Monday Backgrounder: Nepal’s Democracy Drama

Monday Backgrounder is a weekly feature that discusses a new topic every week giving the reader basic knowledge about the subject so that you can pretend to know things without reading a newspaper. With UN Mission in Nepal being kicked out this week, it seems an appropriate time to discuss what has been going on in the Himalayan country.

If you haven’t read my previous post on Nepal’s democratic crisis, one of the worst political dramas of the last decade in South Asia, shame on you. Anyways, I forgive you and just to be comprehensive here are the gory details of what has been going in the country.

Around 1996, a group of red-blooded Nepalis, who followed the teaching of Mao (hence called Maoists) decided to rebel against the government beginning a decade-long civil war in the country. Eventually, in 2006, with a little mediation by India, the government and the Maoists decided to declare a ceasefire and signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

In 2008, after the players in the country had gotten rid of the King, they called for an election according to the CPA. The Maoists, surprising everyone swept the elections and became the largest party in the parliament. They formed a government and ruled happily ever after…except they didn’t. The right-wing factions of Kathmandu (who hate Maoists) started putting the screw in. The biggest issue of contention was the fact that Maoists had 19,000 fighting cadres left over from the war that they wanted to induct in the Nepali Army. The Nepali Army, being an army, wasn’t too excited on the idea of adding 19,000 new soldiers that they had been fighting for the last decade. Tempers were lost, angry words were said and soon Maoists quit the government.

The new government, now from the right-wing, ran into trouble straight away. Now it was turn of the Maoists, sitting on the opposition aisle to push the screw in. Eventually in June 2010, under pressure from all fronts the new PM, Madhav Kumar Nepal (oh yeah baby! Its Mr. Nepal) decided to step down. Since then the parliament has been called sixteen times to vote for a new PM and every bloody time they run into a deadlock. It was meant to be called for the seventeenth time this week but seeing that there will be no resolution the vote was called off. The President of the country has given the parliament time until Friday to come up with a government or he will call for a general election. 

Meanwhile, the funny thing is that the country still does not have a constitution. The deadline for finishing one is May, 2011 but I am not holding my breath, what with a missing government and all. As for the 19,000 Maoists cadres, they are still around, in various cantonments around the country. And the army still refuses to include them in the soldiering business. 

What the United Nations Mission in Nepal was doing, among other things, was to monitor the weapons that Nepali Army and Maoists had and made sure that not more than 12% of the Maoist fighters left their cantonment at the same time to make sure that not enough Maoists are out there to restart a war. According to the reports, UNMIN was not particularly good at its job. 

The Army, claiming that UNMIN was biased in favor of the Maoists, pushed for their ouster from the country and eventually succeeded. Last week, UNMIN left and all the monitoring will now have to be done by the Nepali government. Like that’s gonna work out.

More importantly, the deadlines for both finding a government and writing are a constitution are inching close and no resolution seems in sight. Hopefully, Karthmandu will find a peaceful resolution otherwise the civil war is always a valid option for two sides that never bothered to disarm during four years of peace.