Submit your Article

Nepal is in a deep mess and there’s no way out. Recent events prove we have no reason to be optimistic. First, the Bibeksheel-Sajha split. When the party of bright Nepali youth merged with the party of a foreign returned journalist, most of us were excited. We hoped that soon it would emerge as an exemplary party that would force the dominant parties to become democratic, respon­sible and accountable. But it turned out, the party was no dif­ferent to other parties and despite big talks of democratizing Nepal, it itself lacked inner democra­cy. The potential third force split before it could even begin to make a difference.

We also witnessed the defeat of Dr Govinda KC who was fighting against the commercialization of medical education that makes health care expensive for poor Nepalis. But the democratic “com­munist” government of one of the poorest countries in the world stood for exactly the opposite and had its way. Both houses of the parliament endorsed the watered-down medical education bill. The opposition could do nothing. The medical bill was passed by our parliament. And all were in it together, the opposition and the so called—and self-declared— prominent members of the civil society and rights activists.

The opposition is morally bank­rupt, corrupt, divided, and hence weak. As such it could not mount an effective opposition against the government’s bullying. Or could it be that there was a tacit under­standing between the government and the opposition, not to open the file on NC’s involvement in the controversial purchase of the wide body aircraft? What a win-win for the both parties, and a lose-lose for Nepal.

And while the political parties were in a hush-hush win-win trade off with each other, the recently appointed Chief Justice Cholendra Shumser Rana suspended and took action against some “ill-in­tended” judges on big scandals, including the 33 kg gold smug­gling, and tax evasion by a major telecom provider. When even the judges start making “mistakes” it only means one thing: we are messed up big time. Flee the country, young men and women, while you can.

In addition to this domestic freak-show, our leaders also left no stone unturned to make sure we messed up diplomatically as well. The US invited our foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali to DC to discuss Nepal’s role in the Indo-Pacific Strategy. But we—the flag-bearers of the non-aligned movement—had to see something sinister behind a natural and harmless alliance. The distress­ing thing about Nepal’s decision to not join the strategy was the way we said it.

Instead of rejecting the Ameri­can proposal outright, we could have slept on it and carefully weighed the pros and cons. We could have asked for time and what America would provide us in return for our participa­tion. We could have asked the next foreign ministerial meet­ing be held in Kathmandu. That would have been a mature thing to do and prove to the Americans and our neighbors that we are serious about our national inter­ests and cultivating our friends near and far.

By refusing even further delib­erations on the issue, we proved that we are immature when it comes to maintaining good rela­tions with a country that has been a good friend of Nepal for the past 70 years. If the government thought it made the Chinese hap­py by its immaturity in DC, the Chinese were unmoved, as is evi­dent by the Chinese proposal to reduce the number of projects under its Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal.

If this was not enough, Com­rade Prachanda, one of the two chairs of the ruling Nepal Com­munist Party, had to issue a strong statement denouncing Ameri­ca’s role in Venezuela. He could have kept quiet or just issued a milder statement to prove his revolutionary credentials and to keep himself relevant in whatever global communist movement he fancies. He as always hinted he was misquoted and was hood­winked into issuing it. Then, soon after, came another statement that said the party stands by its earlier statement.

In a fitting quid pro quo, the American ambassador did not attend a diplomatic briefing held by the Nepali government. The message was clear: if you don’t value our friendship by undiplo­matically rejecting our Indo-Pa­cific proposal, and then go on to denounce us for what we do in our backyard, then we too will make our displeasure obvious—of course, diplomatically.

All these episodes show we are not getting better and have nothing to be hopeful about. Expect more unpleasant surprises on both domestic and diplomatic fronts and stop reading the news to save yourself from depression.

3 In the executive

 APEX Series

WOMEN IN POLITICS

1 In political parties

2 In the legislature

3 In the executive

4 In key appointments

5 Overall picture

The male bias in cabinets

 Despite the consti­tutional provision of 33 percent women’s representation intro­duced after 2007, there has not been much improvement in female representation in the cabinet. An examination of all the cabinets formed after 2007 shows that women’s representation remains frustratingly low. After the promul­gation of the interim constitution in 2007, 10 cabinets have been formed but none has 33 percent representa­tion of women.

Even after the promulgation of the constitution in 2015, the num­ber of women in the cabinet has not increased significantly. Women’s representation in key decision-mak­ing bodies remains disappointing. Women have generally been rel­egated to the posts of deputies in local bodies and state ministers in provincial governments.

 In the federal cabinet led by the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Chairman KP Sharma Oli, there are 22 ministers and three state ministers. Only three of the 22 ministers are women—Tham Maya Thapa (Minister for Women, Chil­dren and Senior Citizen), Bina Magar (Minister for Water) and Padma Kumari Aryal (Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Pov­erty). Of the three state ministers, one is woman—Ram Kumari Chaud­hary (State Minister for Agriculture and Livestock). This is a clear violation of the con­stitutional provision that requires 33 percent women’s representation in all state organs. Among the 22 ministers, Thapa, Magar and Aryal hold 14th, 21st and 22nd positions respectively in the cabinet. In prin­ciple, the council of ministers consti­tutes ministers, state ministers and deputy ministers, but the state and deputy ministers are barred from participating in cabinet meetings.

A few days ago, Minister Thapa publicly demanded 33 percent women’s representation in the cabi­net. Ruling party leaders didn’t pay any heed.

Constitutional and legal provi­sions stipulate that all three levels of government should appoint 33 percent women, but political parties tend to ignore these provisions in areas where the Election Commis­sion (EC) cannot impose its decision. For example, the EC cannot dictate how the cabinet is formed.

In provincial governments too, women’s representation is disap­pointing. Of the seven provincial governments, Provinces 1 and 3 have no women, which shows sheer negligence on the part of the political parties. In Province 2, there are two women who are state ministers, namely Dimpal Jha and Usha Yadav.

In Province 4, Nara Devi Pun is Minister for Social Development; in Province 5, Aarati Poudel is Minis­ter for Land Management, Agricul­ture and Cooperative; in Province 6, Bimala KC is Minister for Land Management, Agriculture and Coop­erative; and in Province 7, Binita Chaudhary is Minister for Land Reform, Agriculture and Coopera­tive and Maya Bhatta is Minister for Industry, Tourism, and Forest and Environment. That is it.

In local government

The local election held in 2017 after a two-decade hiatus proved his­toric in terms of ensuring 33 percent women representation. Currently, there are 753 local level units—six metropolis, 11 sub-metropolis, 276 municipalities and 460 rural munic­ipalities. The local polls elected a total of 35,041 representatives, of whom around 14,000 were women. This means, for the first time in Nepal’s political history, there is 40 percent women’s representation in local governments.

The number of women at the local level increased significantly due to the legal provision imposed by the EC, which provided that 40 percent of all nominee seats be reserved for women candidates. This included the requirement that between the mayor and the deputy mayor, and between the chair and the deputy chair of rural municipalities, polit­ical parties has to field at least one woman candidate.

The parties mostly picked a male candidate for the mayor’s post and a female candidate for the deputy mayor’s. That is why an overwhelm­ing number of deputies in the local bodies are female and chiefs are male. At the ward level, the Local Level Electoral Act 2017 has reserved two seats in each of the nearly 7,000 ward committees for women, one of which has to be for a Dalit woman.

History of women in cabinet

Political awareness in the coun­try grew after the overthrow of the Rana regime and the establishment of multi-party democracy in 1951. A cursory analysis of the national cab­inets formed after 1951 shows that women’s representation is depress­ingly low; there were no women in several of these cabinets.

The 10-member cabinet formed after the establishment of democ­racy in 1951 and led by Mohan Shum­sher Rana had no woman. In fact, no Cabinet between 1951 and 1959 had any women. The 20-member cabinet formed on May 27, 1959 and led by the late Nepali Congress leader Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala had one woman member, Dwarika Devi Thakurani, making her the country’s first female minister. That cabinet was soon dissolved by King Mahendra, who then imposed a par­tyless Panchayat regime that lasted three decades.

The first cabinet led by King Mahendra himself had no woman. In fact, it wasn’t until 1972 that Nepal got another female minis­ter. The cabinet led by Kirti Nidhi Bista in 1972 had one women min­ister—Kamal Shah—who served as the state minister for health. All cabinets formed between 1972 and 1990, including the interim gov­ernment led by the late NC leader Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, had only one woman minister—save for the 1988 cabinet that had two women.

1990 to 2007

The first elected government led by the late NC leader Girija Prasad Koirala after the promulgation of a new constitution in 1990 had one woman minister, a number that remained unchanged when the cab­inet was later reshuffled. The cabi­nets formed between 1991 and 1995 saw no representation of women. The cabinet formed under the NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba in September 1995 had no woman, but when it was reshuffled later in the same year, one female minister was appointed.

In all cabinets formed after 1995, the representation of women was negligible; there was either none or one female cabinet member, with one exception in 1996, which saw three female ministers. All the cabinets from 2001 to 2006 had very low representation of women. In this period, the number of female ministers ranged from one to three.

The first cabinet formed after Janaandolan-2 led by the then NC President Girija Prasad Koirala in April 2006 had no female repre­sentation. When the cabinet was reshuffled the following month, two women ministers were inducted.

No improvement after 2007

Despite the constitutional pro­vision of 33 percent women’s rep­resentation introduced after 2007, there has not been much improve­ment in female representation in the cabinet. An examination of all the cabinets formed after 2007 shows that women’s representation remains frustratingly low. After the promulgation of the interim con­stitution in 2007, 10 cabinets have been formed but none has 33 per­cent representation of women.

The first cabinet led by the then NC President Girija Prasad Koirala after 2007 had only two women ministers.

After the first Constituent Assembly (CA) election in April 2008, the then Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal formed an eight-member cabinet, which was expanded to 20 members after a few weeks. The number of women ministers in that cabinet was four, a significant improvement from previ­ous cabinets.

On May 25, 2009, the then CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal replaced Dahal and formed a two-member cabinet, which was later expanded to nine members, including two women ministers. The cabinet was again expanded to 18, but there was no increase in the representation of women. On February 7, 2011, the then UML leader Jhala Nath Khanal replaced Madhav Kumar Nepal and initially formed a three-member cabinet with no female representation. That cabinet was later reshuffled and expanded to 27 ministers, including eight women. Khanal was succeeded by the then Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, whose 36-member Cabi­net included 10 women ministers—a huge improvement.

That cabinet was expanded to 38 members and the number of women ministers reached 11. After the dissolution of the CA, the then Chief Justice Khila Raj Reg­mi-led government, formed in 2013, had 10 ministers, only one of whom was female.

After the second CA election in November 2013, the then NC Pres­ident Sushil Koirala became prime minister, whose 19-member cabinet had only three women ministers.

Even after the promulgation of the constitution in 2015, which ensured 33 percent women’s representa­tion in all state organs, the number of women in the cabinet has not increased significantly. The gov­ernment formed under the then CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli in October 2015 had only two women ministers. When the then Maoist Chairman Dahal replaced Oli, the number of female cabinet members dropped to one. The NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba, who succeeded Dahal in 2017, reshuffled his cabinet six times. In his 56-mem­ber ‘jumbo’ cabinet, there were very few women.

Despite some improvement, women’s representation in key decision-making bodies remains low. Women have generally been relegated to the posts of deputies in local bodies and state ministers in provincial governments. This shows that political parties are not serious about meaningful female partic­ipation. They should go beyond tokenism and appoint women to key positions in their party as well as in the government.

On Jan 25, co-chairman of the ruling Nepal Communist Party Pushpa Kamal Dahal seemed to have gotten nostalgic for his revolutionary past and decided to call out the ‘imperi­alist’ forces for their designs on Venezuela. A statement signed by Dahal under his revolutionary nom de guerre denounced the US and its allies for ‘intervening in the internal affairs of the Bolivar­ian republic.’Dahal’s statement reportedly caught key officials off guard. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who was returning from Davos after making an investment pitch, had to feign ignorance, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) officials were left scrambling for an answer after the US Embassy sought a response on whether Dahal’s statement was Nepal’s official position.

Stuck in a time warp

This comes only weeks after high-level dialogue between Nepal and the US in DC, the first in nearly two decades. The dialogue was expected to provide impe­tus, at least from Nepal’s side, to its effort to secure more funding from the US for its development needs. Instead, Nepal felt unilat­erally sucked into the American Indo-Pacific strategy. In recent years, the US has increased its funding for Nepal under the Mil­lennium Corporation Challenge, and the kind of reciprocity the US expects from this government has put Nepal in a bind. Nepal cannot go against China, nor can it entirely oppose the US moves. Perhaps that was the reason for Nepal’s hot and cold approach to the BIMSTEC military exercis­es. While Kathmandu eventually pulled out of it, it laid bare the big leverage the US has over different actors in Nepal.

After years of prioritizing rela­tions with India and China, par­ticularly between 2006 and 2016, Nepal has finally begun to see that the world is bigger than just the neighborhood. But given the reactive, rather than proactive, nature of our engagement, this newfound wisdom has not neces­sarily translated into benefits for Nepal. This is largely due to the absence of clarity, capacity and cohesion within Nepal’s strategic community. The foreign minis­try officials, with all due respect, seem stuck in a time warp. There has been no investment in the training of the MoFA cadres in line with the rapidly changing diplomatic landscape. As a result, career diplomats at the MoFA have been unable and unwilling to temper the instincts of succes­sive foreign ministers. Nor have they been able to coordinate and control whimsical prouncements by political leaders on sensitive geopolitical topics.

It is a clear sign of this dys­function that the MoFA wasn’t involved in clearing Dahal’s state­ment on such a sensitive issue. There is no doubt a protocol in place for such matters, but not the required competence and willingness to enforce it.

Repeat inevitable

More worrisome is that the lob­bying by Venezuelan diplomats, as reported in The Kathmandu Post, seems to have gone unno­ticed by the foreign ministry offi­cials. This also, perhaps, speaks volumes about how uninformed our officials are about contempo­rary issues. When big powers are on opposite sides of an equation, it is only logical to assume that both would try to rope in other states for support and small states like Nepal are particularly vulner­able. A robust MoFA desk on Latin America would have maintained a risk log and would have proactive­ly held briefings for key political leaders on the dangers of taking sides in the evolving crisis in Ven­ezuela. Given that Nepal has no shortage of left-leaning parties, a repeat of this kind of faux pas is inevitable.

We can ill afford this level of dysfunction at our diplomatic nerve center as winds of a sec­ond cold war blow. As the recent incident involving Huawei shows, the US-China rivalry can quick­ly take an ugly turn—forcingcountries such as Canada to pay a disproportionate price of this conflict between the giants. While Canada as a G-7 country has the ability to endure such a crisis, poor countries like Nepal will not be so lucky if they do not pay attention.

This is not the first time this dysfunction has left the Nepal gov­ernment scrambling to form an official position on a geopolitical issue—and given the lack of inter­nal coherence and under-invest­ment in the MoFA, it is unlikely to be the last.

2 In the legislature

 APEX Series

WOMEN IN POLITICS

1 In political parties

2 In the legislature

3 In the executive

4 In key appointments

5 Overall picture

With 33 percent women rep­resentatives in both the federal parliament and provincial assemblies, Nepal out­ranks other Asian countries when it comes to female representation in parliament. A close study of par­liaments formed after Nepal’s first parliamentary elections in 1959 clearly shows that women’s rep­resentation is increasing, thanks to some strict constitutional and legal provisions. There has been improvement on this front despite the political leadership’s reluctance to provide due space to female lawmakers. This week, we explore the represen­tation of women in our legislative branch, in what is the second part of the five-part APEX “Women in politics” series.

In 1959, Nepal elected its first bicameral parliament through a general election. Of the 109 mem­bers elected, only one was female. Dwarika Devi Thakurani was in fact Nepal’s first Member of Parliament. She later became a member of the BP Koirala-led cabinet in 1959, in what was Nepal’s first democrati­cally elected government.

After King Mahendra dissolved Nepal’s first parliament as well as the Koirala government and imposed a party-less regime in 1960, there was no democratically elected parliament during the three-decade-long Panchayat era. Instead there was the Ras­triya Panchayat, a mixed bag of people appointed directly by the King and zonal representatives favored by the regime. The first Ras­triya Panchayat formed in 1963 had three women. During the entire Panchayat regime, women’s repre­sentation was nominal.

After the restoration of democracy in 1990, women’s representation increased slightly, but was still very low. In the first parliament elected in 1991, there were six women MPs. The number reached seven in 1994 and 12 in 1999.

 "Naturally, it would be easier for female lawmakers to highlight women’s issues, but they are yet to play the role expected of them. They are learning though" Sashi Kala Dahal, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly

The bare minimum

The historic changes of 2006 and the subsequent interim constitution of 2007 fixed the minimum number of women in the national parlia­ment, compelling political parties to abide by it. In many cases, the parties tried to flout the constitu­tional requirement. But now the provision of 33 percent women’s representation in the parliament is firmly established.

Still, the parties have only fulfilled the minimum constitutional require­ment and have not taken proactive measures to increase the number of women MPs.

In the first Constituent Assembly (CA) in 2008, the number of women elected under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system was 30, which represented just 12.5 percent of the total parliamentarians elected under the system. As many as 26 of these women lawmakers were affiliated to the then Maoist party. The constitutionally-mandated 33 percent women’s representation was fulfilled in the first CA through proportionate representation.

The percentage of women par­liamentarians who won under the FPTP system came down to 4.17 in the second CA elections in 2013, which elected only 10 female candi­dates. Women’s total representation also fell to 30 percent, which was an open violation of the interim constitution. Despite pressure from the Election Commission, parties were reluctant to ensure 33 percent representation of women.

The number of women who win under the FPTP system is still very low. It is primarily because the party leadership thinks women candidates cannot win direct elections. But there is another side to the story; top women leaders of major parties prefer to be MPs under the Propor­tional Representation (PR) category, with almost guaranteed election, whereas contesting an election is always a risky bet. (Perhaps they are well aware of their slim chance of winning in what is still largely a patriarchal society.)

Not in leadership

In the current House of Represen­tative (HoR), of the 165 lawmakers elected under the FPTP category, only six are women. The politi­cal parties met the constitutional requirement by selecting more women in the PR category.

Of the 275 HoR members, 90 are women (32.7 percent). And of the 59 National Assembly (NA) members, 22 are women (37.3 percent). How­ever, women are not in leadership positions. Both the speakers are male whereas the deputy speak­ers are female. (Shashikala Dahal is the deputy speaker of the NA and Shiva Maya Tumbahambe is the deputy speaker of the HoR.) In the provincial assemblies, all deputy speakers are women. This clearly shows women’s secondary role and position—from the center, down to the grassroots.

However, in a recent noteworthy achievement, in the second Constit­uent Assembly (CA), Onsari Gharti was elected the first female Speaker in Nepal’s parliamentary history. Gharti was a leader of the then CPN (Maoist Center). The second CA was transformed into a parliament after the constitution’s promulgation in September 2015.

There is also the provision of 33 percent women’s representation in the parliamentary committees, which are considered mini-par­liaments. Of the 12 parliamentary committees under the HoR, women lawmakers lead four. Of the four committees under the NA, women lawmakers lead two.

Article 84(8) of the constitution clearly states: “Notwithstanding anything contained elsewhere in this Part, at least one third of the total number of members elected from each political party repre­senting in the Federal Parliament must be women. If women are not so elected as to constitute one third of the elected members of any political party… such political party must, in electing members… so elect that women members constitute at least one third of the total number of members elected to the Federal Parliament from the party.”

Provisional figures

Women’s representation in the provincial assemblies is satisfac­tory, but not particularly encour­aging in that the parties have just met the constitutional provision of 33 percent women’s represen­tation but not gone beyond that. In the 93-member Provincial Assembly (PA) in Province 1, there are 31 women.

In the 107-member PA in Province 2, there are 35 women. In Prov­ince 3, there are 36 women in the 110-member PA. The 60-member PA in Province 4 has 20 women. The number of women in the 87-member PA in Province 5 is 29. There are 13 women in the 40-member PA in Province 6 and 17 women in the 53-member PA in Province 7.

A report of the global Inter-Par­liamentary Union (IPU) says: “With 33.5 percent women parliamen­tarians in the two houses of the Federal Parliament, Nepal is well above the global average of 23.8 percent women parliamentarians.” The average for Asian countries is 19.8 percent. The report says Nepal is ranked 37th out of 193 countries, followed, among South Asian coun­tries, by Afghanistan (55), Pakistan (93), Bangladesh (95), India (147), Bhutan (170), Maldives (178) and Sri Lanka (180).

Globally the number of women in parliaments seems to have stagnated at around 23 percent and women’s progress in politics has been painfully slow. Accord­ing to the Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, it will take 50 years to achieve 50-50 parity at this rate.

Nepali women lawmakers say their representation in the parlia­ment has contributed to highlight the myriad issues women face. “Nat­urally, it would be easier for female lawmakers to highlight women’s issues, but they are yet to play an effective role expected of them. They are learning though,” says Sashi Kala Dahal, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. She says women are heading some parlia­mentary committees effectively. “The role of women lawmakers will be more effective as they gain expe­rience in parliamentary practice,” she says.

But Dahal wasn’t happy that deputy speakers of pro­vincial assemblies are ranked below an undersecretary in the new precedence order in Provincial Assembly, and thinks that it needs to be corrected.

With women’s increasing num­bers, and hopefully more mean­ingful participation, in the national and provincial legislatures, we can expect them to formulate laws that address the problems faced by women, who constitute 51 percent of Nepal’s population. Other laws will also be more balanced.