The wrath of a republic

In the end hubris caught up with King Gyanendra. Ever since he staged a mini royal coup in October 2002, he had made known his prejudices and ambitions to anyone who conferred with him.

He loathed the political parties on the grounds that they were corrupt and ineffective and therefore ensured that they would not be able to carry out their routine political activities. In his eyes, the Maoists, who controlled large swathes of the kingdom, were purely and simply ‘terrorists’.

By brandishing that threat the monarch reckoned, correctly as it turned out for a long while, that the outside world would have no option but to back his authoritarian regime.

The Americans, particularly after 9/11, shared his deep mistrust of these hard-line communists. So did New Delhi which had to contend with Maoist insurgency in several Indian states. Various agencies argued that the Nepali Maoists were in cahoots with their Indian comrades and that it would be naïve to trust them to forsake violence and join the democratic mainstream.

Sections of the political establishment in Nepal fanned these apprehensions for reasons of their own: they were suspicious about the designs of the Maoists, and especially of their willingness to work within the ambit of parliamentary democracy.

Add to this the close ties that have developed over the decades between the armed forces of India and Nepal. It was no secret in New Delhi that the defence ministry preferred to throw in its lot with the Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

Moreover, leaders of some Hindutva outfits championed the king’s cause. Also pleading on his behalf were members of erstwhile royals, especially in Rajasthan, who had married into aristocratic families in Nepal.

And so it is that even after the monarch assumed absolute powers in February 2005, the US and the European Union, taking their cue from New Delhi, continued to harp on the need to preserve the ‘twin pillars’ of Nepal’s Constitution: multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy.

But this merely served to annoy the king not least because New Delhi not only kept in touch with the parties but also opened channels of communication with the Maoists.

Thanks to some plodding from India, the parties and the Maoists reached a twelve-point agreement in November 2005 followed by another, far more significant one in March this year. Two factors dictated the change of India’s stance: one was the failure of the monarch to share power with the parties despite several solemn promises; and the other was the incapacity of the RNA to contain and roll back the Maoist offensive.

Against this background, it is hard to explain what possessed New Delhi to welcome the king’s proclamation of April 21, offering to return executive power to the representatives of the people and asking the seven-party alliance to name a prime minister.

This was but a ploy which would allow the king to call the shots since politicians would still be answerable to him in the absence of a parliament. (Fortunately better sense prevailed in New Delhi soon afterwards when it abandoned its earlier stand.)

The parties did well to spurn the offer for just three days later, when street demonstrations picked up momentum despite the curfew, the king went on air again announcing his decision to reinstate parliament and hand over all executive powers to the Seven Party Alliance.

The alliance hailed the announcement and swiftly designated the veteran leader GP Koirala as prime minister. The Maoists, after some ups and downs, have welcomed the King’s moves too. Equally significant was an interview that the chief of the RNA, General Pyar Jung Thapa, gave CNN in which he declared that the king, like the Indian president, was the supreme commander of the armed forces but that the latter were responsible to parliament and would take orders only from the ministry of defence. King Gyanendra’s sole support had vanished into thin air. His façade of defiance —against his own subjects to begin with—crumbled.

Now begins a period of trial for the democratic dispensation. The politicians, including the Maoists and the bureaucrats will be called upon to provide governance that is clean, effective, transparent and accountable. Nepal will also need a vast injection of resources to get the economy and development activities moving.

Otherwise, the wrath of the people, a republican wrath, which sealed the fate of an uncaring monarch, is bound to turn on them as well.

Email: dileep.p@apcaglobal.com