POST-MONARCHY POLITICS
IN NEPAL

Prof Khalid Mahmud

CONTENTS

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The 240-year-old monarchy was abolished in Nepal on 28 May 2008 as the Constituent Assembly (CA) in an overwhelming vote proclaimed Nepal a Federal Democratic Republic. The motion to this effect was tabled by Home Minister Krishna Prasad Situala and was passed by 560 votes against four. Only the royalist Rashtriya Prajantantra Party voted against. The resolution also said that the king and the royal family would no longer enjoy and rights or privilege other than those of common citizen of Nepal. The Constituent Assembly also instructed the government to make sure that King Gyandera Shah and the royal family leave the palace within the next 15 days.⁽¹⁾ Thus the king and the royal family was accordingly made to leave the palace, rather unceremoniously. In another resolution the Constituent Assembly provided for the election of a President, who would remain in office till a new constitution was framed.⁽²⁾

Commenting on King Gyandera’s exit Nepal’s leading national daily wrote, “We take joy and pleasure in congratulating all citizen of Nepal that Nepalese are no longer subjects of the Shah dynasty that fooled the innocent people for 240 years that the king was reincarnation of Lord Bishnu.” The first and foremost credit for the Republic goes to the Maoists, the paper wrote, “we did not agree with the violent methods the Maoists had adopted but it would be unjust to deny their role in bringing this day alone.” The paper however pointed to the hurdles that still confronted the Republic. Among them it cited formation of a government and amendments to the constitution and above all the drafting of the new constitution and its approval by the Constituent Assembly.⁽³⁾

The fall of monarchy, unthinkable a couple of years ago, was greatly facilitated by Maoists success in the election to the Constituent Assembly. They had vowed in their election campaign to abolish it, even though other political parties were not as clearly committed to go along with them, and there were among them reservations fearing a political vacuum if the King was not there as head of state. To retain titular kingship was according to them the best option to pre-empt mass disorder and political uncertainty in the country. The Maoist electoral triumph set the pace for an early end to one of the oldest monarchies still in place.

In the election concluded on 10 April 2008 the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) polled 3,145,519 votes obtaining 36.60 per cent of the popular vote and securing 220 seats, while other competitors trailed far behind; the Nepali Congress with 18.30 per cent votes and 110 seats, and the Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) with 17.97 per cent votes and 108 seats.⁽⁴⁾

The abolition of monarchy was an epoch-making development in Nepal but it took the newly elected Constituent Assembly less than two months to accomplish it. However, it is only the beginning of a new era and founding a democratic federal republic on a firm footing is a tall order. According to Dr S Chandrasekharan, power sharing or power balance is the key question. Maoist supremo Prachanda conceded on 12 April that the Constituent Assembly was not the mission but only the means to “collectively write a new Constitution.”⁽⁵⁾ The popular mandate, according to him, did not give a clear majority to any single party. Therefore, it was necessary for all parties and the civil society to work together under “Maoist leadership.” Thus Chandrasekharan said the “Maoist did not want to have parallel power centres but agreed to an accord on power sharing. Rival parties like the Congress obviously had no choice but to settle for a power-sharing arrangement but they were not agreeable to accepting Maoist leadership.

The interim constitution, according to critics, suffered from two handicaps. The provision for consensus decision making in the CA was an impediment since the anti-Maoist faction in the House was reluctant to let the Maoists lead the government expressing the fear that if the Maoists were allowed to take over prime ministership it would be hard to dislodge them for the next few years. The other limitation of the interim constitution is that it does not recognise parties other than the Maoists and the seven-party alliance, particularly the Tarai parties which have a sizeable presence in the Constituent Assembly.

Monarchy until it was abolished in May 2008 was an all-power institution in Nepal’s politics. The first time Nepal’s pro-democracy forces managed to lead a mass uprising against the king’s arbitrary functioning was in 1990 when anybody and everybody from lawyers, doctors, writers, journalists joined the agitation. And king Brindera was forced to compromise with the pro-democracy forces led by the political parties. In a proclamation on 17 April 1990 he lifted the ban on political parties and installed an interim government. However, the principal politician of the day, Congress leader B P Koirala, had advocated a policy of “national reconciliation between the palace and the people.” Thus the 1990 constitution which was enforced thereafter was a “compromise document” which gave substantial powers to the king. However, this was marked by the revival of multi-party system after a lapse of 31 years. In the election held under the 1990 constitution the Nepali Congress secured a clear majority and formed the new government. Close behind its 110 seats was the Communist Party (UML) with 69 seats.

The first democratically-elected government, in particular the ruling Congress, miserably failed to give a good account of its performance as its rule was marred from day one by corruption, intrigue and constant factional tussle. After losing a vote of confidence in the assembly the Congress prime minister advised the king to call for fresh elections. The November 1994 election produced a hung parliament. The Congress paid a heavy price for its in-fighting as the Communist Party bagging 88 seats emerged as the single largest party while the Congress with 83 seats was pushed to the second place.⁽⁶⁾ In November 1994 Nepal witnessed the unprecedented spectacle of Communist Party coming to power; but it could manage to survive only for seven months. Until October 2002 when King Gyandera assumed all executive powers, a sort of musical chairs was played on the parliamentary scene for dumping the prime ministers. From 1990 to 2002 nine prime ministers rose to power and disappeared without king’s intervention. However, King Gyandera, who had ascended the throne following the mass killing of the entire royal family in June 2001, had different ideas about how to deal with political parties and democratic forces. From 2002 onwards the king appointed three prime ministers one after the other. He had made his intention quite clear.⁽⁷⁾ He wished to call the shots all by himself and use the unpalatable politicians as pawns in his grand design. However, to accuse the king exclusively for subverting the political process was a one-sided view of what went wrong with the return of multiparty democracy. The opportunity to act arbitrarily was offered to the king by the feuding politicians obsessed with greed for personal power. They could not run a single party government full term, nor could they stick together to manage a durable coalition. Ironically, of the 12 governments in Nepal between 1990 and 2005 only three were arbitrarily hired and fired by King Gyandera.

The king took the ultimate step in winding up the infantile democratic order when he on 1 February 2005 proclaimed a state of emergency in Nepal and promised that the new government led by him would restore peace and democracy in the country “within next three years.”⁽⁸⁾ King Gyandera, critics said, had taken the calculated risk to stage what was called a “palace coup,” by waiting for an opportune moment to act when he believed the growing unpopularity of the political parties was at its peak. How secure was the king in his palace after the “coup”? Opinions differed, particularly in the initial stages when there was no visible opposition to his action. Nevertheless, critics pinned their hopes on the long-term repercussions of the “palace coup” and predicted the masses would not bear with “absolute monarchy” for long.

Rise of Maoist insurgency                                                                                                                                                                         Top

While the politicians had made peace with the king in the aftermath of the 1990 compromise constitution, Nepal witnessed another historic development — the dramatic initiation of Maoist-led insurgency in the rural areas. Originally a breakaway group of CPN (UML) the Maoist communists formed a separate party and vowed to launch an armed struggle to seize political power in February 1996. 13 February was set by them as the D-Day when they entered the political arena with a big bang. In the first two weeks around 5,000 actions were carried out across the country, including armed assaults on police stations in rural districts, confiscation of property from “oppressive landlords,” and punishment for “local tyrants.”⁽⁹⁾ The Maoists were able to establish their writ in most of the rural districts within a couple of years, and the army operation against them proved inadequate to edge them out of their areas of influence.

In the wake of failure to contain the Maoist insurgency there was growing pressure on the government to open talks with the insurgents. Efforts were made in mid-2001 to negotiate a truce which lasted only four months. The Maoist agenda for talks with the government included three demands: (i) Abolition of monarchy, (ii) setting up an interim government, and (iii) holding election for a constituent assembly. As the talks came to nothing, Maoists were back in business and the government decided to launch a do-or-die military operation against their hideouts, which eventually could do no better than creating a stalemate. The next dramatic development in the Maoist strategy was to enter popular agitation along with other political parties for the overthrow of King Gyandera’s regime which paved the way for their getting closer to the pro-democracy forces in Nepal.

King Gyandera managed to hold the fort for less than a year, when the gathering storm of popular unrest burst into a deluge unparalleled in the history of mass upsurge in Nepal.⁽¹⁰⁾ A qualitatively different feature of this agitation was the Maoist participation in a mass political action which according to critics played a crucial role in the success of the popular movement. However, the Maoists did not formally renounce armed struggle as the means of seizing political power, not did they join the mainstream agitation led by the seven-party alliance but they worked in tandem with the pro-democracy forces. Another key feature was the king’s total isolation at home and abroad. Although in western quarters there were reservations about the Maoists joining the anti-king agitation there was no word of support or sympathy for the beleaguered king who could not sell the anti-Maoist card to the Americans and their allies. The anti-King mass agitation formally led by the seven-party alliances under the leadership of the Nepali Congress was widely seen as having India’s backing, but countries like China or Pakistan did not deem it appropriate to distance themselves from the anti-King forces. After three weeks of mass disturbance the king got cold feet and swallowing his pride he restored the parliament that he had dissolved three years ago to arrogate to himself arbitrary powers to rule by decree.

From insurgency to electoral politics                                                                                                                                              Top

As the king was marginalised and turned into a virtual prisoner in his own palace and the army accepted the changeover to constitutional rule as fait accompli the focus of attention shifted to how the Maoists would respond to the emerging situation. The Congress-led seven party alliance that had come to power opened negotiations with the Maoists which paved the way for a “historic” peace accord. The Maoists not only joined the interim government but were also signatories to the 2007 interim constitution. The entry of the Maoists into mainstream parliamentary politics in Nepal was a landmark development, but they encountered new challenges soon after becoming a part of the interim government. The most serious of these problems was the upsurge among the ethnic minorities, particularly those living in the Tarai region, who demanded to be recognised as “autonomous ethnic unit.” The Maoists also had a rough time dealing with coalition partners, as they insisted that monarchy should be abolished before elections to the Constituent Assembly (CA) were held under the present legislation and elections to the CA should be held under a mixed system: 240 members directly elected and 240 elected on the basis of proportional representation. Consequently the Maoists withdrew from the interim government on 18 September 2007 and CA elections were indefinitely postponed.

Elections to CA                                                                                                                                                                                                 Top

The twice-postponed polls were finally held on 10 April 2008. The assembly was to be elected for a period of two years and its mandate was to draft a new constitution. The number of eligible voters was 17.5 million. The Election Constituency Delimitation Commission recommended the following number and distribution of seats: 335 members should be elected on the basis of proportional representation system, 240 through election in constituencies, and 17 recommended by the council of ministers. The campaigning began more than a month before the election day. By early March more than 5,882 candidates from 55 parties had submitted their nominations for contesting the election under proportional representation system.⁽¹¹⁾ Leaders of the major political parties began door-to-door campaign, especially in the rural areas, as one daily observed that a ‘poll fever’ had gripped the nation.⁽¹²⁾ About 1,35,000 police troops were deployed throughout the country to protect some 20,000 polling station. An estimated 60 per cent voters cast their ballot.

Since the major parties had already agreed to project a republican, federal system, abolition of monarchy did not figure in the election campaign as a ‘bone of contention’. However, the CPM (UML) called for a “prime ministerial system,” under which it proposed that the prime minister should be a directly elected by the electorate, while the Tarai Democratic Party (TDP) proposed the formation of a “single Tarai province stretching from Jhapa to Kanchanpur with several autonomous governing units within it.”⁽¹³⁾

On the polling day, Nepal’s leading English daily called the event “a historic leap towards the future.” “The day has finally arrived. Today Nepalis are casting their votes across the country in first-ever Constituent Assembly election which will abolish 240-year- old monarchy and write a new republican constitution,” the paper wrote.⁽¹⁴⁾ The paper gave credit to the Maoists for “rendering the Constituent Assembly agenda into the Napali politics. King Gyandera’s seizure of absolute power in February 2005, Maoist commitment to a multi-party system and accepting the verdict of the people expressed through the CA election made the alliance between the mainstream parties and Maoists possible.

Of the major political parties CPN (Maoists) topped the list of successful candidates with 220 seats and 36 per cent of the votes polled, of which 100 seats were won through proportional representation. They were followed by the Nepali Congress which won 110 seats (37 direct and 73 through PR) and 18.30 per cent of the popular vote, CPN (UML) 103 seats (33 direct plus 73 through PR) and 17.1 per cent of the vote, Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum 52 seats (30 direct plus 22 through PR) and 8.65 per cent of voter, Tarai Madhesh Loktantrik Party 20 seats (9 plus 11) and 3.33 per cent vote. It was indeed a fragmented assembly with no single party managing to secure even 40 per cent of the seats. Two of the three principal parties could coalesce to have a simple majority, but that was enough for a two-thirds majority required if there was no consensus. The Maoist electoral triumph was spectacular. No one had imagined a guerrilla outfit turned parliamentary party could do as well as it did in the first election, while the performance of the Nepali Congress which had claimed to speak for all Nepalis was disappointing. Another rising star on the political horizon were the champions of the ‘Tarai’s autonomy’ with 72 seats overwhelming all other political forces in the region.

Summary of the 10 April 2008
Nepalese Constituent Assembly election results