Asia Literary Review - Chinese writing

IT WAS, said former US President Jimmy Carter in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, ‘a revolutionary election’, one that would end a decade-long guerrilla war waged in the mountains and valleys of one of the poorest countries in the world, and one that would signal the end of the last of the Hindu monarchies.

On Thursday, April 10, 2008, Nepal went to the polls to decide its future.

The twice-delayed election, originally planned for June 2007 and then again that November, was for representatives to a constituent assembly, which will draft a new constitution for the tiny, but astonishingly beautiful and seriously poor, nation. It is the landlocked home to some 27 million predominantly Hindu people who live, sandwiched between China and India, among eight of the world’s ten highest mountains – including the 8,850-metre Everest – and down on the lush Terai plain.

One of the first tasks of the new assembly will be to formally end the 240-year Hindu monarchy, which relied on the patronage of first Britain and then India, and declare Nepal a republic of federated states.

Nepal has tried parliamentary democracy before, but intervention by the monarchy or the emergence of political elitism thwarted earlier aspirations. Political parties were banned for thirty-nine years until 1990. Then, successive anti-communist administrations provoked the so-called ‘People’s War’, a sustained and bloody populist rebellion led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) that cost the lives of more than 13,000 people, with thousands more ‘missing’.

The Maoists agreed to end their rebellion in return for political representation.

The new assembly ensures a substantial number of seats for Nepal’s marginalised and oppressed, making it extensively inclusive. It faces challenges of truly Himalayan proportions. The People’s War annihilated an already fragile economy, closing down its few industries, making it difficult for exporters of clothing, carpets and ghee to survive, and eroding potential and real earnings from tourism, which offers Nepal the only realistic way out of its dependence on the foreign aid that pays for more than a quarter of government spending. With an average annual income of just US$330 dollars per person, many Nepalese get by on remittances of two million workers who send back US$1 billion a year.

To understand the election’s significance, one needs to reflect on the past. Nepal has a history of a repressive authoritarian rule. The rule of the Shah Dynasty was punctuated by bloodshed, betrayal and intrigue, even though from 1846 to 1951, true power resided in an oligarchy of prime ministers who traded Gurkha regiments for the support of the British Empire.

An uprising backed by India in 1950 marked the beginning of a half-century power struggle between the monarchy and various political elites. A brief flirtation with democracy in 1960 ended two years later when King Mahendra Shah dissolved parliament, banned political parties and took power for himself through a system of village, district and national panchayats (assemblies). Mahendra was succeeded by his son King Birendra Shah, who ruled until 1990, when violent demonstrations forced him to agree to a constitutional monarchy.

So began rule by politicking as party leaders sought to make a new elite.

In response to the perceived ineptitude and apathy of the state in relation to its citizens’ needs and demands, a ‘People’s War’ was declared in 1996 by Maoist rebels who, starting in remote villages, quickly gained control of large tracts of Nepal’s agricultural hinterlands. The government gave the army a long leash in an attempt to regain control. Guerrilla war ensued.

Back in the capital, Nepal’s monarchy played out its final scene. In 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra Shah, allegedly drunk, took a sub-machine gun to his family, killing the king and the rest of his immediate relatives before killing himself. So the official report says. Dipendra’s uncle, Gyanendra Shah, the dead King Mahendra’s brother, was vaulted to the throne and in February 2005 dissolved parliament after a military-backed coup under the pretext of controlling the Maoists’ war. In doing so, King Gyanendra drove the now sidelined mainstream political parties into talks with the Maoist rebels – the enemy of my enemy is my friend – and in April 2006, a largely peaceful popular uprising forced the king to surrender power.

In November 2006, the Maoists put down their guns and signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, joined the interim government in 2007 as a full partner, though it later quit, and openly fielded candidates for the April 10 election, which was widely perceived, and enthusiastically received, as a vote for change and peace. Forgiveness for atrocities by both sides over the past decade, which went largely ignored by the international community out of sensitivities concerning China and India, was on the table.

Given that many Nepalese appeared prepared to reward the Maoists for their part in opening a path to Nepal becoming a republic, there was probably little need for the extensive intimidation and harassment anecdotally reported on the day of the election. A demoralised police did little to maintain electoral security and the election commission’s observers appeared indifferent to maintaining the integrity of the balloting process.

Though the courts have yet to rule on the legitimacy of a handful of seats, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) won 217 seats in the 601-seat Constituent Assembly – including 120 of the 240 directly elected seats and about a third of the 335 seats elected by proportional representation. [An interim council of ministers nominates twenty-six additional members.] The next largest bloc went to the country’s oldest political party, Nepali Congress with 107 seats, followed by the centre-left Communist Part of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) with about 100.

The Maoists soundly beat everyone else in the race, strategically and tactically, and the Carter Centre, though observing what it called ‘some irregularities during the conduct of the poll’, deemed the election to be credible and urged the international community to accept the outcome. The result was unforeseen, much of the media and most pundits having predicted the Maoists’ defeat. There is nervousness about what happens next, one wit dubbing the Nepalese New Year, on April 13, the start of ‘Year Zero’.

Subel Bhandari

• As Asia Literary Review went to press, the Constituent Assembly met for the first time on May 28 in Kathmandu and, with just four dissenting votes, abolished the monarchy, declaring Nepal ‘an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular and an inclusive democratic republic nation’. The act was met with popular acclaim on the streets of the capital. Gyanendra, invited to stay in Nepal as a private citizen, was stripped of his palace and given fifteen days to move out.