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Any lingering doubts over the sustainability of the left alli­ance, and with it the longevity of the new left government, have been removed with the new sev­en-point agreement between CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and his CPN (Maoist Center) counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Or have they? The February 19 agreement com­mits to the formal unification of the two parties, with all outstanding ideological issues to be settled in the next general convention, whenever it is held.

Political analyst Bishnu Sapkota does not buy the argument that the two parties have now united. “There is no ideological coherence between them, and without it, there can be no true unity,” he says. “In my view this is a purely power-sharing agree­ment, nothing more.”

Sapkota says he would have been more convinced had the unification happened “bottom-up rather than top-down”. Otherwise, he ques­tions, “How is it possible that Oli and Dahal could settle everything between them without consulting party colleagues?”

Sapkota also thinks that Dahal and the Mao­ists, by agreeing to abide by the principle of multi­party democracy, as stipulated in the seven-point deal, have in a roundabout way accepted UML’s official line of “people’s multiparty democracy”. Otherwise, “there is no place for multiparty democracy in Maoism”.

Ideology aside, party unification was endorsed after Oli had already become prime minister. What, then, was the signif­icance of the new deal?

“With this agreement, the two main communist forces of the country have formally accepted that there is no alternative to mul­tiparty democracy,” says Nilamber Acharya, former chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the first Constituent Assembly elected in 2008. “This means they fully accept the new constitution, which is most definitely not a communist document.”

In Acharya’s view, consolidation of the two communist forces could pave the way for a “strong two-par­ty system” that in the long run will strengthen democracy. But Acharya too has misgivings.

“How can we be assured that so many ambitious political personas can remain under the same roof for any length of time, particularly when there is no shortage of forces that want the left unity to unravel?” he asks.

Political commentator CK Lal also suspects the longevity of this “unnatural” unity. “It represents the consolidation of the traditional power structure. The ‘Permanent Establishment of Nepal’ now has a potent political front,” he says. “It was the pressure from PEON that brought them together. But in time the differences among PEON will be more and more pronounced, which in turn could imperil the left unity.”

When the two communist parties had announced an electoral alliance on the eve of the provincial and federal elections, China, it was suspected in some quarters, had encouraged, if not abetted, the left bonhomie.

In Lal’s reading, the February 19 agreement is in part a result of “Chi­na breathing down the neck of Oli and Dahal”. Lal predicts that with the left united and Oli-led govern­ment firmly in place the “anti-India and anti-West lobby will be strength­ened while the pro-China lobby will get a boost”.

Irrespective of the degree of Chi­nese involvement, another pub­lic intellectual, Hari Sharma, also doubts the two communist parties have ‘unified’ rather than ‘merged’. “A merger takes place between two unequal forces, when one is clearly dominant,” Sharma says. “A uni­fication, on the other hand, hap­pens between two equal forces”. In this reading, too, the Maoists have agreed to be subsumed under the UML fold.

Sharma also sees some troubling signs for the new government. “If Oli was the prime minister of the left alliance, why wasn’t a single Mao­ist leader present at his swear­ing-in? In coalition politics, such absence is highly symbolic.”

Nonetheless, if the two parties are serious about future unification, it is a positive development for a country like Nepal, Sharma adds. “Social science literature suggests that a fragmented polity leads to radicalization of society. Strong, consolidated political parties miti­gate against such a danger”.

But strong parties have strong ideological bases. Does the new out­fit have such a robust base? “This is something that worries me. Accord­ing to the seven-point agreement, the new party will have Marxism-Le­ninism as its guiding principle. If so, we have to assume they adhere to the principle of democratic cen­tralism, the bedrock of Leninist philosophy,” Sharma says.

In its essence, democratic cen­tralism believes in a strong central political leadership whose deci­sions are binding on those lower down the party chain. Democratic centralism, for instance, is a constitu­tionally-man­dated governing policy of China. “Do the leaders of the new party have Chinese leadership in mind, then?” Sharma asks.

Such ideological and leadership questions have always bedeviled the communist movement in Nepal that started with the birth of the Com­munist Party of Nepal in Calcutta in 1949. Formed with the intent of overthrowing the Rana autocracy in Nepal, the movement became mired in controversy right from its incep­tion. When power was transferred from the Ranas to the monarchs, a faction of the communist party decided to coopt the monarchy, while the other faction pursued a strident republican line, leading to the first formal split in 1962.

This started the seemingly endless process of periodic breakdown and consolidation of Nepali communist forces. Given this checkered history, the doubts now being raised about the long-term viability of the new communist outfit, which is now in control of virtually the entire state apparatus, are perhaps valid. Even the two communist parties in the ongoing unification process have seen many mergers and splits.

If history is any guide, we may not have to wait for long to find out whether the February 19 agree­ment is a purely power-sharing deal. Or if Messrs Oli and Dahal (and their party rank and file) are committed to an ideologically strong left force and a vibrant two-party democracy.

There is no denying the wish of the majority of Nepalis though. They heartily endorsed the common ‘prosperity and sta­bility’ platform of the left alliance. 

Having secured the unification of the CPN-UML and the CPN (Maoist Center), the largest and the third largest parties in the federal parliament respectively, UML Chairman KP Oli has formally invited Upendra Yadav’s Sang­hiya Samajbadi Forum Nepal (SSFN) to join his government. Oli has hinted that he is open to the idea of amending the constitution to address the demands of the Madhesi parties.

The prime minister right now has the support of 174 lawmakers in the 275-member lower house of the federal parliament. Oli believes that if he can get the support of the two main Madhesi parties—Mahanta Thakur’s Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN) with its 17 seats and Yadav’s SSFN (16 seats)—then the leftist ruling coalition will have a solid mandate to govern for the next five years.

But the two main Madhesi forces have so far been non-com­mittal. When The Express wanted to know about the progress in his deliberations with the ruling parties, SSFN chairman Yadav was dismissive: “Oli’s government is all talk. So far it has made no substantial proposal that will convince us to join the government.”

Asked what the bottom-line of the Madhesi parties is, Yadav retorts that the bottom-line “has not changed in a long time.” He was primarily hinting at the old demand of the Madhesi parties that there be two Madhes-only provinces in the entire Tarai belt and that there be more representation from Mad­hes in the national legislature.

The Madhesi parties believe that voters in Province 2 trusted them so that they could make a strong pitch for con­stitution amendment. As such, it will be difficult for them to abandon the amendment issue. But it will be as difficult for the UML chairman to change provincial boundaries, as he reckons that his party won the elections by constantly ques­tioning the rationale for the kind of constitution amendments the Madhesi parties want.

Yet a kind of meeting-point seems to be on the horizon. RJPN leaders in particular say the UML and Oli have, after the elections, “softened on Madhesi issues,” as senior RJPN leader Sarvendra Nath Shukla put it. “So although we may not immediately join the government, we can still consider supporting it from the outside.”

An RJPN leader even hinted that his party could be flexible on the provincial boundary issue, thus far the biggest sticking point between the UML and the Madhesi parties.

Shukla for his part believes the UML has realized that it cannot ignore Province 2, “which among the seven provinces sends the most MPs to the national parliament.” Considering the softening of the UML’s stand, says Shukla, “Madhesi par­ties should also be ready to find common ground.”

Kathmandu: A meeting of the out­going Council of Minister on Feb­ruary 15 concluded that the cabinet formed under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had fulfilled its goals. The cabinet meeting held at the official residence of the prime minister at Baluwatar thanked all those who had supported the government, said outgoing Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation, Mahendra Yadav. The meeting also concluded that the government had been successful in its main task of holding local, central and provincial-level elections. RSS

Former Nepali Ambassa­dor to China Tanka Kar­ki espies a ‘troubling pattern’ in South Asia. “The common thread that binds the cur­rent events in the Maldives and block­ade-time Nepal is that both were man­ifestations of India’s nervousness at China’s rise in this sub-region,” he says.Karki is referring to the ongo­ing political crisis in the Maldives that was set in motion when the Supreme Court there decided to annul charges against nine oppo­sition figures, including former President Mohamed Nasheed, who has been living in exile in Britain since May 2016. In response, the current President Abdulla Yameen declared a state of emergency and ordered the arrest of two offending Supreme Court judges as well as of some opposition members.

As the tiny island country with a population of under 400,000 has been thrown into political turmoil, Yameen has reached out to China for political support. Meanwhile, Nasheed, who is seen as traditional­ly close to New Delhi, has gone so far as to ask India to militarily intervene to ‘save democracy’ in the Maldives.

It is true that China has stepped up its engagement in the Maldives: buying islands, building roads and sending its warships for ‘special training sessions’ with the Maldivi­an defense forces. China fears that without these ‘gestures of goodwill’ its room for maneuver in the strate­gically important Indo-Pacific seas would be fatally reduced. But India is as convinced that Chinese activ­ism in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives is part of China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy to surround it in the Indian Ocean.

Ports of call

In Pakistan, China has commit­ted over a billion dollars for the construction of the deep-sea port of Gwadar. This is part of the US $62-billion China-Pakistan Econom­ic Corridor (CPEC), a key compo­nent of President Xi Jinping’s signa­ture Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Sri Lanka, after its inability to ser­vice Chinese debt, had to recently hand over the Hambantota, another deep-sea port on the Indian Ocean, to China on a 99-year lease. In 2016, President Xi went to Bangladesh, another strong Indian ally, and com­mitted a whopping $21.5 billion for 26 different projects. Even in Bhu­tan, whose security is overseen by New Delhi, China wants to pry the tiny kingdom out of India’s clutch.

All these investments and mus­cle-flexing by China in India’s near neighborhood—in an area Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as falling under India’s ‘sphere of influence’—troubles the Indian establishment. Perhaps this is why Indian commen­tators have started openly talking about the ‘red lines’ that India’s close neighbors cannot cross with China.

“Even during the recent Nepal visit of Indian Minister of Exter­nal Affairs Sushma Swaraj, Indian commentators were warning that Nepal should not cross these red lines,” former envoy Karki says, “This red-line formulation is loaded with meaning.’’

One of the Indian commentators who had been consistently invok­ing the red lines is SD Muni, an old Nepal hand in New Delhi who is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Defense Stud­ies and Analysis (IDSA). When this correspondent asked him if there was a lesson for Nepal on what is happening in the Maldives, Muni replied: “Nepal’s only lesson from this could be: avoid crossing red lines on India’s security sensitivities in dealing with China”.

The problem, as former envoy to China Karki points out, is that India does not clearly say what these red lines are, so they can be defined as New Delhi wishes. Nepal was deemed to have crossed one such line when its political leadership pushed ahead with (what India thought of as China-backed) consti­tution without consulting India, result­ing in nearly five months of border blockade.

Indian options

For Muni, one way KP Sharma Oli, the prime-minister-in-waiting, can avoid crossing India’s red lines is by not “roughing up India” over China. “Swaraj visited Kathmandu primar­ily in response to Oli’s request to Modi for support [for his prime min­istership],” says Muni. If Oli crosses India’s red lines, he knows the left alliance remains fragile and India “always has the option of leaning towards his rivals both within and outside the alliance”

Former Foreign Secretary and Nepal’s Permanent Representa­tive to the United Nations, Madhu Raman Acharya, for his part, thinks that while there are similarities between the Indo-China rivalry in the Maldives and their geopoliti­cal battle for supremacy in Nepal, unlike in Nepal, “India does not have extensive leverage over the Maldives, partly because of the dis­tance between the two countries, and partly because of the growing Chinese footprint there.’’

But, then, does he too believe Swaraj’s recent Nepal visit was moti­vated by China? “Definitely, the Chinese have been more active in Nepal and Swaraj came to put a lid on it.’’

In Acharya’s view, Swaraj’s visit, which was undertaken without consulting Nepal, also had a sinister mes­sage: if it serves Indian interests, India will not desist from breaching established diplo­matic norms and, in fact, “going to any extent.’’

Nevertheless, as Muni hinted, India’s intervention in Nepal is not a one-way street. Pramod Jaiswal, author of several books on Nepal-China relations, likewise, believes Swaraj was sent to Nepal only when Modi got a clear signal from Oli that he wanted to mend frayed relations with India.

Waiting and watching

“Yet New Delhi remains wary of Oli,” Jaiswal adds. After all, he says, Oli is someone who until the time of the blockade was reput­ed as one of India’s most trusted friends in Nepal. But then he sud­denly “jumped ship and went into China’s camp.’’ The blockade-time prime minister came to be seen as courageously standing up to the ‘Big Brother,’ and Oli’s brand of anti-India nationalism proved to be a smash hit at the hustings.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also an old political fox. In the lead up to the 2019 Lok Shabha election, he sees an opening in Oli’s recent overtures. Going into national elections, Modi would like to project himself as someone who has the support of not just the majority of his people but also of other countries in the region. “This is why India will make every effort to woo Oli,” says Jaiswal. The problem is, China too considers Oli as one of its own.

All these are indications that this old geopolitical game in Nepal, and in South Asia at large, could get curi­ouser and curiouser .