Transboundary jurisdiction

Nepali Times opinion piece

Towards an authoritarian regime?

Prateek Pradhan

JUN 26 - After all the hullabaloo and repeated threats by the Maoists to take to the streets, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has finally agreed to vacate the coveted position. Hopefully by the end of this week, the people will get to see a leftist government led by the Maoists and adorned with the UML and other smaller leftist parties. With the Maoists on the verge of taking the reins of power, two valid concerns have surfaced strongly. First, how will it affect the morale of the Nepal Army? How will they accomplish the integration of the PLA into the NA? Second, how hard will they attempt to constrict democratic space and establish an authoritarian regime?
The insistence of the Nepali Congress until the last minute to include the leader of the opposition in the Security Council is not because they are avaricious for power. Their latest decision to remain out of the government has somewhat justified their stand. GP Koirala must have been requested by the Nepal Army not to leave it alone at the mercy of the Maoists. Obviously, the NA that fought so fiercely with the PLA from 2002 to 2006 will not find it easy to accept a Maoist henchman as president and its supreme commander-in-chief. Had GP Koirala been accepted as president, an NA-PLA merger would not have been that difficult. But after the UML ditched the NC, the latter had no option but to accept the conditions set by the new Maoists-UML coalition. There was hardly anything the NC could do. 
The latest development suggests that the Maoists have agreed on a UML candidate for the position of president. Though the Maoists and the UML have failed to reach an agreement regarding the candidate, it should not be too difficult for the NA to have any UML leader as the supreme commander-in-chief. The NA's voting pattern in the latest CA election has not been revealed, but the samples that came to the public proved that a majority of NA soldiers voted for the UML. 
However, many people fear that the Maoists might dump the UML at the last minute by fielding Ram Raja Prasad Singh as their presidential candidate. Singh will get the votes of the Madhesi parties too. As they say, anything is fair in love and politics. The Maoists may not choose to drop the UML because these two parties together enjoy a comfortable majority. Otherwise the Maoists will have to seek the support of other smaller parties. This will make the Maoist government vulnerable to a no-confidence motion anytime.
After the formation of the Maoist government and the election of the president, their behavior towards liberal democratic values would be the first thing to worry about. They have openly warned the media to be careful. In the rural areas, journalists have already started practicing self-censorship to protect themselves from Maoist wrath. The case of two journalists in Bardia who were displaced for exposing Maoist involvement in the corruption related to a public property is just the tip of the iceberg. The journalists strongly believed that any wrongdoing hidden from the public was very dangerous. In order to suppress such reporting in the future, the government will have to promote state terrorism.
In addition to suppressing fundamental rights and freedom of expression, the Maoists might even try to displace the political parties from the remote areas. The parties that could not canvass the countryside will find it even more difficult to enter the villages to win the sympathy of the people. The Maoists might attempt to eliminate other political forces, and create a situation where only they will win the elections time and again – something similar to the action of the Bengal communists who have ruined the state since they came to power in 1977. 
Obviously, if the Maoists try such things, they will not survive for long. The people will ultimately rise up against any authoritarian setup. We have seen just such an incident recently. The former king failed to contain the stiff opposition against totalitarianism despite having military might on his side. So the Maoists won't be an exception. Maoist leaders Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Dr Baburam Bhattarai understand this fact very well. But the internal dynamics of the Maoists will not allow them to show any flexibility towards liberal democratic values and capitalist economic policies. So, contrary to many people's forecast that the Maoists will ultimately change like the UML did in the 1990s, the leaders themselves might get dragged towards a radical line. 
After October 2002, when the then king had deposed a democratically elected prime minister, many people had thought that, in this 21st century, he would not dare go further along the totalitarian road. But he proved them wrong by staging a coup in February 2005. He had been forced to do so by his close aides who wanted power and authority beyond anything else. They thought the people could be controlled by batons, boots and bullets. The Pushpa Kamal-Baburam duo will fall into a similar quandary. Radical cadres led by Mohan Baidhya and Netra Bikram Chand are in no mood to rest until the country is turned into a People's Republic of China of the kind established immediately after Mao's takeover. 
The Maoists' fall towards absolute communism can only be prevented by the international community, the civil society, professional groups, all democratic people and the media. These groups should come out openly against any initial move that might push the country towards a radical path. If pro-democracy groups remain complacent saying that it is the 21st century and they cannot establish absolute communism, we will end up having a communist state sooner than later.
prateekp@gmail.com
Posted on: 2008-06-25 07:33