New Delhi: Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada was in India this week to take part in a counter-terrorism confer­ence in Gurgaon. Khatiwada was the keynote speaker at the event that was organized by the India Foundation, a think-tank close to the ruling BJP party. In the conference, Khatiwada presented Nepal’s views on counter-terrorism. The conference, according to the organizers, was held to analyze the changing contours of terrorism and evolve strate­gies to equip the international community with the ability to counter the menace of terror­ism. APEX BUREAU

When she first became the country’s president in Octo­ber 2015, Bidya Devi Bhandari was the vice-chairman of CPN-UML and the head of its women’s wing. Bhandari has risen steadily up the party hierarchy ever since she defeated Nepali Congress heavyweight, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, in a 1993 by-election. The by-election was held to fill the seat vacated by her husband, the charismatic UML general secretary Madan Bhandari, who had died in a jeep accident earlier that year. Bidya Devi Bhandari, née Pandey, had started her polit­ical career as a student leader in the 1970s, before joining what was then CPN-ML in 1980. Two years later, Bidya Devi married CPN-ML General Secretary Madan Bhandari. Used to living in the long shadow of her husband, she set about carving out her own space in the party after his abrupt death.

As her political stature grew, so did her ambitions. In 2009, she got the defense portfolio in the Madav Nepal government. Her term as defense minister is perhaps best remembered for her cozy relations with the Nepal Army high command.

Her two-year first term as president was also checkered. She had a knack of making headlines for all the wrong rea­sons: her rather lavish spending, ‘needless’ foreign trips and for causing infernal traffic jams in the already congested roads of the capital. Then, near the end of her first term, she caused a stir by holding up the Sher Bahadur Deuba govern­ment’s three nominees for the federal upper house. But when her party chief, KP Sharma Oli, who in his later capacity as prime minister named his own set of three national assembly members, she quickly approved the new nominees.

Many say Bhandari did not deserve a second term. Suppos­edly, her only qualification was that party chief Oli had taken her under his wing. This is why, as Oli now enjoys near-abso­lute powers with a three-fourth majority in the federal lower house, as well as effective control over all seven provinces, Bhandari’s next five years as the country’s ceremonial head will be closely watched. Oli could easily use her office to cement his control over all levers of government.

“Oli now has effective control over all state organs, includ­ing the presidency,” says Radheshyam Adhikari, a Nepali Congress MP in National Assembly, the federal upper house. “If you look at Bhandari’s actions during her first term, for instance her unconstitutional blocking of important ordi­nances, there are signs she cannot rise above party interests.”

But others may contend it would be wrong to judge Bhan­dari-the-president so harshly when she is just a small part of Nepal’s patronage-driven politics.

Bidya Devi Bhandari elected as Nepal president for second term

It is no news that the prime min­ister’s position is the most cov­eted political position in Nepal since the 1990s. This is true for any parliamentary democracy for that matter. Yet, ironically, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the execu­tive nerve center, has been the least desired posting for civil servants. Some former bureaucrats even describe it as a ‘dumping ground’ for the undesirables. “In our system of governance, the prime minister is the most powerful person, ultimately accountable for all the successes and failures of the government,” says Bhoj Raj Pokhrel, former Chief Election Commissioner who has also served in the capacity of Chief Secretary. “But since the 1990s, successive prime ministers have been unable to exercise their authority and were often held hos­tage by influential ministers.”

This seems to be changing with the cabinet’s endorsement of new Business Rules for the executive last month. Close on the heels of federal restructuring, the PMO is undergo­ing a major overhaul—the first of its kind in its modern history—giving it broad powers designed to place it at the center of a “command and control” structure. While the details of the restructuring are still patchy, a broad outline being discussed sug­gests an expansive list of authority vested in the PMO.

The key principles guiding these reforms revolve around the idea of giving the PMO the ability to mon­itor and supervise the governance processes, and to set up a system of rewards and punishments as and when necessary, says Bishnu Rimal, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s Chief Political Adviser. “It is designed to make the PMO a center of excellence.”

These plans for reform didn’t come about overnight though. They had been discussed during Oli’s first stint as prime minister in 2015-16. “Back then time was so short that we weren’t able to work on it,” says Rimal. “But this time we had couple of months between the elections and the formation of the new government.”

Prime Minister Oli’s previous experience in government appears to have convinced him of the need to revamp the system to clear the many governance bottlenecks. “PM Oli and the left alliance ran on the platform of political stability, pros­perity and good governance. Now that their agenda has been endorsed by the voters, they clearly under­stand that the road to prosperity passes through good governance,” says Pokhrel.

National security

There are several broad strands of reform under discussion. First among them is revamping the large­ly symbolic National Security Coun­cil (NSC) and empowering it as some other countries. The position of a National Security Adviser (NSA) is to be created—combining both security and foreign affairs roles, according to officials. To support the NSC and the NSA, the National Investigation Department (NID), which was under the Ministry of Home Affairs, has now been brought under the PMO to augment intelligence gathering on internal and external security threat, economic crimes and cor­ruption under the federal structure. Similar reform had been recom­mended by a recent study of the Nepal Institute for Policy Studies, a think-tank.

“The NSC is necessary in a federal setup and should be headed by a competent authority,” says Geja Sharma Wagle, a secu­rity expert, who was involved in the study. “Under past govern­ments, the NID had become a politi­cal recruitment center.”

Attempts to cre­ate a counter-intel­ligence unit under the PMO have been under discussion for several years but given the short stints of succes­sive governments, there has been no tangible action until now.

Governance

The second aspect of the restruc­turing is motived by the desire to maintain strict vigilance over gov­ernance processes, including cor­ruption and financial crime, while checking instances of constitutional bodies overstepping their mandates: Lok Man Singh Karki’s unruly tenure as the head of the CIAA, the consti­tutional anti-graft body, being the quintessential case in point, as UML leaders point out. The CIAA under Karki had become highly intrusive and had created a fear psychology among civil servants and politicians alike that in turn contributed to gov­ernance paralysis. This, UML lead­ers say, is the rationale for bringing the Department of Revenue Inves­tigation (DRI), the Department of Money Laundering Investigation (DMLRI) and the Social Welfare Council within the PMO’s purview.

“Controlling corruption is not the CIAA’s job, it is rather the prime minister’s job,” tweets Rabindra Adhikari, CPN-UML lawmaker and former chair of the parliament’s Development Committee. “The CIAA steps in only when the PM is unable [to control corruption].” UML leaders argue that the prime minister has to have the right infor­mation to check corruption, which is what the remodeled PMO enables. Moreover, say UML leaders, these institutions will have a lot of autono­my and power under the PMO.

While bringing these bodies under the PMO is a good step, that alone is inadequate, says former adminis­trator Pokhrel. “Effective and inde­pendent functioning of these institu­tions calls for an enabling environ­ment and strong leadership.”

Federalism concerns

Some worry that a strong PMO may also go against the idea of fed­eralism where power is shared and not concentrated. As Nepal is in its formative years of implementing a federal system, there are inherent risks of setting precedents where provinces do not assert their author­ity, partly because there is weak leadership in the provinces and a strong one at the center, and partly because six out of the seven provinc­es have government led by the ruling left alliance (all seven if Samajwadi Forum and RJPN join the govern­ment). In the case of the six chief ministers, they may be reluctant to challenge their own party’s prime minister if he seeks to weaken the provinces, the argument goes.

But others say that a strong prime minister is essential to honor the constitutional spirit of federalism. Given the clear devolution of power in the constitution where provincial and local governments are in charge of sub-national bodies, empowering provincial governments should be in line with the center’s agenda of shared prosperity, they argue.

“In principle, strengthening the PMO is a good thing. The only ques­tion is of intent,” says Wagle, the security expert. There are some who already question the government’s intent—pointing at the move to bring the Social Welfare Council under the PMO. They fear that the council could be used to deny donor fund­ing to civil society groups that are critical of the government.

The prime minister’s top polit­ical adviser argues that the Oli government is doing what all oth­er governments wanted to do but could not—and that there is no rea­son to fear a power grab. These reforms will be underpinned by recommendations of experts in the think-tank wing of the PMO, according to Rimal. “There will not only be party affiliated intel­lectuals, but also experts who offer critical viewpoints.”