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Stephen
Mikesell/Unfinished agendas of the 1990 Movement
Democracy
implies enfranchisement, active engagement and
organised confrontation. In Nepal, two struggles
have been termed ‘democratic’: the
People’s Revolution of 1951 and the People’s
Movement of 1990. In both cases, political parties
initiated the action, though the masses later
added their support. In that sense, both were
‘democratic’, although neither really
served the interests of people at large.
Mikesell
focused in on the 1990 movement. Though it had
some spontaneous elements, in the end it proved
to be primarily for the benefit of the parties
and of limited use to the people. The leadership
called the campaign from India, and it started
as a one-point demand to lift the ban on political
parties. Political parties were equated with freedom,
which was a false equation, even for the cadres.
The movement deceived people in its inability
to serve their interests. The structural forces
of governance did not change, though some democratic
aspects did emerge out of the movement.
Demands
called for an end to rule by inheritance, and
some attempts were made at independent media,
such as Free Nepal Radio in Kirtipur. Had many
of the democratic trends been fostered, true democracy
could have been facilitated. Individuals demobilised
after the success of the one-point programme on
the assumption that the parties would continue
to take the democratic struggle forward from the
top-down.
In
certain respects, this demobilisation was similar
to the German Social Democrats’ victory
in 1920, in that both led to the disbanding of
armed workers and supporters after initial victory.
In the German case, it led to Hitler’s rise.
In Nepal, party leaders tended to see the strengthening
of their own positions as the strengthening of
their parties and failed to engage the populace
fully. Party leaders had to look for powerful
sponsors (corporate, donor, etc), resulting in
a leadership aligned with the interests of others,
not the people. Moreover, party hierarchies were,
and are, often corrupt.
The
1990 constitution was not written in a democratic
way. Its drafters represented the class/caste
interests of the elite, not the masses, and the
final product had little democratic validity.
If the people had been involved in the process,
there would have been ancillary democratic benefits.
Lawyers tend to see the constitution as something
to be enshrined and worshipped, but without a
democratic process, the constitution does not
mean much.
In
the years since, bureaucracy, a tool of social
control, has frequently been the subject of calls
for decentralisation. In Nepal, the bureaucracy
has been an avenue through which multilateral
agencies, corporate interests and various global
bodies pursue their agendas. Today, with a USD
4 billion debt, Nepal effectively has no sovereignty,
and external interests and their partners among
the domestic elite are the real power base.
The
successful assertion of people’s interests
necessarily involves conflict with the bureaucracy.
But the monarchy successfully resisted attempts
to decentralise power during the constitution-framing
period. The anchaladhish—the monarchy’s
representatives—maintained the king’s
power base at the local level through a surveillance
system.
A
better system would have been representation by
locally elected delegates. The interim government
did not endorse the local government control plan,
and only three members of the government supported
it. If the communities had been involved in the
drafting of the constitution, they would have
gained more power than they eventually did. All
of this undermines the Congress Party’s
claim to being representative of the people—it
sends authority downwards, rather than secure
legitimacy upwards. Only the incompetence of the
anchaladhish prevented their use as more effective
central tools, though the central government has
many methods of undermining democracy at the local
level. The selection of candidates by central
authorities, rather than by local bodies, further
undermined the potential for democratic representation.
Under the Congress-led governments of the 1990s,
the monarchy’s anchaladhish were replaced
with centrally appointed spies of the party, the
chhetrapal, who performed a similar function.
Rather
than being revolutionary in outlook, parties have
increasingly represented competition for clientalism.
After political leaders are elected, they ignore
the interests and needs of their constituents.
Clearly, there are better ways to organise politics.
Among other improvements, these include drawing
candidates from local areas, not from party hierarchies,
and increasing the public’s ability to retrieve
unrepresentative leaders. People retain some power
(hence bandhs) but real change requires the body
politic to be politicised, not just rubber-stamping
decisions of the party hierarchy. This also entails
local control over ecology, agriculture, education,
knowledge and economics, rather than centralised
control.
In
Bolivia, people mobilised against their own local
government’s sale of water interests to
Bechtel, an American corporation. In China, where
the presenter has been based for the last five
months, local people have resisted ecological
rape. Brazil is a good model, because Brazil is
home to strong populist politics, of mobilising
bottom-up rather than legislating top-down. In
the 1960s, when Brazilian populist politics was
beginning, the government gave into many of the
people’s demands. But after the 1964 CIA-backed
coup, US foreign assistance dominated the country.
Even so, people still resisted street-by-street,
town-by-town. Many town councils require strong
community participation by the leadership to prevent
a professional political class from emerging.
And all of this was done in spite of restrictions,
constitutional and otherwise, from above. The
Brazilian model shows that there are other models
of democratic politics than multi-party democracy,
which has largely failed in Nepal.
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