlords. Although the KMT and the CPC shared the same political desire to drive away imperialist forces and warlords, the commu­nist party still needed to safeguard the interests of the working class in the cities and carry out land owner­ship reform in the countryside. As a result, the gap between the KMT and the CPC widened.

Between April and July 1927, the KMT rightists, represented by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei, launched two sudden cam­paigns to kill communists. Within a few months, tens of thousands of communist party members and pro-communist revolutionaries were killed or persecuted. The coop­eration between the KMT and the CPC broke down completely.

The bloody slaughter taught the communists that they must have a revolutionary army of their own. On 1 August, 1927, Zhou Enlai launched an uprising in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province. On August 7, the central committee of CPC held an emergency meeting, at which Mao proposed that “the power to rule comes from guns”. On 9 Septem­ber, 1927, Mao led the workers’ and peasants’ uprising in border areas of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. On September 29, Mao established the leadership of the CPC over the army. On October 27, his troops arrived at Jing Gang mountain, creating the first revolutionary base under the CPC leadership. After that, in Janu­ary 1928, Zhu De (later command­er-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army) launched a peasant upris­ing in southern Hunan province. In April 1928, the troops of south­ern Hunan uprising and Nanchang uprising arrived at the Jing Gang mountain base.

From October 1927 to Janu­ary 1930, Mao wrote three arti­cles—“Why can China’s red regime exist?”, “Struggle in Jing gang moun­tain” and “A single spark can start a prairie fire”—marking the starting of the theory of the revolutionary road. The goal was for the countryside to encircle the city.

Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek gradually gained the upper hand in the internal struggles of the KMT. Zhang Zuolin, the leader of China’s most powerful military warlord, was assassinated by the Japanese in June 1928 after rejecting Japanese demands to expand their colonial interests in northeast China. Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin’s son, was extremely angry and at the end of 1928 he declared northeast China subordinate to the nationalist gov­ernment of Chiang Kai-shek. From then on, Chiang Kai-shek ostensi­bly completed the reunification of China.

The CPC and the KMT (which later went on to rule Taiwan) completed their journey from being comrades to enemies.

After the Narendra Modi gov­ernment in India dramati­cally changed the status of Jammu and Kashmir in the first week of August, it expected a show of support from neighbor­ing and friendly countries. Clear­ly Kathmandu was caught in a diplomatic dilemma as the issue involved three countries with which Nepal has friendly ties. It also complicated the issue further as Nepal is the current chair of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). As such, Pakistan expected a ges­ture of solidarity from Nepal—or at least a statement that showed concern.While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) rightly kept a stud­ied silence over the issue to avoid offending either of the two par­ties involved, the fear was that the party apparatus, particularly of the ruling CPN, would issue a statement that could create anoth­er difficult diplomatic incident for the country. Such a fear was not irrational, given how insen­sitive the CPN’s sister wings have been to the country’s interest over Venezuela.

There has been some brain­storming over Nepal’s foreign pol­icy and protocols in the past—par­ticularly to bring party apparatus on the same page, but it seems to have done very little in streamlin­ing the process or ensuring com­pliance with the protocols.

More heat than light

In 2014, the Institute of Foreign Affairs conducted a seminar for the representatives of political parties to orient them on ‘Prin­ciples and Strategies of Nepal’s Foreign Policy and Protocol’, yet the discussion produced more heat than light. Participants com­plained that the seminar lacked focus, and the event quickly descended into a competition of sorts over who knows more than whom. Unfortunately, that is the usual sight in most conferences and seminars held in Kathmandu on Nepal’s foreign policy.

The constitution reiterates Nepal’s faith in the UN Charter, Panchasheel and non-aligned principles, and eschews refer­ence to special relations, yet these are abstract ideas that cannot be easily translated into action­able strategies, particularly in the context of a renewed cold war that involves our neighbor to the north. While Panchasheel does offer some room to anchor to our foreign policy posture in most cases, it is not always easy to operationalize our neutrality when an incident involves two neighboring countries with dia­metrically opposite views. The MOFA’s own guiding principle does not go very far from the constitutional directive: Nepal shall pursue its relations with neighbours based on sovereign equality and reciprocity, but the country shall not align one neigh­bor against another.

Internal issue

On the Kashmir issue, it would be problematic to even say that Nepal does not comment on the internal affairs of another coun­try. What India considers internal is an issue Pakistan has sought to internationalize for seven decades.

Besides the competence of dip­lomatic personnel, Nepal clearly has two challenges to address: to operationalize broad foreign pol­icy principles into clear action­able strategies; and to bring party officials on the same page. This can only be done by creating a robust research and debate cul­ture in the country. Given how rapidly the geopolitical landscape evolves in this day and age, a static approach cannot address the challenges inherent to being a small power in a vibrant and complex neighborhood

 The Government of Nepal and the concerned provincial gov­ernments need to address the growing concerns of the members of the District Assemblies (DA) and their executive arms, the District Coordination Committees (DCCs), regarding their functions, duties and powers.The sooner it is done, the better it is for the country, especially for the functioning of the three- tier sys­tem—federal, provincial and local. The delay is causing disillusionment not only at the DCC level, but also in village bodies, municipalities and the provincial governments, which have no clue about how to work with the DCCs under the existing constitutional regime.

The DCC is a district-level polit­ical authority in every district of Nepal. They were formed in March 2017 to replace the district develop­ment committees. At present, there are 77 DCCs. The framers of the new constitution had a choice as to whether to continue with the exist­ing administrative districts within the unitary system of government, or to allow them to be assimilated into the framework of the three tier federal system. They continued with it for a number of political reasons. Obviously, the decision reflected the opinion of the major political parties of the day, and the issue of their utility and viability under the federal system, especially with regard to the agenda of empow­erment and change, was not ade­quately discussed. But it is never too late to think about it and plan for the future.

Since the Panchayat era, Nepal had remained divided into 75 dis­tricts, 14 zones and five develop­ment regions. The new constitu­tion gave continuity to the districts, but split the districts of Rukum and Nawalparasi into two, thus increas­ing the number of districts to 77, while restructuring the country into a seven-province federal model. Thus, the constitution created 77 DAs to coordinate between the village bodies and municipalities within each district. As these assem­blies were crafted out as deliberative bodies, the constitution also gave them a leadership role. That role comes with the power of coordi­nation given to the DCCs by Article 220(7).

Article 220(7) enables the DAs to coordinate between the village bodies and municipalities (called palikas in Nepali) within the respec­tive districts, monitor development and construction works, coordinate between the federal and the provin­cial government offices and village bodies and municipalities, and per­form other functions as provided for by provincial laws. It is clear that the provinces were empowered to pass such laws, so that they could work out the details of the coordination roles of the DCCs and respond to the provincial requirements that may vary between provinces. But what has been done so far poses far more challenges than the framers of the constitution ever contemplated.

Last year, the Government of Nepal (the federal government), which has been supporting the local as well as provincial governments in developing their legal regimes, provided to the provinces a model law called the District Assembly and District Coordination Commit­tee Act 2075. The model covers the basic rules of internal operations of the DAs, their functions, duties and powers, restrictions on discussions and reporting procedures. It has three additional provisions that are significant. It creates the position of the District Coordination Officer as an executive under the Act. It is clearly mentioned that the budget­ary and personnel matters regard­ing the DAs will be handled by the federal laws. Additionally, the power to devise and enforce necessary pro­cedures, directives and standards in matters that fall under the DA’s jurisdiction has been given to the concerned DA. All seven provinces have passed the model law with little to no changes, but these provisions have fallen short of the anticipated legal requirements, although they have been able to help the DAs and the DCCs move on with these basic prerequisites.

Article 220 of the constitution and the DAs and DCCs it creates must be explained in the light of Nepal’s three-tier federal system. This Arti­cle does not create a fourth tier, and it should never be perceived that way. All powers have been divided between these three levels, and whatever the power of coordination may entail, it must not affect the con­stitutional balance in the division of powers. The framers of the con­stitution placed the DAs and DCCs under part 17, which eliminates any confusion that they also fall under the Local Executive, although they are not entitled to exercise the pow­ers provided under Schedules 8 and 9. They exercise only those powers that are conferred to them by Article 220(7) and the laws created by con­cerned provinces under its Clause (d). It need not be emphasized here that the federal government enjoys certain law or policy-mak­ing power under explicit consti­tutional provisions with regard to provincial and local governments. It also enjoys the power to issue necessary directions.

The model law that has been enacted into provincial legislation does not give any clue as to how the federal government or the provinces are connected with the concerned DAs and DCCs. As provided for by Article 220, each district’s DA con­sists of chairpersons and vice-chair­persons of the village executives and mayors and deputy mayors of the municipal executives within the district. The DA elects the DCC, consisting of a maximum of nine members, including one chief, one deputy chief, at least three women and at least one dalit or another member of a minority group. The DCC discharges all functions required to be carried out by the DA. A member of a village assembly or municipal assembly within the concerned district shall be eligible to be a candidate for the office of the chief, deputy chief or member of the DCC for a five-year term, and if elected to these positions, his or her office of the member of village assembly or of municipal assembly shall ipso facto lapse. As a politi­cal body, they have been created through a different electoral system and are supposed to have a clear link with the federal government. Given the nature of their coordination responsibility, such linkages need to be formal as well as substantive. The success of provincial govern­ments will also depend on how far they will be able to use the good offices of the DAs and the DCCs and coordinate with them in the overall interest of the province. The same is required in the case of the federal government as well. It is clear that the legal regime needs to be created, developed and consolidated.

In any case, such a law would be subjected to two apparent limita­tions. First, it cannot exceed the parameters of Article 227(7). The power of coordination needs to be carefully handled. Second, this law-making power cannot affect the scheme of the constitutional division of powers between the three levels of governments. By giving continu­ity to the districts, the dominant political parties were able to avoid the challenging task of restructuring the state all over again based only on identity, ethnopolitics and regional­ism. But the challenge of optimizing the role of the DAs and the DCCs remains to be handled. Under a suitable legal framework, they could support even the issues of identity, ethnopolitics and regionalism.

It is really difficult for the DCCs to work in the absence of procedures, directives and standards that enable them to work with all the village bodies and municipalities within the district. There is disillusion­ment regarding how to coordinate in the absence of such clear guide­lines. Under the model law, the DAs have the power to develop these procedures, directives and stan­dards themselves. But the support of the provincial government is very important in the given situation. The monitoring work of the DCCs has not begun in any meaningful sense, because they don’t know how to achieve efficient results, or do it with some sense of authority. They also expect recognition of their power by the local governments. Some DA members think the local govern­ments hardly have any respect for them, because their capacity has not been clear. Even a ward member has a clear role in the local government. No such role has been identified for the members of the DCC. Many think that had they still been in their con­stituency as ward members, they would have had busier schedules serving their people rather than being left out as members of the DA. On the top of that, they do not have enough budget and human resources to perform their jobs.

Recently, the DCCs in the country have formed a national federation to create a united front and have started lobbying for its rightful place in the system. But even the DCC Federation has no programmes, because their role will depend on the role of the DCCs and the legal regime created for them. It was possible for the framers of the constitution to avoid creating district-level political structures and, instead, allow the concerned provincial government to self-coordinate as far as their plans and programmes were concerned. The present provisions, even at the level of coordination, overlap with the palikas’ exercise of executive power as enabled by Schedules 8 and 9 of the constitution.

It is thus important to review the situation and adopt an effective, yet a cautious, approach to the roles of the DAs and the DCCs in order to expedite the process of their devel­opment and institutionalization

After the disastrous 2017 parlia­mentary polls, Nepal’s Grand Old Party, the Nepali Congress (NC), has been going through a deep leadership crisis. Soon after the election debacle, there were strong voices in the party in favor of an impromptu General Convention to elect new leadership. Youth leaders in particular are of the view that the current leadership can no longer run the party well, hence the need for new leadership to revitalize it. After continuous inside pressure, a Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting this week decided to initiate the process of holding the conven­tion within a year. The pressure came mainly from senior leaders Ram Chandra Poudel, Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Shekhar Koirala. Party President Sher Bahadur Deuba has been facing heat for failing to transform the party’s structure into a federal setup and to play an effec­tive role as the head of the main opposition party in the parliament.

As part of the preparations for the 14th General Convention, the CWC has decided to alter the par­ty’s organizational structures into interim structures appropriate for the federal setup. As per an agree­ment, a CWC meeting in the second week of December will prepare a specific timeframe for the conven­tion. Similarly, the party is all set to start the process of renewing active membership.

This means that the race for party presidency has truly begun. Congress leaders believe there will be new alignments in the lead-up to and during the convention. At the 13th GC, there were three factions led by Deuba, Poudel and Sitaula, a state of affairs that has continued till date. Senior leader Shekhar Koirala has not taken any side but is pre­paring to fight for party presidency himself.

Changing face

Youth leaders think that the cur­rent leadership—which not only means Deuba but also other senior leaders like Poudel, Sitaula and Gen­eral Secretary Shashank Koirala—cannot effectively lead the party in the face of a strong Nepal Com­munist Party which has a near two-thirds majority in the House. “We have high respect and love for our incumbent leaders, but it’s clear that they cannot reform the party. The public will no longer accept them as the party’s face. A change is the need of the hour,” says Congress youth leader Gagan Thapa.

Many party leaders believe an ordinary leadership cannot take the party into the next set of elections, and that it needs charismatic leaders who can communicate with the peo­ple with a powerful message. While some think young leaders like Thapa can play that role, the old generation leaders are unlikely to accept his leadership. The NC, many believe, is therefore going through the worst leadership crisis in its seven-decade history.

According to a CWC member, completely displacing the incum­bent leadership in a party like the Congress is not possible. Leaders and cadres have a hierarchical mentality; they think youth leaders should wait until the older gener­ation retires. “The NC has leaders who have emerged from a long struggle, served jail terms and are totally dedicated to the party. They are not ready to hand over leader­ship to the new generation easily,” says Puranjan Acharya, a political analyst and a close observer of Congress politics.

Deuba seems to be in no mood to give up his claim to party leader­ship in the next GC. He has publicly said that he would take rest only after elevating the party’s position in national politics. “The party lost the last elections badly while Deuba was its president. He does not want to retire with the tag of an incompe­tent party president,” says a leader close to Deuba.

Divided he wins

Despite his unpopularity among the youths and criticism by rival fac­tions, Deuba maintains a strong hold on the party’s organizational base. So he is likely to emerge victorious in the next GC if multiple factions fight for presidency.

There is talk of an anti-Deuba alliance in the Congress, but it is unclear how or whether it will hap­pen. Poudel, who claims to be senior to Deuba, complains he is always relegated to second position in the party. Poudel’s several attempts to become prime minister and party president have been unsuccessful. He was defeated by Deuba in the race for party presidency at the 13th convention. Poudel’s faction is weaker but is in the limelight because of the presence of pop­ular youth leaders such as Gagan Thapa and Pradeep Poudel. The senior leader has confided to his close aides that he wants to lead the party once and then retire. He wants all leaders in the anti-Deuba camp to support him in his bid for party presidency.

Not everyone will oblige. Shekhar Koirala has been making prepara­tions to stake his own claim on party presidency, although leaders from the Poudel faction, such as Prakash Man Singh, Ram Sharan Mahat and Arjun Nara Singh KC, argue that Shekhar is a junior leader in terms of his active party politics.

“That argument makes me sad. I accept that I am junior. But what is the status of the party that is now being led by seniors? I respect them. But the logic that juniors cannot fight for presidency is unacceptable,” Koirala told APEX. Though they have their differences, three mem­bers of the Koirala family—Shekhar, Shashank and Sujata—seem to have come together in the past couple of years. But it is still unclear whether Shashank will support Shekhar. Sha­shank has not yet given any clues about his plan; he has only spoken broadly about the need for a change in party leadership.

Which seems possible only if everyone decides to gang up against Deuba. Shekhar is trying to incentiv­ize Gagan to support him by offering him the post of General Secretary. Shekhar claims that if Gagan and his young supporters back him, he would completely hand over party leadership to youth leaders at the 15th convention. The Koirala family, because of BP’s legacy, still enjoys considerable support; despite lim­ited leadership skills and lack of a clear agenda, Shashank Koirala was elected General Secretary at the 13th GC by a wide margin.

Deuba believes it would be easy for him to win party presidency if there are multiple candidates. So he will try to prevent a possible gang-up against him, according to a senior party leader