NEPAL: Communists and Royalists Make Strange Bedfellows

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis -- Suman Pradhan

KATHMANDU, Mar 11 1997 (IPS) - For the first time after Nepal replaced an absolute monarchy and returned to democracy seven years ago, the Himalayan kingdom has a prime minister with royalist antecedents.

Lokendra Bahadur Chand became Nepal’s prime minister on Monday after a three-party centre-right alliance of the Nepali Congress collapsed in a house vote last week.

Chand has served as prime minister before — during the autocratic Panchayat years, when there were no elections and prime ministers were appointed by the Royal Palace.

What is more interesting is that Chand’s rightist National Democratic Party (known by its Nepali acronym, RPP) has only 19 seats in the 205-seat legislature. He is prime minister only because he has forged an unusual alliance with the left.

The Communist Party of Nepal United Marxist-Leninists (UML) won the 1994 elections which threw a hung parliament, and has tasted power before. Although they are the single largest party in Parliament with 90 seats, they did not have enough to form a government on their own.

The Communists together with the Nepali Congress had spearheaded the democracy uprising that ended in April 1990. A new Constitution, which was introduced later, brought back free elections, lifted the ban on political parties and turned King Birendra into a constitutional monarch.

At that time, Chand was prime minister of the last King- appointed government and himself handed over power to the interim coalition made up of the Communists, Congress and royalists.

This week, with Chand once more prime minister, events have come a full circle. And in an ironic twist to the tale a rightist prime minister is in power because the left has come to his aid.

This strange alliance has bolstered the argument that the Communists and the royalists were one and the same, even during the Panchayat regime.

Also in the RPP-UML coalition are two lawmakers of the southern regional political force, the Nepal Sadbhavana Party (NSP). Two more from the leftist Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (NWPP) have also extended their support.

It has to be said that both the RPP and NSP were also part of the coalition of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress.

It is not sure how workable Chand’s coalition will be and how long will it last. the only thing the present coalition has in common is the fervent desire to keep the Nepali Congress out of power.

With politicians switching sides at the slightest excuse, and the euphoria of democracy long since gone, political apathy is growing in Nepal. Chand is the fifth prime minister since 1990.

The new prime minister himself has spoken little to the press since King Birendra called him to form a government, but his allies say the coalition will try to stay till the next general elections due in two years time.

“Thus government will last till the elections,” NSP leader Gajendra Narayan Singh told IPS. “We will work out a basic set of policies and programmes. There should not be any problems”.

But problems there will be, and lots of it. If Nepal’s recent political history is any guide, the most pressing threat to Chand’s stability will come from within his own RPP which is beset with internal strife.

RPP parliamentary leader Chand controls only 10 of the 19 legislators the party has in parliament. His rival Surya Bahadur Thapa is a strong contender for the leadership of the party.

Party leaders however say, the difference have been papered over soon after Chand assumed the premiership yesterday. “We have managed to come back to power in a short span of seven years. I don’t think any one in the party will want to spoil this,” Rajeshwar Deykota, a top RPP leader said.

RPP president Thapa even sounded a conciliatory note when he welcomed the new developments and promised to cooperate with Chand.

This aside, the other major threat for Chand could come from within his major ally, the communists. The CPN (UML) leadership too has been embroiled in a battle for supremacy which could soon boil over.

Moreover, an influential group of communist legislators

recently warned of deserting Chand if he is elevated to the premiership in any RPP-UML alliance. But Kamal Koirala, a communist legislator, said the differences had been worked out, for now.

Even if the coalition partners do manage to keep their houses in order, there could still be major problems due to the divergent ideologies.

The rightists RPP, which likes to project itself as a centrist force, has already endorsed free-market policies and economic liberalisation.

The communists, meanwhile, are averse to such ideas. During their nine-month minority rule which ended in August 1995, the communist government rolled back much of the liberalisation and privatisation policies set in motion by the earlier centrist Nepali Congress government