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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Nepal travels brink-to-brink as leaders scramble for last minute deal




One day to go. Whole constitution to be promulgated. Political parties sharply divided on crucial issues. Population polarized even more. Interest groups ready to make streets bloody.


The sorry state of Nepali politicians and the members of 4 years old constituent assembly has become like that of a lamb that had once succeeded to encage the tiger with the condition that the tiger would be released after certain period; so that at the end it would have developed something to protect itself from the danger. Now that the tiger is all set to open, neither a new cage is ready nor the lamb has developed capability to run and escape.



Most of the 4-year period gone, most time having been lost in wrangling for making and breaking governments in Kathmandu, the CA has done a commendable job over past few months to few weeks and at one point of time it seemed as if the magic was going to happen. But now, the dangerous game of brinkmanship played by the leading politicians has made a disastrous outcome far more likely and the tiger is snarling with all its might.

The most troublesome danger that lurks beyond May 27 is the chaos that is sure to follow in case the parties fail to salvage the elected body by promulgating some form of constitution tomorrow. Even going by the often scary coverage of the political events in the country in the media, it is hard to estimate the degree of radicalization of people that the interest groups have caused. This process is partly because of the failure of the political parties to guide the people but to a dangerously large extent, this is the result of some groups deliberately attempting to salvage or promote their petty partisan interest at the cost of the future of whole country.

Either way, it is still reasonable to hope that some form of compromise in the eleventh hour will be able to salvage the CA by promulgating some form of constitution by midnight tomorrow. I guess the majority of Nepalis do have that hope having seen the behavior of political parties in the past. Yet the equation is too complicated to judge and so many factors are at play, some of the important factors are detailed in previous article in this blog. And a scenario with profound disappointment is also to be anticipated.

This much can be said: the crux of the problem lies in the enduring tussle between NC and UML at one side attempting to retains some of the foundations of post-1990 Nepal (with due backing of those communities which ruled in the past) and the Maoists with regional and other ethnic groups throwing all their weight at bringing a profound a change in that foundation; each with clear eye at the future vote politics.

Win-win is impossible. A compromise is likely. But a disappointing, disastrous and disgraceful end of CA also can not be ruled out. Let's see what happens.


1 comment:

city said...

nice posting.. thanks for sharing..

विजय कुमारको खुशी पढेपछि

जीवन, खुशी अहंकार

जीवनमा अफ्ठ्यारा घुम्तीहरुमा हिंडिरहँदा मैले कुनै क्षणमा पलायनलाई एउटा विकल्पको रुपमा कल्पना गरेको थिएँ, त्यसलाई यथार्थमा बदल्ने आँट गरिनँ, त्यो बेग्लै कुरा हो त्यसबेला लाग्थ्योः मेरा समग्र दुखहरुको कारण मेरो वरपरको वातावरण हो, यसबाट साहसपूर्वक बाहिरिएँ भने नयाँ दुख आउलान् तर तत्क्षणका दुरुह दुखहरु गायब भएर जानेछन् कति गलत थिएँ !


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