Crossing floors and red lines
If democracy is said to work best at the local level, it’s probably not because of the shockwaves it can send across national politics. What passed for an innate exercise in democracy in the legislature of the far-western province of Karnali the other day may not have passed muster with the average Nepali voter. It has turned the tables in Kathmandu in a way no one wants to ignore.
The party whip has long been considered an anachronism anyway. Flogging and flagellation just don’t stir up positive images and emotions in terms of maintaining party discipline. Moreover, if individuals can’t vote their conscience in this day and age, what good is our collective will?
So four Unified Marxist-Leninist blokes chose to cross the floor and save the Maoist Center government of Chief Minister Mahendra Bahadur Shahi. Hounded by the Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli’s faction, those four legislators were honored by the rival Madhav Kumar Nepal group. With the four subsequently expelled from the UML, Chief Minister Shahi rewarded three with ministerial posts.
The impact was immediately apparent. Having pinned down his party rivals wearing a grim smirk all the way, Oli suddenly felt compelled to place a call to Maoist Center leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Still recovering from how victory in the restoration of the House of Representatives boomeranged on his party and politics, Dahal recognized he had just regained the initiative. While he accepted Oli’s phone call out of courtesy, the Maoist Center leader refused to meet the prime minister. Instead, he huddled with Madhav Nepal, after which both groups absented themselves from the all-party meeting Oli had convened. Having seen him defy critics to survive this long politically, it would be foolhardy to suggest that the prime minister may have run out of options. His ostensible alliances with the extreme right and the extreme left have given him a wide enough berth.
Many of Oli’s own methods have had the thinnest veneer of democratic propriety for him to rail against practices such as floor crossing. Yet Oli can count on popular apathy.
Few Nepalis have the willingness to consider the shenanigans in Karnali as anything but a crude power play. True, Nepalis have not lost faith in democracy. That’s only because that’s not an option. The ability of this political class to lead us in the right direction has eroded beyond the point of ineptness. Second-, thirdor fourth-generation leaders have been so groomed and galvanized in the traditions of their mentors that they would be hard-pressed to let old habits die.
External stakeholders, for their part, are doing everything to establish the wisdom, cogency, and legitimacy of Nepal’s post-April 2006 course, knowing full well how off-course we have careened. If there were to be a course correction, no foreign power wants to forfeit the stakes it already holds to another power.
So forget floors or ceilings, the 12-point understanding is the red line no one’s supposed to cross. Lest we be tempted, external and internal handlers know when precisely to inject such issues as MCC, RAW and debt traps and rein us in.