Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

NEPAL: Spring Blooms Early, Democracy Dormant

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU , Mar 5 2006 (IPS) - Spring has come a month early to Nepal’s capital, according to locals eyeing the blooms in their gardens, but more than a year after King Gyanendra seized power, a democratic thaw seems unlikely.

It was in 1990 that Nepalis last took to the streets to force their monarch to drastically curtail his powers. Then King Birendra, the current king’s brother, bowed to demands for a multiparty system and agreed to the drafting of a new constitution. Democracy in this south Asian nation was in full flower.

But in 2002, one year after Birendra and his family were killed in the ‘palace massacre’, the prime minister dismissed Parliament. He was then fired by King Gyanendra, who began appointing his own leaders. On Feb 1, 2005, the monarch tired even of that vestige of multiparty democracy, fired and jailed his last PM and declared emergency rule.

Hundreds of activists, journalists, academics and others considered threats were rounded up and jailed and soldiers were posted in media houses. The king promised to restore peace and full democracy within three years – but more than a year into that mandate, few people see anything but bad news ahead.

Since ending a unilateral ceasefire in January, Maoist rebels have reignited their decade-long war against the state with fury, attacking police posts in major towns – even in the Kathmandu Valley, home of the army and police headquarters.

The major opposition political parties, united in a rare coalition since May 2005, boycotted February’s municipal elections, in which only 22 percent of Nepalis voted.

Even the king’s usually silent backers among the world’s nations, such as Japan, are beginning to voice their impatience at the monarch’s failure to convert his promises of peace and a return to full democracy into action.

Dozens of protests have been held, both in rural areas and in the capital, some attracting tens of thousands of people. But where are the hundreds of thousands of Nepalis whose sheer weight could push King Gyanendra out of power?

“The students are there, the women, the lawyers, the civil society, the media, the labourers, even industry. How can people say there is no support for the movement?” asks Sahana Pradhan, a member of the central committee of the moderate Marxist-Leninist wing of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML), which governed briefly after 1994’s elections.

“1990 was different,” Pradhan added during an interview in her home one recent morning. “The demand then was that the king should give up absolute power. Today, the people on the street are warning the political parties: ‘No more leaders like in the past’.. They’re saying, ‘what did we get from democracy? Nothing’.”

It is universally acknowledged here that the political parties that governed, squabbled and in many cases splintered after 1990 were corrupt and did little to entrench democracy in what should have been fertile soil.

That failure soured a huge number of Kathmandu’s middle class on democracy. ”I still have energy for democracy” but ”I’m not as blind as in that time,” 1990 activist Rohit Adhikari told IPS in 2005.

”Unless good young leaders come up, I don’t think people will really participate (in today’s protests) because they don’t believe” the existing ones, added the employee at an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) who asked that his real name not be used.

Many of the children of 1990’s revolutionaries refuse to even dip their toes in what they consider the fouled waters of politics, says Rajendra Mulmi, president of the NGO Youth Initiative.

“The media has hyped the corruption in politics so much that people think only of that when they hear ‘politics’,” Mulmi told IPS.

Nepali youth are today divided into a ‘political’ group, mostly rural-based and students of government schools, and the apolitical, urbanites who study in private institutions, he added in an interview.

The latter “only see these ‘political’ youth burning tyres on the streets, and say ‘look at those rascals polluting the environment’.”They don’t recognise that politics is all around them, that it affects their daily lives,” says Mulmi adding that one of the group’s slogans is ‘Hating politics is not the answer’.

That does not mean that Nepali politics cannot be improved, says the youth leader. For example, role models are lacking and, when they do emerge, are quickly put down by the political parties’ leadership.

“Many young people were on the street when (youth leader) Gagan Thapa was arrested, more than when the other (senior) leaders were recently jailed,” adds Mulmi. But today, Thapa languishes on the sidelines of the powerful Nepali Congress party and many youth would rather put their energies into planning overseas studies than backing political warhorses.

“Us leaders, to some extent, unknowingly helped to bring this day,” says Pradhan, who first went to Kathmandu’s streets chanting democratic slogans in 1948. “If we were united in wanting to develop this country, to return democracy to the people, I think it would have worked.”

“We have learned much and made many corrections. Now, whenever I speak publicly I say that our party has made many mistakes,” she adds.

Nepal’s many rumour mills fired up again last week when it was reported that King Gyanendra was holding one-on-one meetings in his palace in the resort town of Pokhara with many political figures in and out of the government. A deal with the parties was imminent, people predicted.

But the opposition will not bite, says Pradhan. “When the king went to the west some months ago he told officials publicly: ‘try to win the people over to your side. If you can’t do that, then divide them’.”

“He’s doing that now, offering titbits to the people,” she added.

No backroom deal will satisfy many youth, says Mulmi. “They want change but change with a vision. For example, if there’s going to be a republican system, who’s going to be the president? Just coming out of this mess is not a solution.”