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The May 17 merger between the CPN-UML and the CPN (Mao­ist Center) is undoubtedly a momentous occasion in Nepali polit­ical history. The communist behe­moth that is the combined Nepal Communist Party now commands a near two-thirds majority in the federal parliament, and heads six of the seven provincial governments. Never before has a political party of any stripe so completely dominated national polity. Nor in the democrat­ic history of Nepal has there been a prime minister as strong as KP Sharma Oli. The left unity, which had been in the works for the past six months, has generated a lot of hope. Barring a political earthquake, the left gov­ernment will serve out its five-year term, which is again something that has never happened before. Econ­omists have repeatedly blamed the political instability of the post-1990 political set-up as a major hurdle to the country’s development and to the economic empowerment of its people. The hope now is that prosperity will follow a stable polity.

Yet there are grave fears over the left unity. The biggest of them is that the ruling party, in its seemingly single-minded focus on develop­ment and prosperity, could curtail democratic freedoms and intimi­date opposing voices, perhaps to build a ‘communist utopia’ in due course. Presently, the only other country to have an elected commu­nist government, Cambodia, is only nominally democratic. Its prime minister, Hun Sen, has continuously been in office for 33 years, making him the longest-serving prime min­ister in world history.

Single-party corporatism

Asked why the two big commu­nist parties in Nepal came together, political commentator Krishna Kha­nal bluntly replies, “To maintain a stranglehold on power”. Were that not the case, he asks, “why is the Nepal Communist Party trying to enlist other smaller parties in the government, when it already has a comfortable majority?”

Khanal likens the left merger to trying to establish a “single-party corporatism”. He finds it troubling that the media, which is itself corpo­ratized, is blindly supporting the left unity, when what it should be doing is critically questioning the rationale for the merger.

Nilamber Acharya, another polit­ical analyst, is more sanguine. “The unity will end the unhealthy competition among the political parties to get into govern­ment. Now the only way for the opposition parties to get back to power is by going to the people for a fresh mandate, which is how it should be in a democracy,” he says.

But doesn’t he fear the risks asso­ciated with an all-powerful ruling party and an emasculated oppo­sition? “Look, the opposition, by definition, is in a minority. Its strength depends not on the num­ber of its MPs but on the kinds of issues it raises. The onus is now on the opposition parties to regain public faith by raising pro-people issues,” Acharya says.

Senior Nepali Congress leader Ram Saran Mahat, for his part, fore­sees risks as well as benefits of the left unity. “One hopes that with a strong government, there will now be policy continuity and timely deci­sion-making, both of which were missing during the terms of pre­vious, unstable coalition govern­ments,” Mahat says.

Many plans, zero programs

Yet Mahat also sees some alarming signs. “On the economic front, this government is distribution-orient­ed rather than focused on increas­ing our capital base. Such distri­bution-oriented programs could ultimately bankrupt the country.”

Mahat is also uncomfortable with the centralization of powers in the PMO. “The prime minister should be providing overall vision and leadership, not busy himself with every little operational detail. I suspect the current government has authoritar­ian tendencies.”

Economist Biswo Poudel espies lack of clarity on the priorities of the new party and the government. “The government, for instance, says it will offer loans to industries and hydro projects at subsidized rates. But to get those loans the industries will have to pay hefty bribes, which negates the benefits of the subsi­dized loans.”

And what did Poudel make of the government’s Policies and Pro­grams announced in the run-up to this year’s national budget. “Frank­ly, its garbage. It’s all policies, but no programs. It talks of big dreams but offers little in terms of how to realize them.”

But won’t political stability in itself contribute to the country’s prosperity? “Not necessarily,” Pou­del argues. “If political stability were enough, the 30 years of Panchayat rule would have transformed the country,” he says.

Krishna Khanal also points to the potential for abuse of ‘democratic centrism’, one of the guiding prin­ciples of the new party. “In this system, once the party leadership makes a decision, it is binding upon all party members. Lenin used this princi­ple to sideline Trotsky. In other words, democratic cen­tralism can be used to sideline alternative voices in the party.”

Khanal believes the left unity gov­ernment has achieved precious little in its nearly 100 days in office, and thus has already failed to honor its mandate. Nilamber Acharya dis­agrees. “The biggest achievement of the first 100 days is the left unity itself—for it will have far-reaching impacts on the country. Now that the unification is done and dusted, the government can focus on other important things,” he says.

Biased against Madhes

Ram Saran Mahat also questions the new party’s adoption of demo­cratic centralism. He reckons dem­ocratic centralism is directly against the spirit of the new egalitarian constitution. But while he criticiz­es the government, the Congress leader also vows to play the role of a responsible and effective oppo­sition, “much like we did during the nine months of the Manmohan Adhikari government in 1995, when Nepali Congress helped rein in its populist programs.”

Veteran Madhesi journalist Rajesh Ahiraj questions if the ruling com­munist party can give society a pos­itive direction. “The authoritarian tendencies it has displayed in its short existence could ultimately fuel secessionism in parts of Nepal,” he cautions. Why, for instance, was the chief minister of Province 2 prevent­ed from visiting the US, he asks?

Ahiraj says the new party’s lead­ership is not inclusive; there is not a single Madhesi in its nine-member top brass, “which will only add to the old fear among the Madhesi people that KP Oli and company are somehow anti-Madhes.”

From all these observations it becomes clear that the biggest chal­lenge for the Nepal Communist Par­ty will be to prove that it is commit­ted to democratic values and that it will embrace all Nepalis, irrespec­tive of their color or place of origin.

As Nilamber Acharya says, ulti­mately, the left government will be judged on the basis of its action. “Frankly, I don’t see a danger of authoritarianism lurking in this part of the world. What I fear more is that our rulers have not learned anything from their past mistakes.”

Nepal has made zero progress in exploring petroleum in the past three years. The task of exploring and extracting petro­leum products was given to a Chinese govern­ment-owned company in the wake of the acute shortage caused by the five-month-long block­ade imposed by India in 2015-16. KP Sharma Oli, the current and the then prime minister, had even signed an agreement with the Chinese government to that effect in early 2016. Immediately following the agreement, Nepali officials and technical experts from the Chinese company had conducted a field study of some half-dozen districts with petroleum potential. But even two years after the preliminary study, the exploration works remain stuck—largely due to official indifference.

It’s as if the government, which expressed strong interest in petroleum survey during the blockade, forgot about it once the shortage eased. This despite the fact that the China has pledged aid worth Rs 2.5 billion, as well as tech­nical assistance, for petroleum exploration.

What’re the chances?

Sudhir Rajaure, chief of the petroleum exploration promotion project at the Department of Mines and Geology, claims that the preliminary study was not particularly fruitful. “We had submitted detailed data on potential petroleum sites to the Chinese team. Based on our data, they had carried out field research. But the project could not move ahead as the Chinese team gave us no further infor­mation. We repeatedly wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make inquiries with the Chinese company, but we didn’t hear from them,” says Rajaure.

He informed that there are 10 potential regions in Nepal—mostly in the Madhes, inner Madhes and the Chure range—for petroleum extraction. Similar regions in Assam (India) and Potwar (Pakistan) have been producing petroleum for a long time.

“The first task is to identify the quantity and quality of petroleum at a particular site. The whole process—from preliminary study to extraction—takes at least three years. To ascer­tain the presence of petroleum in a particular site, some drilling is necessary,” says Rajaure.

In the late 1980s, the Department of Mines and Geology had drilled some 3,500m at a site in the south-eastern district of Morang. But no remnants of petroleum deposits were found. Rajaure thinks that the drilling has to go up to 4,000m deep in order to strike oil.

Extremely risky investment

But if no oil is found, it will mean a loss of billions. The work is inordinately costly as it requires sophisticated technology and high­ly-skilled technicians. So the government has reason to be hesitant about investing in petro­leum exploration. And without ‘reasonable certainty’ that Nepal has oil, renowned global oil-exploration companies won’t be attracted here, opines Rajaure.

In Kathmandu, the extraction of methane hasn’t been effective either. It has been found that 14 sites east of Teku have methane under­neath them. A preliminary study was also con­ducted in Imadol last year.

By Pawan Timilsina | Kathmandu

After first going to India and then hosting his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, Prime Minister KP Oli is now laying the ground for his state visit to China in early June. Starting with his time as government head during the 2015-16 border blockade, Oli has consistently emphasized Nepal’s need to maintain a calibrated balance between India and China. The five months of the crippling blockade had cruelly brought home to Nepalis the dangers of overreliance on any one of its two big neighbors. Oli, both during his first term as prime minister and later in the opposition, continued to strongly pitch for ‘equidistant’ relations. Thus it is not surprising that having done his bit to mend his frayed ties with India, which were badly damaged during the blockade, PM Oli, in his second inning as prime minister, is now focused on enhancing relations with China. Oli has made no secret of his ambition to make Nepal a ‘vibrant economic bridge’ between the two economic powerhouses next-door. To this end, during his upcoming China trip, he will focus on operationalizing the landmark Trade and Transit treaty that he had signed during his 2016 China trip as prime minister.

“My understanding is that China wants Prime Minister Oli to come with clear plans of the projects Nepal wants to develop under the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI],” says Gopal Khanal, PM Oli’s former foreign policy advisor. “So far Nepal has failed to offer a credible and specific plan on how it is to benefit from the BRI.”

Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali, while speaking to media-persons in Beijing recently, seemed to suggest that Nepal was keen on having China develop some big-ticket infrastructure projects in Nepal under its BRI initiative. “Nepal has expectation that the initiative should contribute to the development of physical infrastructures, enhancing cross-border connectivity including railways and roads, pro­motion of trade, tourism and investment, and people-to-peo­ple relations,” he had said.

In other words, Nepal wants China to foot the bill, in toto, for connectivity projects. For instance, in addition to China bearing the expenses of the railway line up to Rasuwagadhi on the border, Nepal wants its northern neighbor to also pay for the rail link from Rasuwagadhi to Kathmandu (and beyond). Nepal could likewise lobby for the enlistment of the Damak Industrial Corridor project and cross-border electric­ity transmission lines under the BRI initiative.

During bilateral talks, the Chinese, for their part, may seek a formal extradition treaty, like the kind Nepal has with India, says someone privy to Oli’s upcoming China trip.

But by and large it will be a case of PM Oli putting forth a laundry list of expectations before the Chinese leadership.

Simrik Air helicopters on May 16 completed their search and rescue mission for the Bulgarian national Boyan Petrov, who had gone missing in an area of the Tibetan Autonomous Region in China since April 29.

Petrov is a veteran climber who has summited all 10 peaks over 8,000m. As the operation could be undertaken only by Nepali helicop­ters, with Chinese permits, Simrik had deployed its helicopters on an immediate basis on a special request of the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in New Delhi.

After the first unsuccessful mis­sion on May 11-12 to spot Petrov, involving two helicopters, on May 16 one of Simrik Air's helicopters flew over the concerned regions for the second time, again to no avail. The search flight over Shishapangma, the Tibetan mountain Petrov was climb­ing, lasted for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Further, Sherpas reached 10 meters closer to the summit. They found some of Petrov’s belongings, such as insulin, medical kit with some energy gels and his t-shirt at camp 3, but there was no sign of the climber. APEX BUREAU