PHA-Exchange> Rape of constitution

[Mathura P Shrestha]

Dear All

Constitution was misused by many elected or coalition governments. Deuba's recommendation to dissolve the parliament was unconstitutional. The spirit of constitution is clearly stipulated in the constitution that the king decides only as advised by the Prime Minister and the PM is supposed to be deciding on such important matters only after the decision of the cabinet. Similarly cabinet could decide only with the confidence of trust from the parliament and respective party or parties. And the party could and should decide according to its declared manifesto, its political stands and political basis of the trust and aspiration of the people. These are fundamentals of multiparty democracy, constitutional monarchy, and political norms of people's sovereign rights. 

However, the most severe violation of the constitution is perpetuated recently by the king himself who is supposed to guard the constitution with its spirit and letters. Itis the example worst violation of the trust enshrined in the constitution. This is especially disastrous because of long history of autocracy dictated directly by the kings during so called Panchyat democracy and centuries of familial rules prior to 1950 revolution. People prefer to call these periods as dark nights. Socially, the dark nights represented nights (periods) of most violent and most awesome genocides in a war between gods and demons described in one of the epic of Nepal.

Historically, the incompetency of political parties are based on the following interrelated factors:
  1.. The leaders always fear the people and their power of their discontent as they know that they do not have capacity to know the extent of the country's and people's needs and problems or solve them properly. To compensate this deficiency they develop unnecessary attachment with and dependency on the monarchy. This is also partly related to the hidden power structure, as the army is rather controlled by the king. Majority of officers and soldiers are of course phycologically aligned with the democracy.
  2.. Non-party or even anti-party traits, corruption, favoritism and nepotism engulfed the ways of life of political party leaders, especially those of ruling parties, bureaucracy and ruling class.
  3.. Political party leaders, because of their subconscious class mentality, do not try to grasp their political grounds. Thus they are susceptible to decide as per their personal whims or without proper home works or research. Some classic examples of their historical mistakes are:
  a.. In 1950/51 the Nepali Congress who shared power with the corrupt Rana regime agreed to dissolve its own liberation army which  fought heroically to bring Rana regime to its heels. Instead, the Rana soldiers were upgraded and reorganized as Royal Nepali Army.
  b.. The prime ministers copied other countries' PMs, without understanding their political bases, to recommend the king to dissolve the parliament without the decision of the cabinet or their party. They did not like to take parliament or the people into confidence.
  c.. The political leaders and ministers could not harness the bureaucracy politically and reform it. In stead they degraded themselves to become party to the existing bureaucracy instead of providing political and policy directions to the bureaucracy.
  d.. They compromised the constitution and democratic norms to activate constitutional monarchy. Examples for this are - referrals of resignation of upper house members to the king without discussion in the house or even without the recommendation of leader of the house; nomination of some members of upper house and appointments of ambassadors etc.
  e.. The political parties could not manage the conflicts and differences within the party (inner-party struggle) and with other parties. The ruling party never behaved politically the opposition parties, and the opposition parties could not take its political stands with or against the ruling party(s).
  f.. In stead of advocating and setting processes including political mediations to develop and reform the constitution  to guarantee the sovereign rights of the people and according to the needs of time they constantly harped on the unchangability of the constitution. Thus they exposed their ignorance to the social and political dynamics. 
As conscience keepers, the intellectuals, professionals, experts and members of civil societies for democracy, human rights and social justice must now unite and condemn the 'Shahi ghosana' strongly, critically hammer the conscience of political leaders and workers towards democratic and people-centered norms and against their wrong trends and behaviors. We also need to usurp solidarity with international communities to prevent the political accident and crisis like the present one in Nepal and to foster democracy, human rights, social justice, peace and well-being of the people in Nepal, other developing countries and in fact, all over the world.

We also should advocate the resolution of the present insurgency or civil war in Nepal by putting pressure on both conflicting parties to come forward with sincere and committed ceasefire and result oriented dialogue. The conflict is taking a big toll of lives, health and properties of the people. Instead of resigning ourselves to despair and fate let all of try to mediate and resolve the conflict to bring peace and progressive social changes that will make differences to the people. 

With regards,

Sincerely,

Mathura P. Shrestha.


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