Monarchy And Modernization Not Mutually Exclusive

The release of former Nepalese prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala from two months of house arrest, along with the freeing of nearly 300 other political activists across the nation, should help create the climate for constructive discussions on the political future of the tiny Himalayan kingdom.

Ever since King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s multiparty government and assumed full political powers on February 1, the mainstream political parties have focused their energies on restoring democracy without addressing the principal impediment to that objective: the Maoist rebels’ threat to sabotage free and fair elections.

Worse, the mainstream parties’ periodic threats of political engagement with the rebels on abolishing the monarchy betray a sense of defeatism. For democrats, how can the Maoists’ objective of a historically discredited one-party totalitarian communist state be more appealing than King Gyanendra’s vision of a constructive monarchy which has not even had the patient hearing it deserves? Moreover, when the king is the only person talking about how 21st century Nepal could benefit as a member of the World Trade Organization and by acting as a hub between the rapidly growing economies of China and India, it becomes difficult to accept the thesis that monarchy and modernization are somehow antithetical.

Admittedly, the onus of restoring democratic legitimacy to the Nepalese state lies with the political parties. Events at home and abroad, however, have moved beyond the point where platitudes and generalities can substitute for dispassionate thinking. Internally, the Maoist insurgency, which has claimed some 11,000 lives, has raised issues of nationalism, social progress and economic development that need to be addressed urgently. Internationally, it is no longer disputed that weak states can compromise global security by, among other things, providing havens for terrorism and organized crime, spurring waves of migrants, and undermining global efforts to control environmental threats and disease.

The Financial Times reported last week that the US intelligence community is drawing up a secret watch-list of 25 countries where instability might precipitate American intervention, with one official quoted as saying that Nepal was the subject of a special study.

As for the state of Nepalese democracy before the royal takeover, a stinging rebuke came from an unlikely source: neighboring Bhutan. While unveiling the draft of the kingdom’s first constitution last week, government officials gave clear indications that they sought to institutionalize structures and safeguards to prevent a replication of the breakdown of Nepalese polity.

In their simplest form, political parties are mechanisms for the articulation of the shifting will of the people. The parties can embody and express the sovereignty of the people only through periodic free and fair elections to parliament. Certainly not by using the Maoist insurgency as an excuse to avoid elections and striving to seek legitimacy on the streets. The demand for the restoration of a parliament duly dissolved by an elected prime minister, a move held to be constitutionally valid by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, does not addresses the imperative of democratizing the state. Mock sessions of parliament on the streets confer legitimacy neither on the attendees nor their underlying aspirations.

To be sure, legitimacy cannot be held in abeyance in the absence of the requisite constitutional and political structures. For such difficult times, Nepal is fortunate in having an institution rooted in tradition, historical continuity, religious sanction and popular acceptance, capable of safeguarding constitutional authority and the power of the state. This framework of constitutionalism and rule of law should provide the basis for a wider national debate, especially at a time when the Maoist leadership is split between camps advocating peace and continuation of violence.

Such a debate can begin only when the tendency of envisaging the monarchy in anything but the Westminster model is shed. Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej once said, "In order to be King, you have to be King 24 hours a day." His sagacity and wisdom brought such stability to a country in tumult that the fact that the 18-year-old Bhumibol ascended the throne in 1946 after the mysterious gun-shot death of his brother, King Ananda Mahidol, has receded into the background of history.

The emergence of an assertive monarch in King Gyanendra, who ascended to the throne in June 2001 after his brother, King Birendra, and other royals were murdered at the palace by a drink-fuelled crown prince who later shot himself, sparked needless paranoia in the major political parties. Through public comments and newspaper interviews, the new monarch demonstrated early on that the personality, experience and wisdom of the person wearing the crown define the role a constitutional monarch plays. By exercising his prerogative to be consulted, the responsibility to warn and the right to encourage, King Gyanendra sought to spur politicians to advance the tenets of democracy and the imperatives of development together, but to little avail.

Explaining his decision to seek direct political control in the midst of political paralysis and a raging civil conflict, King Gyanendra said the nation had chosen an agenda that embodied the unacceptability of terrorism. “When we are fighting for democracy and against terrorism,” the king told a group of Nepalese editors, “the Nepalese people want to know what our friends are thinking.”

Nepal needs the patient understanding of its international friends, not aid embargoes and diplomatic isolation. “We want our friends to help us by words and by deeds. If this is not the agenda they want to go along with, then they should tell us what their agenda is.” Two months on, the Nepalese people are still waiting for an answer.

Sanjay Upadhya is a Nepalese journalist currently based in the United States

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