Author: Bijen Jonchhe
Publication: The Rising Nepal
Date: January 9, 2006
URL: http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/pageloader.php?file=2005/12/30/editorial/editorial1
Senator Leahy's statement to President George
Bush was both predictable and unpredictable. Predictable because it was the
take of a first-worlder on "this land of mostly impoverished tea and
rice farmers" in the throes of a political crisis and on the brink of
chaos. Unpredictable, because many discerning Nepalese had thought of him
less anachronistic than his throwback on the infamous Sixties when CIA-engineered
coups were part of American foreign policy, which he seems to be wanting to
prescribe again in Nepal taking advantage of its troubled political condition.
Incitement
If this were not true, why would he ask the Chief of Armed Staff General Pyar
Jung Thapa to "show real leadership at this critical time?" If this
does not amount to incitement, what does? What does his recommendation that
the United States should do everything possible to encourage the army to announce
its own ceasefire mean? How are we to interpret this? Does Leahy really believe
he can further the cause of democracy or for that matter peace in Nepal by
encouraging the RNA in this manner?
In his June 24, 2004 statement on George Bush's
decision to go to war in Iraq, he had agreed with Bush that the Iraqi people
are better off without Saddam Hussein but had pointed out, "But that
is not the measure of a policy that led us into a war based on a false premise,
faulty, distorted intelligence, and an astounding lack of understanding or
concern for the huge costs and liabilities." These considerations hardly
figure in his diagnosis and prescription for the maladies affecting Nepal.
Rather, it appears that the very things he had charged George Bush and the
US government with are now applicable to him and his recommendations on what
the US policy toward Nepal should be. Suddenly, this dove of a left-winger
in US politics has turned even more hawkish than the most right-wing extremist,
where Nepal is concerned. This probably is the result of listening to only
a handful of people and choosing to ignore the total picture just like he
accused Bush of not listening to others and closeting himself to his advisors
prior to declaring war on Iraq.
While slamming Bush in 2004 over Iraq, Leahy
had said, "In fact, other options were far from exhausted, and the intelligence
he relied on was manipulated, misinterpreted and wrong". One year later,
the same can be said about Leahy's statement that flawed as the political
parties of Nepal are, there is no substitute to them. But this is not true.
There are options, and the real options include more political parties to
be meaningfully involved in rebuilding Nepal through a legitimate political
process. In fact, the legitimacy of all representatives had expired constitutionally
as well as legally the day the House was dissolved. Successive governments
since then had failed to hold the polls. Now that the current government has
finally determined to hold elections to restore democracy and put a legitimate
government in place and thereby resolve the political crisis plaguing the
country, the agitating parties have decided to boycott it.
It's also interesting to note here that Leahy
is in agreement with the political parties that the municipal and parliamentary
elections are no solution to the crisis. Why? Just because the agitating parties
have decided against it as their own proposals for an all-party government
and restoration of parliament are not possible?
What neither Leahy nor the agitating parties
of Nepal understand or pretends not to understand is that unless there is
an election, there is no way any one can claim that they are truly the people's
representatives. So, instead of harboring prejudices and suspicions regarding
the elections, Nepal's agitating parties should instead have been taking initiatives
to ensure free and fair elections.
The democratic process has to restart at some
point, and it cannot be better done than through the election of local bodies.
Therefore, only by participating in the polls the political parties will be
able to prove their democratic credential. Leahy ought to have advised the
agitating parties in this regard, but unfortunately, as things are at the
moment, his support for the political parties is support for the same inept
people who for 12 years bred corruption and nurtured the Maoists.
With regard to the Maoists, Leahy has very
much downplayed the threat they are. In fact, he wants to make the US policy
on terror stand on its head. That the Maoists, despite their unilateral ceasefire
- even an extension of it - continue to extort, abduct and rob and even kill
seems completely a non-issue. He sees the 12-point understanding between the
agitating seven-party alliance and the Maoists as opening a "crack of
light" as though that were the light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing
could be more delusional.
If Leahy's prescription is to be followed,
and if the Maoists were to be mainstreamed without even laying down their
weapons, US policy on terrorism would become the laughing stock throughout
the world. If the world is to follow the "no negotiation with terrorists"
principle, then it follows that Maoists of Nepal ought to be the first ones
to lay down their weapons before they can become an acceptable force in mainstream
politics. But nowhere has Leahy mentioned this, though he takes quite a great
deal of pain to exhort the Chief Of Arm Staff to take the Nepalese military
on its own tangential path, and a dangerous one at that.
Harsh View
This, to say the least, is contradictory for even as he champions the cause
of democracy in Nepal, he seems to want Nepal to become another Myanmar, or
for that matter another Pakistan? It would be a folly to question the senator's
motives, but one must ask why he is prompted to take such a harsh view of
the present government. The danger of a senator of the stature of Leahy lies
in that he has the power to influence state policy and thereby engender even
greater chaos.
But just as the US government chooses to give
little importance to Senator Leahy's views on its handling of the Iraq problem,
we the people of Nepal as well as the President of the US should not be misguided
by his pronouncement on us and our concerns.
