Editorial: Magnanimity and restraint

At a time when the winter session of Nepal’s Federal Parliament is about to commence following protracted delays resulting from factors best known to the government amid the opposition parties’ plans to hit the streets against some ordinances, it will be worthwhile to start with relevant quotes from some famous personalities.

Walter Bagehot, an English journalist and essayist, goes: A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

Jean-Louis de Lolme, a Genevan and British political theorist and writer, fires, with the British parliament in his crosshairs: Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man and a man a woman.

Arun Jaitley, an Indian politician and lawyer, argues: Parliament's job is to conduct discussions. But many a time, Parliament is used to ignoring issues, and in such situations, obstruction of Parliament is in the favour of democracy. Therefore, parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic.

These nuggets of wisdom may not be music to the ears of the government and at least a section of the Parliament. But even a super-powerful government and a sovereign parliament should not stop critics from being critical and skeptics from being skeptical.

Looking back, our decades-long tryst with parliamentary democracy has chapters that are far from glorious. These chapters feature unethical means employed to pass laws with a brute majority mustered through unethical means like horse-trading and floor crossing, with long-term consequences for the country and the people.

In those instances, lawmakers from various political parties have done the bidding of a whip-cracking executive without bothering to protect the interests of the very sovereign people they claim to be serving. More often than not, ruling parties have chosen to bulldoze opaquely drafted laws through the parliament instead of bothering to listen to the opposition. Throughout the years, the main agenda of the opposition bench seems to be to topple the government.

The winter session has given the constituents of the parliament yet another opportunity to mend ways. Magnanimity won’t  hurt the government, restraint won’t hurt the opposition.

For the apex leadership of our country, here’s part of a quote from APJ Abdul Kalam, an  aerospace scientist who went on to become the president of India: When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realized that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision.