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Uneasy calm
The announcement of a seven-member cabinet last Tuesday by Nepal?s new Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, is a good beginning for the Himalayan kingdom?s march back to democracy.
The announcement of a seven-member cabinet last Tuesday by Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, is a good beginning for the Himalayan kingdom’s march back to democracy. The tentative cabinet includes four members from Mr Koirala’s Nepali Congress party, and one each from the Communist Party of Nepal, the Nepali Congress Democratic and the United Left Front. Once the other three parties of the seven-party alliance that forced King Gyanendra to hand over power to an elected Parliament last week are also accommodated, the political process will hopefully take off in earnest.
So far it has been good going for the reinstated Parliament, which, last Sunday, unanimously passed a resolution to elect an assembly for drafting a new Constitution. But this should not lull the Koirala administration into complacency as it begins charting out a credible roadmap for Nepal’s polity. Once the roadmap is on the table, both the Parliament and the government can be dissolved and an interim government formed to write a new Constitution and oversee new elections.
This is easier said though, since many questions remain unanswered, not the least of which is the importance — or otherwise — of the monarchy, and negotiating peace with the Maoists. The Maoists have fought for more than a decade to establish a Communist republic and want the monarchy abolished. When the political parties entered into an agreement with the rebels in November 2005, they skirted the issue of pushing for a republic. They agreed with the Maoists only to overthrow the ‘autocratic monarchy’ and work for constituent assembly elections. But now the second major party in the alliance, the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist, insists on a more radical agenda, including changing the national anthem and the name of the RNA, scrapping of Raj Parishad, putting the army under the Parliament and removing the title of Supreme Commander of the army from the king. Each of these issues should be carefully considered. Gains so painfully achieved should not be frittered away.
