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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

Better sense prevailed and the nearly month-long standoff in the federal lower house over the twin ‘extra-judicial killings’ in Sarlahi ended after a deal between the ruling and opposition parties. Earlier, the Nepali Congress and the RJPN, the two opposition parties, had been stalling the house, asking for a parliamentary probe into the police shootings of Kumar Poudel, a leader of the underground Netra Bikram Chand Biplob-led CPN, and Saroj Narayan Singh, an RJPN cadre. Eventually, the opposition parties agreed that there was no point in running a parallel parliamentary probe when the National Human Rights Commission was already investigating the incidents.

Instead, a seven-member cross-party parliamentary panel has been formed under senior NCP leader Subhas Chandra Nembang to ensure that such incidents are not repeated. The panel is to submit its report to the parliament in a month. The resumption of parliamentary proceedings is great news. But it would be a travesty of justice if any attempt is made to quietly bury the twin incidents in Sarlahi. Now the onus is on the NHRC to unearth the truth. According to preliminary investigations by two other rights bodies, the Advocacy Forum Nepal and the Informal Sector Service Center, there is strong evidence to suggest that Poudel was not killed in crossfire, unlike what the police has been claiming.

They noted some peculiar activities in the lead up to Poudel’s death that made them doubt the official government version. The rights bodies found that locals had been barred from walking in the vicinity of the incident site from early in the morning of June 20, the day the CPN leader was supposedly killed. Also, no local they talked to said they had heard a gunshot throughout the day. The local police were also curiously kept in the dark about the whole affair. These are disconcerting findings.

The conclusion of the two rights bodies that there has of late been a disturbing increase in the number of ‘fake encounters’ is not reassuring. It suggests that the federal government is intent on taking the law into its own hands. Whether or not the government wants to sit down for talks with the Biplob outfit, there can be no justification for killing its cadres in cold blood. If it does so, public sympathy for the banned outfit is bound to grow, which will be a troubling development. It will also seriously undercut the legitimacy of perhaps the strongest government in Nepal’s democratic history, an even more worrisome consequence

There is a huge disconnect between the words and deeds of Nepal’s foreign pol­icy establishment. This establish­ment is comprised of civil ser­vants, party officials and security apparatus, each of which has its own institutional interests that often don’t add up to a broader national interest. Their divergent interests are in turn giving trac­tion to confusing signals to both the United States and China that are now locked in a new Cold War. As tensions grow, a flip-flop can easily put Nepal on the receiving end of harsh punitive actions—like the recent blockade.As inhuman and unjust as the Indian blockade was, there should also be a clear reckoning of the role of the national leaders in triggering it. It has now been established that our top leaders offered categorical assurance of retaining a Hindu state in the con­stitution when they were sum­moned to Delhi, a promise on which they reneged. A similar punitive action from Beijing and Washington cannot be ruled out if we continue to ignore their sen­sitivities. Being a small state, we do not have the luxury of big pow­ers and cannot be assured of a second chance.

Both the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Indo Pacific Strategy (IPS) are a reality and the best way to navigate the inherent risks is by transparently engaging with both sides. Nepal’s current approach appears to be one that favors the BRI and distances itself from the IPS. Yet upon closer inspection, even on the BRI, Nepali state remains deeply non-committal—as evidenced by the scaling down of the list of BRI projects from 36 to nine. This approach is unhelp­ful and dangerous as it creates a false impression globally of Kath­mandu leaning toward Beijing—without delivering the benefits of an unequivocal public alignment with the China-led strategy.

Nepal does not need to buy into the exclusionary narrative of this or that strategy. It is nat­ural for Washington or Beijing to want allies to be completely loyal to them, but we do not have to be—so long as we make our principles clear. In fact, during the previous Cold War, Nepal suc­cessfully received development assistance from both blocs. Even today, sections of the East West Highway have both Soviet and American engineering stamps. That speaks volume about how our then non-alignment strategy provided a safe approach to deal­ing with big power rivalry.

That old template may not be completely relevant today, yet it could provide valuable lessons for our renewed diplomatic posture in an evolving global and regional geopolitical context. This new Cold War is both ideological and civilizational—hence the stakes are that much higher. Rather than getting caught up in and defined by events and diplomatic acci­dents, Nepal needs a proactive approach in defining the limits of its engagement within both the BRI and the IPS. This means articulating a clear principle that would define our renewed foreign policy posture. This also means clearly communicating our com­fort levels and our desired depths of engagement with both Beijing and Washington.

Our current response to the BRI and the IPS seems to be a curious case of politicians saying one thing and civil servants doing a completely different thing. By being gung-ho about the BRI early in the post-blockade context, our politicians had raised Beijing’s expectation, which is now being met with frustration over the slow pace of delivery.

On the IPS, Washington is flabbergasted by how our for­eign ministry officials treat this strategy as radioactive (the MCC predates the IPS, and even Amer­icans are giving mixed signals about whether the MCC is a part of the IPS). Yet our military and armed police continue to benefit from elements of the IPS. At the same time, youth wings of the rul­ing party are hosting top leaders of the Venezuelan regime.

Not just Washington, even Bei­jing is wary of the shenanigans of our top political leaders, a wari­ness that is compounded by the civil administration’s lukewarm response. This may personally be a risk-free approach for top bureaucrats and politicians, but it is building up an unacceptable level of risk for the country.

Foreign ministry officials need to articulate a clear roadmap that other actors can adopt and adapt. As tensions escalate, Nepal urgently needs coherence and clarity in dealing with the rival frameworks being promoted by Beijing and Washington O

What does the extraction of the Prime Minister KP Oli’s wisdom tooth have to do with Nepal’s foreign policy? A lot, it turns out. PM Oli chose to get his troublesome tooth yanked out at the time Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was preparing to come to Kathmandu, perhaps to lay the ground for the official visit of his Big Boss. How could PM Oli host such an important guest when he could only mumble, right? No sooner had his gums healed than the prime minister decided time was ripe for a thor­ough check-up and a spell of rest, in what would be a 10-day Singapore package. Meanwhile, fellow co-chairman of the Nepal Communist Party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, embarked on a ‘family trip’ to Dubai. Both these trips were planned following the three-day Nepal stay of the RAW chief Samant Goel, who had held extensive discussions with both Oli and Dahal. Coincidence? Perhaps. Goel came calling to Nepal when the federal govern­ment was starting its preparations to welcome Xi Jinping: The prime minister had begun taking the inputs of security agen­cies on the logistics of Xi’s movements, the TIA runaway was being spruced up, and the whole airport vicinity beautified.

Now, suddenly, no senior government official is ready to discuss Xi’s visit, even though sources both at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy say they are doing their best to make Xi’s visit possible—and soon. Some specu­lated that if he came at all, the Chinese president would turn up around Oct 11-12, when he is scheduled to visit Varanasi to meet Narendra Modi, in what is being billed as Wuhan 2.0. But those dates fall in the middle of the Dashain festiv­ities. Government officials are unlikely to be up for such an important assignment when they would prefer to be home with their families.

Xi coming then? That depends largely on Nepal. The country has failed to prioritize the projects it wants China to support under the BRI framework. Why would the Chinese president come if he does not get to sign off on any of the big BRI projects? If Nepal is serious about welcoming him, senior government officials surely know of his penchant for spec­tacle and grandiosity: Xi won’t come to sign a $100m deal.

The foreign ministry seems keen on the visit. But other ministries tasked with finalizing the BRI projects have been rather sluggish. There may still be time though. If some big projects can be mutually agreed upon, the Chinese President need not link his Kathmandu visit with his trip to Varanasi. The globe-trotting Xi can always stop at Kathmandu during any of his foreign tours. But don’t hold your breath.

Dahal has deeply internalized the notion that his path back to power runs through New Delhi. Oli too knows he cannot alienate India if he is to serve out his term as prime minister. A displeased China, by comparison, is not a mortal danger to either. For all the talk of growing Chinese influence in Nepal, it is India still calling the shots